Modern Spreadsheets in Maple

Maple is a numeric computing platform. It offers a robust C-based extension system.

SheetJS is a JavaScript library for reading and writing data from spreadsheets.

This demo uses SheetJS to pull data from a spreadsheet for further analysis within Maple. We'll create a Maple native extension that loads the Duktape JavaScript engine and uses the SheetJS library to read data from spreadsheets and converts to a Maple-friendly format.

Tested Deployments

This demo was tested by SheetJS users in the following deployments:

Architecture	Version	Date
darwin-x64	2025.1	2025-06-20
win11-x64	2025.1	2025-07-17

Maple has limited support for processing spreadsheets through the ExcelTools package¹. At the time of writing, it lacked support for XLSB, NUMBERS, and other common spreadsheet formats.

SheetJS libraries help fill the gap by normalizing spreadsheets to a form that Maple can understand.

Integration Details

The current recommendation involves a native plugin that reads arbitrary files and generates clean XLSX files that Maple can import.

The extension function ultimately pairs the SheetJS read² and write³ methods to read data from the old file and write a new file:

Script that will be run by Maple extension

var workbook = XLSX.read(original_file_data, { type: "buffer" });
var new_file_data = XLSX.write(workbook, { type: "array", bookType: "xlsx" });

The extension function will receive a file name and perform the following steps:

C Extensions

Maple extensions are shared libraries or DLLs that use special Maple methods for parsing arguments and returning values. They are typically written in the C programming language.

To simplify the flow, the new function will take one argument (the original file name) and return one value (the new file name).

The official documentation has a comprehensive list⁴ of methods. For this demo, the following methods are used:

• MapleNumArgs and IsMapleString are used in argument validation. The demo function will raise a Maple exception if no file name is specified.

• MapleRaiseError and MapleRaiseError2 programmatically raise errors.

• MapleToString and ToMapleString convert between Maple and C strings.

Duktape JS Engine

This demo uses the Duktape JavaScript engine. The SheetJS + Duktape demo covers engine integration details in more detail.

The SheetJS Standalone scripts can be loaded in Duktape by reading the source from the filesystem.

Complete Demo

This demo was tested in Windows x64. The path names and build commands will differ in other platforms and operating systems.

The sheetjs-maple.c extension exports the SheetToXLSX Maple method. It takes a file name argument, parses the specified file, exports data to sheetjsw.xlsx and returns the string "sheetjsw.xlsx".

This can be chained with Import from ExcelTools:

Sample usage of SheetToXLSX extension

with(ExcelTools);
Import(SheetToXLSX("pres.numbers"))

MacOS

1. Open a new Terminal window and create the /tmp/sheetjs-maple folder:

cd /tmp
mkdir sheetjs-maple
cd sheetjs-maple

Windows

0. Install "Windows Subsystem for Linux" (WSL)⁵ and Visual Studio⁶.

1. Open a new "x64 Native Tools Command Prompt" window and create a project folder c:\sheetjs-maple:

cd c:\
mkdir sheetjs-maple
cd sheetjs-maple

2. Copy the headers and lib files from the Maple folder to the project folder. The headers will be placed in the extern/include/ folder in the Maple folder. The lib files are placed in a platform-specific bin folder.

MacOS

In macOS, the "Maple folder" is located in /Library/Frameworks:

cp /Library/Frameworks/Maple.framework/Versions/2025/extern/include/*.h .
cp /Library/Frameworks/Maple.framework/Versions/2025/bin.APPLE_UNIVERSAL_OSX/*.so .
cp /Library/Frameworks/Maple.framework/Versions/2025/bin.APPLE_UNIVERSAL_OSX/*.dylib .

3. Observe that macOS does not need a "Linux Subsystem" and move to Step 4.

Windows

copy "C:\Program Files\Maple 2025\extern\include\"*.h .
copy "C:\Program Files\Maple 2025\bin.x86_64_WINDOWS"\*.lib .

3. Run bash to enter WSL

4. Install Duktape:

curl -LO https://duktape.org/duktape-2.7.0.tar.xz
tar -xJf duktape-2.7.0.tar.xz
mv duktape-2.7.0/src/*.{c,h} .

5. Download SheetJS scripts and the test file.

curl -LO https://cdn.sheetjs.com/xlsx-0.20.3/package/dist/shim.min.js
curl -LO https://cdn.sheetjs.com/xlsx-0.20.3/package/dist/xlsx.full.min.js
curl -LO https://docs.sheetjs.com/pres.numbers

6. Download the extension C code

curl -LO https://docs.sheetjs.com/maple/sheetjs-maple.c

MacOS

7. Observe that macOS does not need a "Linux Subsystem" and move to Step 8.

8. Build the extension library:

gcc -shared -fPIC duktape.c sheetjs-maple.c -lm -std=c99 -Wall -o libsheetjs-maple.so -L. -lmaplec

Windows

7. Exit WSL by running exit. The window will return to the command prompt.

8. Build the extension DLL:

cl -Gz sheetjs-maple.c duktape.c /EHsc -link -dll -out:sheetjs-maple.dll maplec.lib

9. Close and re-open Maple, then create a new Maple Worksheet or Document

10. Run the following command in Maple to change the working directory:

MacOS

currentdir("/tmp/sheetjs-maple");

Windows

currentdir("c:\\sheetjs-maple");

11. Load the SheetToXLSX method from the extension:

with(ExternalCalling):
dll:=ExternalLibraryName("sheetjs-maple"):
SheetToXLSX:=DefineExternal("SheetToXLSX",dll):

12. Read the pres.numbers test file:

with(ExcelTools);
Import(SheetToXLSX("pres.numbers"))

The result will show the data from pres.numbers

Footnotes

1. See "ExcelTools" in the Maple documentation. ↩

2. See read in "Reading Files" ↩

3. See write in "Writing Files" ↩

4. See "C OpenMaple and ExternalCalling Application Program Interface (API)" in the Maple documentation. ↩

5. In a PowerShell terminal window, run wsl --install Ubuntu ↩

6. See the Visual Studio website for download links. In the Visual Studio Installer, install the "Desktop development with C++" workflow. ↩