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Gnumeric Now Supports All Excel Worksheet Functions
unmadindu writes "The latest beta release of Gnumeric has been released. According the the developers, it is now ready and stable enough for general use and deployment, and the final 1.2.0 release will be made on September 8th. This release also marks the realization of a major milestone -- all of the worksheet functions in the U.S. version of MS Excel are now supported. I have been using 1.1.19 for quite some time now, and it is incredibly fast, and hugely improved compared to Gnumeric 1.0."
So how long before Microsoft chanages Excel to be totally incompatable with their old file format and/or functionality, just to screw the open source community yet again?
It damn well will happen... It's just a matter of how long.
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Worksheet functions are great, but a lot of Excel's draw comes from its embedded VBA. Companies that rely on workbooks with embedded VBA probably wont be willing to switch to Gnumeric until it has support for VBA, or something very similar.
"Open the pod by doors, Hal" > "I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave" sudo "Open the pod bay doors, Hal" > alright
And even on technical merit, Gnumeric is behind in some important aspects, Excel file compatibility the most dire one.
The awful truth is that some very large corporations are run on cobbled together Excel worksheets.
The situation is this: Take some very intelligent people, and provide them with a braindead tool that can, in the end, get the job done. Very few of them will have enough time to find something better, or even to know that there is something better. They will use the tool, and inadvertantly create a nightmare for whoever has to clean up after them.
A multidimensional array of variant, often executable data, with links to a broken-by-design half-object-oriented crudfest of a language, and a horrific hack of the C++ type system, is clearly not the route to computing nirvana.
The world would be a nicer place if these people knew about Python, Haskell, and Prolog, for example, which would accomplish their goals in a cleaner, more efficient and maintainable but ultimately less approachable way.
How do we get this to happen? Education. Only when computing (not "How to use some applications"), and multiple models of computing (procedural/OO, functional, and logical), are taught in schools at a young age ( 11 upwards), as a basic subject as fundamental as other sciences and humanities, will people do things "right" from the beginning.
Will it happen? Doubtful. All we can hope for is that someone comes up with something that strikes a balance, and lets people do their work easily, without creating a horrific mess. Also doubtful.
Linux started with GNU gcc version 1.37. Wow, does that seem like a long time ago. There was not even a working curses library at the beginning. Only stuff which relied on the standard C libary could be made to work, and not even all of that.
So while this Gnumeric milestone deserves a "hats off" to all the wizards on the Gnumeric team, let's not forget all those who over the years toiled away at improving the GNU toolchain -- compilers, linkers, libraries, debuggers, and all those who worked to make XFree86 as stable as it is today. They layed the groundwork for Gnumeric and all the great software to come.
From the graphing functions to its statistical capabilities, I consider Gnumeric to be on part with Gimp itself as an example of the quality that the Open Source model can create.
Any idea whether there is a windows version? Now that would be a good idea. I don't know why there isn't more work Open Source development being done for windows. How about giving Microsoft their own taste of "embrace and extend" by using Open Source on Windows as a means of reaching those who aren't likely or able to move over to Linux? I for one was VERY glad to see that Gimp had been ported to windows. I kept getting asked by windows users if there was a good alternative to Photoshop and now I can finally say yes without qualifying my answer with "but it only runs on Unix."
Microsoft isn't nearly as afraid of Linux as it is of the Open Source / Free Software movement/model itself. The technical quality of Microsoft's products is often lackluster, but when it comes to business strategy its leaders are grand-masters. They'll bankrupt you using an inferior product nine times out of ten. So far open source products like Linux have frustrated their ambitions to move up into the enterprise server arena but that isn't the same as going after them in their own backyard. Linux CAN be every bit as useful as a desktop OS as anything Microsoft or Apple has to offer, but it isn't quite there yet. Soccer moms and secretaries simply aren't going to move over to Linux because it isn't what their computers ship with and it isn't what everyone else is using. It also requires a degree of technical acumen that almost no-one posesses. The same is true of Windows of course, but that doesn't work against it since it's already in the dominant position. Those of use who do posess skill and talent with computers often forget just how mysterious the things that seem obvious to us are to most people. That is why Linux is stuck in the server room and will be for the forseeable future. If we can't displace Windows on the desktop, why not use it against its masters? Imagine if all the open-source application work that has been done for Unix was targeted at windows as well? Everyone who owned a computer would be using open source software in some capacity, and many would be aware of it. This would make it much easier to move people off of windows onto something better.
Before this movement to something better can occur however Linux needs to be made more luser friendly. Before you can sell something to someone you have to show how it is better than what they are already using and how what they are using is detrimental to them in some way that the replacement is not. Just making a better mousetrap isn't good enough when your potential customers have already invested in another model. Your mousetrap has to kill more mice AND include a feature whereby human fingers will never be smashed by it accidentally. Right now Linux is comparable to Windows as a desktop os in most ways. It needs to be better than windows and not plagued by the problems that windows is burdened with, or at least those problems that end-user clueless types consider to be important. Creating end-user apps for the platform where our end-users are is the very best way I can think of to gain insight into what they consider to be important. By ignoring windows as a platform for open-source development we're only helping Microsoft keep the barrier to use of Open-Source products artificially high.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
For christ's sake, slashdot, GNOME has had a new logo forever. Can you please update it?
Once you define yourself as a competitor, then you can start adding the cool stuff that differentiates your product.
MS knows this as well. Excel just didn't materialize from thin air. Spreadsheets started with Visicalc on the Apple ][. It was a truly innovative program that, to the people who understood it, justified the purchase of the machine. In much the same way that the graphics capabilities justified the purchase of a Macintosh, even if it had barely enough memory. The one truly imaginative thing MS has ever done is was combine the spreadsheet concept with the Macintosh concept. The original Excel was a truly beautiful and a deserving successor to Visicalc. But Excel was only a successor, not an original. And since them MS has lost the beauty in a bunch of extraneous crap.
I cannot say the same thing about word, as MacWrite was a superior product for many years.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
This question has come up before, and I'll give you the same answer.
While we'd all like to 'innovate' (god I hate that word now that MS has abused it) and improve things no one is going to care unless the cost of transition is fairl y low. Before Gnumeric could implement some of its neat new features like dynamic dependencies we had to first implement enough of MS Excel's semantics that people could move their existing data over. That is the key to the real monopoly in Redmond. _They_ control your data. Their products have the content needed to do your work locked up in their semantics, and their binary formats. Before we can start creating a bold new world, we've got to free the hostage content.
It should also be noted that MS has lavished vast resources onto its flagship products. Ignoring all of their work 'because we know better' seems like a fools bet. Over the years I've cursed them frequently, but have also built up a grudging respect for the depth of Excel. It drives me nuts at times, but at least it is a consistent nuts, for some of the murkier corner cases.
Now that Gnumeric has paid the piper, and spent five years understanding what it means to be a spreadsheet we've got more leeway. Which is why we've been able to move so far past XL in terms of quantity and quality of analytics. Hopefully, that tend will continue.