Generating Excel documents CONTAINING IMAGES in Linux + PHP environment
 

Hi,

I'm building a PHP application that is supposed to run on Linux. I want
to generate Microsoft Excel *.xls files (at least Microsoft Excel 2000
compatible), that would CONTAIN IMAGES AS THEIR INTEGRAL PART. I know
it's quite easy to generate excel documents as XML files, but as far as
I know, you cannot include images directly in the document this way and
can only place there a reference (according to what I found out, you
can use base64 encoding to include images, but ONLY IN Microsoft Word
2003 XML).
Now, native excel documents for sure can contain images, but is there a
way to dynamically generate such native excel files in Linux + PHP
environment (I know this should by possible using a software called
"xlsgen", but it ONLY RUNS ON Windows and as I understand it it
requires a Microsoft Excel installation to work)?

Thanks in advance for your response!