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

Google cache

[GillBates0]

of the first two links:

Softmaker
PlanMaker

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: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.