<sect1 id="sect-dataentryextern">
  <title>Obtaining Data from External Sources</title>

  <para>
    Data are commonly obtained from external sources such as from
    other files, either in a spreadsheeet format or in delimited text
    format, from other applications using the mouse to copy and paste
    data or from external applications such as databases or internet
    data streams.
  </para>

  <sect2 id="sect-dataentryextern-files">
    <title>Obtaining Data from External Files</title>

    <para>
      Data which already exist in an external file can be imported
      into a workbook first by opening the file into a separate
      instance of <application>gnumeric</application> and and then by
      copying the relevant data into the desired worksheet.
    </para>

    <para>
      Data contained in external files in the formats of several other
      spreadsheet applications can be opened by
      <application>gnumeric</application>.
      <application>Gnumeric</application> can open files in
      <application>Applix</application> (TM) format, GNU
      <application>Oleo</application> format, Lotus
      <application>123</application> (TM) format, Microsoft
      <application>Excel</application> (TM) format,
      <application>Multiplan</application> (TM) format, OpenOffice
      <application>Calc</application> or StarOffice
      <application>Calc</application> (TM) format, <application>Plan
      Perfect</application> (TM) format, <application>Quatro
      Pro</application> (TM) format, <application>sc</application> and
      <application>XSpread</application> format or in the
      <application>Xbase</application> format.
    </para>

    <para>
      Data contained in external text files which are formatted in
      well defined ways can also be opened by
      <application>gnumeric</application>.
      <application>Gnumeric</application> can open files formatted in
      Data Interchange Format, formatted as HTML tables, or formatted
      in text formats such as comma separated values or tab delimited
      records. The opening of text format files is configurable by the
      user so that text files which contain data formatted in a wide
      variety of schemes can be imported correctly into
      <application>gnumeric</application>. Obtaining data from these
      files is explained in detail in the section titled <xref
      linkend="sect-files-openimport" />.
    </para>

    <para>
      Data which are opened into a separate instance of
      <application>gnumeric</application> can be copied and pasted
      into the current worksheet with the copy and paste commands as
      explained in <xref linkend="sect-movecopy-cutandpaste" />.
    </para>

   </sect2>

  <sect2 id="sect-dataentryextern-cutnpaste">
    <title>Obtaining Data by Cut and Paste</title>

    <para>
      Data can be obtained from other
      <application>Gnumeric</application> workbooks or other
      applications using the mouse to copy data and paste them into a
      worksheet. This is explained below in the section titled <xref
      linkend="sect-movecopy-xclipboard" />.
    </para>

   </sect2>


  <sect2 id="sect-datasource-database">
    <title>Getting Data from a Database</title>

    <para>
      This has not yet been written.
    </para>

  </sect2>

  <sect2 id="sect-datasource-stream">
    <title>Getting Data from an Internet Data Stream</title>

    <para>
      <application>Gnumeric</application> has been connected to
      external data sources such as stock quotation service data
      streams using an experimental plugin. This requires the ability
      to write programming code. Information on extending
      <application>gnumeric</application> by developing plugins can be
      found in the section called <xref
      linkend="sect-extending-plugins"/> and the actual computer
      source code can be found in the directory
      <literal>gnumeric/plugins/sample_datasource/</literal> of
      either a distribution of <application>gnumeric</application> or
      in a code checkout from the concurrent versioning system (CVS)
      repository.
    </para>

  </sect2>


</sect1>

