Python: Load xls project into tab seperated format (text/csv) and from this format to xml

I am looking for 2 simple utilities to be built in python with hopefully standard tools that are available. Code should be modular so that they can be reused in other python applications. 1) Utility 1 will load the xls file ( with the specified sheet name, the first sheet should be chosen if no sheet name is specified ) and extract out as a tab-seperated text file. 2) Utility 2 will just convert the above generated file into a flat xml (simple) derived from the column headers of the spreadsheet. Solution must work on all os ( windows, mac, linux ). Solution must be open-sourced on github, and the developer can take all credit for it if needed. Even better if an existing solution is leveraged and forked. I estimate that this should take a couple of hours for a programmer well-versed with python and will showcase talent to be provided bigger projects.