Android Microsoft Office Library (.doc, .docx, .xls, .ppt, etc.)
Does anyone know of a good Java Microsoft Office API capable or running on an Android? I know there is an OpenOffice Java API, but I haven't heard of anyone using it on Android.
I know that using intents is another option, but how common are pre-installed office viewers on the varying Android distributions? Would it be reasonable for a developer to expect the user to have one of these viewers installed? Is it reasonable to request that they install one of these applications if they don't already have one?
Answer
Since most of the documents we need to display are already hosted on the web, we opted to use an embedded web view that opens the document using google docs viewer.
We still have a few locally stored documents though that this approach doesn't work with. For these, our solution was to rely on the support of existing apps. After spending some more time with Android, It seems that most devices come equipped with some sort of document/pdf reading capability installed fresh out of the box. In the event that they don't have a capable app, we direct them to a market search for a free reader.