Excel Clone for Linux Now in Beta

Martin Kotulla writes "SoftMaker, a German software developer, has released the first public beta of PlanMaker 2004, a native-Linux spreadsheet that is highly Excel-compatible ... in fact, this app is basically Microsoft Excel ported to Linux, including Excel-compatible charting and even AutoShapes. Here is a chart comparing Excel, OpenOffice.org, and PlanMaker." Update: 05/07 19:07 GMT by M : Softmaker.de is temporarily down; the site can still be reached at softmaker.com.

Comments

What surprised me most

[ObviousGuy]

The thing that really surprised me was how badly OpenOffice supported (or rather, didn't support) Excel's functionality.

You may say that those features are part of the 80% of features that aren't used, but someone's using them. If those someones aren't able to use those features, OpenOffice is useless for them.

Re:What surprised me most

[Jody Goldberg]

I'd be interested in getting copies of any file that you have trouble with to see how Gnumeric fairs. Getting good test cases can be very helpful. Our confidentiality policy can apply if desired. Please contact me.

Thanks

Google cache

[GillBates0]

of the first two links:

Softmaker
PlanMaker

Re:The wrong path

[rrkap]

When people send me Excel files, I kindly ask them to re-send the file in CSV or some other format. Yes, there are things you can only do in native file format. But the vast majority of users never do those things.

Ah, yes. I can't remember the last time I saw someone use excel to create a chart or calculate something. The fact is that calculation and presentation of data are the two main points of spreadsheets and neither works with CSV files.

mirror of comparison chart

[whizkid042]

http://www.unixauthority.com/~fiskeja/mirror/www.s oftmaker.de/pmwcomp_en.htm

Don't Forget Gnumeric!

[Rysc]

Gnumeric is a much better spreadsheet program than OOo Spread. It's also better than Excell in all ways in which it competes, except for charting . (And they'll be fixing that *real soon now*). Enough of this crappy OOo stuff and commerical stuff. Use Gnumeric! This is not SIAG or some krappy Koffice attempt, it's teh best Excel-styel spreadsheet program you can get.

Re:Don't Forget Gnumeric!

[praedor]

I've used all three (gnumeric, kspread, and OOcalc). I do find that gnumeric is quite good, but not really any better at those data analysis tools than kspread is. Both gnumeric and kspread suffer (TREMENDOUSLY) in the charting arena. Gnumeric doesn't even have a broken rudimentary graphing capability while kspread ties into kchart which is a horrible charting app. OOcalc kicks both their butts on charting, but it doesn't match up to the charting possible from excel.

Of course, excel cannot hold a candle to the charting capabilites of DeltaGraph or CricketGraph (both Mac apps...do they have PC versions?). I have begged the koffice developers to fix the atrocious kcharting app so that it is actually of use (mostly hard-of-hearing ears if not outright deaf ears). I hope against hope that OO will improve its charting capabilities (C'mon! You CANNOT do proper charting if you don't do error bars). Gnumeric doesn't even enter the picture here. Nothing at all in the charting arena so all the nice data analysis done in gnumeric is for naught. There's no way to plot it out, no way to graphically represent it.

Weak charting

[Jody Goldberg]

Gnumeric is admittedly still pretty weak on the charting side. However, things are improving quickly. Please file a few feature requests to help guide things. 1.3.x has support for error bars now (still need to hook up the xls import for that) and the polar (what xl calls radar) plot engine is in place too. My short term goals are to extend the axis mapping support, and add a gnuplotish implicit iterator feature that is not in XL.

Re:Still Waiting on Solver

[Jody Goldberg]

Gnumeric has solver, goal seek, and iterative expressions.

Re:The wrong path

[AstroDrabb]

MS's XML format is more of a PR stunt then really being open. MS has barked a million times about "IP" and MS Office is one of their biggest cash cows. Basically they made a schema that will let you read the MS Office docs, but they still keep tons of closed proprietary stuff in those XML files. What is the purpose of being able to read the file if the important content is a binary blob in some proprietary format? The plain text is readable, so a simple Word doc is easy to read (though competing office apps have been able to do that for a long time). MS Office will truly be open when MS release full specs of the file format and all that could possibly be in them. I can give you an XML file with a Base64 encoded blob of proprietary data. Just because it is XML does not make it Open. OpenOffice's format is _really_ open. You can get docs that explain the format and how to read or write OOo's file formats. This is not the case for MS. If it is, please provide a link to the MS Office document _specs_ and not just some silly schema.

As a little test, create a new Excel file and on Sheet 2 put the following data:

1 1
1 2
1 4
1 4

Now on Sheet1, insert a chart using the data on Sheet2. Now try to save it as "XML SpreadSheet (*.xml)". You will get a warning that all "AutoShapes, other objects and Charts" will be removed. What is the point of this "open" XML format if it cannot save complex spreadsheets? MS will never let their MS Office format go. End of story.

Re:Row Limit

[martin-k]

The current limit of 16384 rows is not set in stone. We had PlanMaker builds with 65536 and 256K rows, but then some functions (like sorting whole columns) were too slow -- remember that we are also supporting Pocket PCs and Handheld PCs, and CPU-wise, they are at a i286 or i386 level.

As soon as we have optimized some of these routines, the row limit will be raised.

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Re:Unfortunately...

[martin-k]

No, in fact we haven't.

It's commercial software, I need to make payroll every month. If you can get over this fact, the rest is really lenient. Remember Philippe Kahn's "just like a book" license? That's what our license is modeled after -- install on as many machines as you like, but only use as many copies concurrently as you have licenses.

If "free" is what you are after, get ahold of a copy of SUSE Linux 9.1. It ships with TextMaker Free Edition and PlanMaker Free Edition.