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NewsForge Reviews Excel Clone for Linux
martin-k writes "NewsForge has a glowing review about PlanMaker for Linux, a new spreadsheet for Linux that is much more compatible with Microsoft Excel than the competition and speedier, too. PlanMaker has Excel-compatible charting and AutoShapes and reads and writes any Excel file you throw at it. Here is a chart comparing Excel, OpenOffice.org, and PlanMaker." Yes, Virginia, NewsForge is also part of OSDN, like Slashdot.
Wouldn't it make more sense to work with OO.o not against them?
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why not try gimp instead? Cause thats not a spreadsheet editor, asshat.
The extent to which OpenOffice is hyped has sadly cut into a lot of Gnumeric's mindshare, despite it being the better product by far. I know some people like to hate Miguel de Icaza for trying to port .NET, but he did a fuck of a good job on the foundation of Gnumeric and the present team has kept on making it better. Don't fall for "bundling": use the better program.
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Whatever it's qualities may be, this PlanMaker thingie is non-free (as in speech and as in beer). This makes it very much uninteresting for quite some people. If there's a decent alternative that's free (hint: there are, several), then that's the way to go IMHO.
If it's as good at working with Microsoft's patented file format, and is so close of a clone of Excel; how long until Microsoft eliminates them through legal means?
This is nice, but the last thing that the open source community needs is more choices. This software will only weaken the openoffice user base and make Microsoft stronger. They should join forces with the OO developers and build ONE great product.
This account has been seized by the GNAA. That is all.
The product is $50 USD and is closed source commercial-ware. Why not just buy win4lin ($99) and run an old version of Excel 97?
Alternatively you get codeweavers wine for $40 and run your old MS Office tools and at the same time support wine development.
More important is to have OpenOffice have all the Excel charting functionality. Currently OOo Charting tools are a bit more crude.
Compatibility for WordArt is not at the top of my requirements list for compatibility.
Okay, so I always seem to be posting this in reply to any Excel clone news whatsoever, but I still feel it's a totally valid point, and whilst this is the case I shall continue to post it.
.csv files, process the data in a particular way and then dump it all into pivot tables that are linked to other Excel spreadsheets. These are business critical, and until these work 100%, with no additional effort (some of the people that have to use these sheets are barely computer literate at all), there is no way on God's earth that I can persuade the IT department to switch over to an alternative.
What about the Macros? Surely this is one of the most important parts of Excel, and could even be one of the things that makes it such an indespensable tool for many companies. It gives it the freedom to move outside of the solely number crunching arena, and into a million and one other places.
It's all very well having a new Excel clone for linux that can retain my conditional formatting better than ever, but 99% of the sheets I use here involve macros to open many
I guess at the end of the day, lockdown isn't lockdown after all when there isn't a viable alternative.
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
Also - the ability for it to follow the theme of the user's desktop is not yet considered important it is getting there.
I do not know the product, but I do not see the advantages it gives me ofer the free ones significant, and many of the free ones have advantages over it.
As far as interplay is concerned, can it talk the OpenOffice formats? These are becoming more and more deployed.
I'm sorry SoftMaker - you may have a good product, but it has no relevance to me - and I do not seeing it have in the future either.
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I know whenever I have to do calculations on that scale I do them by hand! After all, I wouldn't want to have to look through 64k rows to find a transcription error! But seriously, Wow. I think the market for number of people needing > 64K rows must be pretty slim. Particularly those not using a scientific program like Mathematica, Maple or R-something.
If you don't have to be absolutely compatible, there are plenty of free (really free) spreadsheets. Gnumeric, being considerably more lightweight that Openoffice, does the trick for me most of the time.
When nothing other than Excel will do, why not just run Citrix (or some virtual box if you don't have access to a Citrix server) and run real Excel?
If you seriously need Excel, I doubt this will be a satisfactory long-term solution, for any number of reasons. Plus, it ain't free.
In sum, who needs another me-too piece of proprietary software?
Does anyone know if you can make a bulleted list within PlanMaker without too much trouble? Yes, I know that this feature doesn't make much sense, but it's one of the major factors preventing my father from switching to Linux and from regularly using open-source office software. My dad gave up on Open Office in short order.
It seems that for open-source software, and Linux in particular, to appeal to the business world, the software must make the features business execs regularly use, such as tools for making memos, readily accessible and as similar as possible to the features in MS Office. My father, for example, is eager to try something new, but becomes frustrated when he needs to relearn everything or when he has trouble importing documents and spreadsheets from other programs
Maybe PlanMaker will convince him to give Linux another chance. I hope so.
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First of to all those screaming gnumeric, rtfa!
Second, I can understand that people want to run a system that is 100% open source. If you want to, do it, but please also stop your whining, that this has not been ported to linux and that has not been ported to linux.
Softmaker is offering a spreadsheat that seems to be more compatible with Excel then other spreadsheats on linux. I can't possibly see how this is bad.
In speaking of not talking about GNUmeric because people may not like Miguel de Icaza for the Mono project:
.NET is a "creation" of Microsoft and we all know that Microsoft is the big bad wolf that wants to eat all our grandmothers - but still it may have good ideas and just because they are the bad guys, we should not forget the good things they may come up with and adapt those ideas (with even more good ideas from the free software comunity). .NET is proprietary software from Microsoft, but Mono is FREE SOFTWARE built with ECMA and ISO ideas. And I actually see Mono as the true .NET in realtion to it's "filosofy" as Microsoft likes to say. True multiplatform you get with Mono, not with .NET.
I don't really understand what is the real problem about it. Yes,
Never tell me that the last thing I need is more choices. I use linux specifically because it give me MORE CHOICES.
ARRRGGG. This is the attitude that has caused there to be a dominant platform.
I don't want Linux to be dominant, I don't want Macs to be dominant and I don't want Windows to be dominant. When there is a variety of system, they need to embrace open standards (open source or not), and compete. This can provide better software for all.
Now mod me down because my rant is off topic.
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Considering this software is non-free (in both senses), I am more tempted to ask what makes it better than Excel rather than what makes it better than OO.o
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I do what most scientists do, I program. Jeesh, the performance improvement alone would make the coding time worthwhile. Not to mention that you're likely to reuse most if not all of the code.
I'm really curious, what features does a spreadsheet have that makes you think it's the right tool for this kind of a job?
In my mind, spreadsheets are designed for applications where you want to be able to look at a table of numbers. Are you really scrolling through 64k rows of data by hand? I use spreadsheets for keeping track of grades in the classes I teach. When i work with huge arrays of numbers I use compiled languages and an external application for visualization. If I need interactivity I like matlab. Mathematica, mathcad, etc. also work.
It sounds to me like trying to move a big pile of gravel with a wheelbarrow. If you really like the hands-on feel and precision dumping then by all means use the wheelbarrow, just be prepared to make a lot of trips. But, at some point you just might break down and realize you should be using a dump truck.
Right tools for the right job, it's really a simple concept. And, if you need advanced features you just might have to --gasp-- pay for that tool.
But a database requires MUCH more knowledge and effort to set up and administer. Everyone who uses it either has to have an interface designed for them, or has to know SQL and how *not* to screw up the database. What if something has to be modified? Are we going to let just *anyone* add/alter tables?
And you STILL have the problem of having to pull data from many sources, process it, reformat, etc. So now we need a REAL coder (no insult intended, VBA guys) to write programs in- C#? Java? Even perl or python will require non-trivial amounts of work.
And no, the IT guys can't help you- they're too busy with patches, network outages, etc. And you can't afford another person in your department *JUST* to setup/maintain a database.
Instead, if we can just teach people how to import/export from an application they are already intimately familiar with, and get a few employees to slap together some simple VBA dialog boxes, we can get our jobs done quicker WITHOUT having to hire extra staff.
I have done this myself- for no other reward than not having busy-work tie me up for hours at a time. Sure, I could have set up a database... if IT would allow it (it's a non-critical part of my job)... after a weeks-long wait for approval... and if they'd let me make my own DB (doubtful)...
Errm... I think the grandparent was referring to Gnumeric's capabilities as an office-compatible spreadsheet, rather than an all-or-nothing rival. Gnumeric has been fast, capable, and very complete for some time now. It's the most polished office app available for GNOME, quite probably.
What are you talking about?
For most people Windows comes pre-installed on their computer, and Dell (or whoever) didn't pay too much to Windows for the license. And they probably need Windows anyway for some other applications.
But to get MS Office means sending a lot more of your money to MS, or pretending you're a teacher or something like that. And if you do buy MSOffice you're going to start spreading MSOffice documents. If you install some cross-platform MSOffice alternative you'll be one (giant) step closer to moving to a free OS.
AbiWord on Windows is quite good. I'm sorry that Gnumeric doesn't run on Windows.
Thats great, now they just need to make a command line interface for it. I was doing a project a year ago where we would get ms files and need to convert them. And the only way to do that was to manually launch excel and click click click to make it a CSV file text file. Simple functions like this greatly increase the use of applications because when you have to do 15 or 1500 in a day so that the rest of process which is completely automated can take over because you kill the week link in the chain.
This isn't a case of CLI is better than GUI. It is a case of CLI is easier to automate.
excle2csv foo.* | automated && echo Done.
You just can't do that with a GUI app. There are things that are easier with a GUI. But the basics (Save As file conversion being one of them) that should be available from the command line.
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Noone said it's got anything to do with F/OSS community - it's just a _better_ spreadsheet for Linux.
> weakened userbase of Gnumeric, which was and is a better and more compatible app. I don't see you whining about that.
As far as most practical users are concerned, who gives a damn.
Sure it'd be great if Linux had a perfectly compatible and "free" Office application but it doesn't (yet).
Why is it that "yet another" syndrom is always welcome when the other app is F/OSS and trashed when the other app is not free?
Those folks make good Linux software and customers who recognize that value and want to pay for it have every goddamn right to do so.