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Gnumeric Turns 5
Jody Goldberg writes "Five years ago, Miguel committed the first code for Gnumeric to CVS. In a testament to the quality of the code several lines are still in use. Since that time the project has grown to more than 300,000 lines and now supports all 325 worksheet functions in MS Excel, plus almost 100 more. This seemed like a good time to thank all the people who have contributed to Gnumeric over the years. We're about to start the run up to the the next stable release which will be out in a few
weeks and we look forward to continuing work with GNOME, and the community at large to produce the most powerful spreadsheet in the world."
If Linux and GNU are going to get big, they have to innovate and write better software, not just emulate what the big guys are doing.
I want an office where I can use whatever software I want for each function, not what others decide to be in a suite.
guppi is OK, but I really wish they would port the guts of something like Grace over to Gnumeric. One of the things MS did correctly on Excel was decent graphing, and I would like to see Gnumeric use some really powerful plotting tools from the open source world (scigraphica might be easier to incorporate) and take that to the next level.
Oh - is there any way to keep the scroll bar from reflecting the fact that there are 65000 rows or whatever in a sheet? It really limits the use of the scroll bar.
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
Why is it bad to compare OSS software with a proprietary counterpart? I think it gives those that don't know about the software a chance to see how they compare.
If someone for example uses, MS Excel and wants to switch to the OpenOffice equivalent or Gnumeric in this instance, then they could see before hand if it contains all of the features they use frequently. At the same time it could show them features they have always wanted but could not get with the proprietary software. We compare things all the time. Is it really so wrong to do it with software?
Question everything.
Our goal is to produce a great spreadsheet.
Compatibility with existing products is required for people to be able to transition. We already have significantly better analytics than MS Excel. Over time we hope to become a superset of it in other areas too.
I'm concerned that so open source apps written these days have names that demonstrate their affiliation with a particular desktop. Having names that begin with "gn" of "K" is a kind of flag waving that shows which desktop application framework was used (gnome or KDE).
Ideally the user should be able to (and usually can) run apps using either framework on any desktop. But when the name has "gn" for example, are they saying "well yes you could probably run it in KDE but it's a gnome app so maybe you're better off running it in gnome..."
Why is their so much tribalism? I think it's an important step in the maturity of Linux or Open Source in general to get to a point where the particular implementation (gnome or KDE) of any given layer (the desktop) has NO impact on other layers (the application) and so the title of the app should not even need to provide any hint of affiliation with a particular brand of in another layer.
Happy Birthday Gnumeric, looks like a great program. But as a user I don't think I should need to know about it's internal implementation thanks.
-- the only thing we have to fear is really scary things
I really wish there was more consolidation in the OSS world. It would be nice if the Gnumeric developers could spend their time making OpenOffice calc even better. Gnumeric may be good, but OpenOffice will be what the vast majority uses in the future...
And Excel supports pretty much all the functions that Lotus 1-2-3 supported. Lotus 1-2-3 supported pretty much all the functions that Visicalc supported.
What did Isaac Newton say, again? I started over from scratch and ignored the work of those who studied these problems before I had? No. "If I've seen farther than others, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants."
Miguel has openly admired Microsoft's work in providing usable user-interfaces and applications that work well. He's also been critical of their excesses and lack of focus on security. Is it any surprise that Gnumeric (which aims to be able to import any Excel document) implements all of the Excel functions, but then extends them in its own way, adding nearly 100 of its own?
Personally, I don't particularly like Windows much because it doesn't work like I want to work. I'm accustomed to the Unix Way (or at least the Linux Way, though I did start with real UNIX in the form of AT&T SVR4, SunOS and Solaris). I really dislike Microsoft as a company, and anyone who thinks that removing choices and is a great way to make software easier to use. (Easier to learn, maybe, not not easier to use.) Hence, I don't run Windows at home, nor do I use MacOS X except via ssh. (My wife has a Mac in addition to a PC.)
--JoeProgram Intellivision!
well, um, M$ imitated 1-2-3 et al, then created file structures that locked everyone else's intellectual property (the contents of the spreadsheet in this case) into their own impenetrable file system theat ensures that you have to pay their toll just to share your work with someone else. One of the best features of Gnumeric, which I use often, is that the files it creates have a published scheme.
Gnuplot seems pretty good, but isn't a GNU app (as I understand it, it semi-predates GNU) or much of an open source app. So GNOME feels that they can't use it and I don't want to use it for philosophical reasons.
Everything else, as I've said, sucks. Guppi looks interesting , though. I can't seem to find out if there's any way to use it from an Apache server-side app. Anyone else know?
Nothing for 6-digit uids?
I can't remember who wrote the statistics add-ins for Excel (and I don't have a Windoze computer handy to find out) but that is one thing that would be very useful to me. Plus there is a range of plotting functions that are simply not there in Gnumeric, and I've been struggling along with Grace, which has a bit of a slow learning curve.. For all that, though, Gnumeric's a great product.