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."

Comments

SXC ?

[Ploum]

it could be very cool to support the sxc (openoffice) format. what about this ?

Re:SXC ?

[KiwiSurfer]

Gnumeric 1.1.19 does support Openoffice's SXC file format. I discovered this by accident when I opened a SXC file instead of the XLS file I was going to open. The import filter isn't too bad for simple spreadsheets, but I would still use Excel's XLS fomat for transferring files between OOo and Gnumeric until the import filter improves. I think this is a positive step toward an OpenSource office enviroment to replace the present-day MS Office enviroment. - James

But does it work the same?

[frovingslosh]

Gnumeric Now Supports All Excel Worksheet Functions

All functions, as defined by their list of functions, is somewhat different than Gnumeric working the same as Excell. For example, I would be amazed if the graphs embedded in spreadsheets and generated from the data look anything like they do in Excell; they certainly were not ever readable in the versions of Gnumeric I've used. Sure, they have a function that calls something that supposedly makes graphs, but the graphs just ain't right. And A.F.A.I.K. this function was on their "already working" list the last time I checked.

I also want to see memos that I've attached to cells in my spreadsheet not vanish when imported into Gnumeric, as well as graphics embedded in a cell. Does anyone know if these now supposedly work?

Re:But does it work the same?

[Jody Goldberg]

I do not claim that Gnumeric supports 100% of the features in MS Excel. That will not be until version 2.0 ('aka Extend') which I'd like to see go out within the next year. The language in the release notes was very explicit

"100% of the worksheet functions"

That refers only to the functions callable from expressions in cells.

The Gnumeric team has been fairly anal about never claiming to support a feature that was not complete. Our Charting engine has long been a source of pain that never quite managed to find its niche. Which is what has delayed the 1.2 release for almost a year. Our new engine is targetted explititly at supported a superset of MS Excel's charting so that, like the rest of Gnumeric, things look just right when you import from xls. I've spent time ensuring that things are practically pixel perfect given the right fonts.

We've supported reading and writing cell comments (memos) from xls95 for years. 1.1.20 adds that capability for 97/2k/XP too. Not sure what you mean by 'graphics embedded in a cell'. Please file a bug report with more details and we can keep track of the request.

Hope it does a better job.

[crovira]

The functions to calculate integrals (need that to calculatr bond rates,) sucked big time in Excell. Insufficient precision.

If you're working on a multi-million dollar, long-term bond that comes to quite a bit of change dropped betwen the cracks.

Ironic....

[MrEnigma]

I just tried out a copy of Office 2003.

At work I use Office 2000, and use Excel a lot, etc.

I was previously using XP (2002) at home, and I noticed that there wasn't anything added on to Excel, or really to anything, just made it more "prettier".

The same is true with 2003, save Outlook which has been revamped.

It seems as MS is insisiting on keeping the same things. I know there are things here ad there that are updated, but nothing that would make you want to upgrade over 2000, and that's pretty sad.

Re:This is a blatant DMCA violation.

[Jody Goldberg]

And we can read their encrypted files too, _the horror_.

Thankfully there's not much to worry about here. A few years ago MS published a series of 'MS Excel developer's kit' books. There wasn't much in the way of useful material so for actaully developing extensions to MS Excel available. So, as far as I can tell, Microsoft tried to pad the book with what it figured was some marginally interesting filler, a full set of docs for the xls file format :-)

When I bought the book I was quite irrate at the lack of useful content. It warms my heart all these years later to actually be able to put it to good use.

PS
They also included the full content of the book in various MSDN discs, and on their web site for several years. Then mysteriously pulled it a few years back.

Re:Bets?

[Jody Goldberg]

They're somewhat stuck. The sheer mass of users for older versions of MS Excel limits their ability to change the format in any meaningful way. XL97 was the last time it changed at the core. The amount of shrieking between 95 and 97 was huge. This is one of the reasons Excel will very likely not support more than 256x64k for a long long time. Their file format would implode.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if they have not considered it, but the opensource xls readers tend to be alot more resilient than MS in handling xls. We've had to code defensively sue to poor/missing docs. It will be hard for them to produce anything we (Gnumeric and OO) could not figure out pretty quickly, while still allowing XL97 to handle things.