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.

Comments

Interesting....

[Luscious868]

I think I'll look at it. Sometimes OpenOffice.org chockes on certain Excel spreadsheets that I try to open in it. I'm curious to see if this will do any better.

Re:Interesting....

[bugmenot]

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.

Re:Interesting....

[Tarantolato]

This has nothing to do with the open source community. It's a proprietary app that happens to run on Linux. Also, OpenOffice spreadsheet already weakened userbase of Gnumeric, which was and is a better and more compatible app. I don't see you whining about that.

Re:Interesting....

[mj2k]

This is definitetly a positive step - openoffice sometimes inexplicably crashes on some spreadsheets, and at least last time I used OO, some of the excel charts were just treated as images and were not editable. The one thing though I wish someone would fix is the need for a really good equation editor in the word processor - I'm a grad student in engr and the only reason I haven't migrated completely to linux is because I have to use word, in conjunction with mathtype to write up reports,etc. I know OO has included some sort of support for equations, but it's still a long way from attaining the robustness I need.

Re:Interesting....

[DrNibbler]

This is nice, but the last thing that the open source community needs is more choices.

I disagree. The opensource community is about choice. Could you picture a world with 1 linux distribution or 1 browser? Part of the power in opensource that freedom of choice. The question is not "where do you want to go today?" it is "how do I get job done today". Also, I find the whole opensource vs. MS thing a waste of energy. At the end of the day open source has no competition because it's a debate of ideology, not marketing or products. If people understand how MS does business and why OSS exists and they are ethical *poof* they'll join us. It's not about the market place it's about how people think. Oh, one other thing.. this product doesn't appear to be open (Unless I mised something).

Re:Interesting....

[eyeye]

What linux actually needs is a spreadsheet app that can run VBA.

From working in a large company I can say that most people only ever used a small number of features - excel becomes a requirement because "programmers" write utilities in VBA!

Surely being VBA compatible wouldnt be that hard, it is a joke of a language.

Re:Interesting....

[peope]

Lyx and texmacs is what my university used when creating written material for their math-courses.

Re:Interesting....

[willCode4Beer.com]

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.

Re:Interesting....

[b17bmbr]

it's not OS dominance, or even hardware dominance, it's standards. what is noce about OO.org (and apple's Keynote) is that it's files are XML based. office's lock-in didn't come because it was, or even is, the superior product. in fact, word is by and large, a bloated pile of crap. but, the problem for most is not the app, it's the file. look, you can use mozilla, IE, safari, opera, lynx, etc., to view web pages, but you really have one choice to view .doc files. the lock-in is file compatibility. microsoft knows it has got you by the balls and it loses everything if you can read/write .doc/.xls with any app. look what they're pushing .net for, web apps. and they're chagning things with longhorn. they're shitting right now because in a few years most apps, etc. willbe web services or web based, and they don't control that.

Re:Interesting....

[kanthoney]

They've got TextMaker for word processing.

Re:Interesting....

[Donny Smith]

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.

Re:Interesting....

[perlchild]

gnumeric(I'm not sure, it could be some people friendly to gnumeric in the gnome umbrella) has been working on something like that for some time.

And yes, they'll probably spend more time fixing up the "special cases" proper to Microsoft's understanding of basic and vba, than implementing the language itself. The goal is to import spreadsheets which include vba code without user intervention, hence, they need to be work-around compatible(which means they get the cruft of the bugs, if not the bugs themselves) they can't just design a clean language.

If I'd been them, I'd have attempted to write a with-user-intervention-converter to python or scheme. Just to keep that much cruft away from their code, as a programmer, that'd give me the jeebies. YMMV.

Re:Interesting....

[Jody Goldberg]

amen

Unfortunately it's a non-trivial amount of work to write a vba clone. Not impossible by any means, but it does require a community to do it. We started the gb project years ago, but it faded away without real progress. I'm currently pinning my hopes on mono and it's basic implementation.

Re:Interesting....

[aristotle-dude]

Yeah and linux will never make it as a desktop as long as zealots like you say stuff like this. Not ever programmer out there works on inhouse software.
*Gasp*

Programmers who work on developing software to sell on the shelves, need to get paid "money". They cannot survive on selling "support". How many individual do you think would pay for support anyway?

Do you work for MS? I have a theory thast some of these zealots are actuaslly MS employees paid to make linux look bad.

There is nothing wrong with using some proprietary software.

Re:Interesting....

[yuri benjamin]

The last thing we need is to have a bug-for-bug compatibility with MS Word, which includes VBA. Unfortunately, we'd bring in the macro viruses nightmare into linux as well.

Not if it's properly sandboxed. Don't give it access to any "addressbook" objects or anything silly like that.

Let me be the first

[Apreche]

Let me be the first to say what everyone else is gearing up to say.

gnumeric exists. Acknowledge both its existence and superiority in the world of spreadsheets.

Re:Let me be the first

[Anonymous Coward]

why not try gimp instead?

Re:Let me be the first

[JaredOfEuropa]

gnumeric exists. Acknowledge both its existence and superiority in the world of spreadsheets.

Superiority? Almost everyone else uses Excel... and the ability to read other people's spreadsheets is a very important characteristic in most environments where spreadsheets are used.

That's why Planmaker (and OpenOffice to some extent) should scare Microsoft. People may think MS Office stinks, but the pain of having to convert all your existing files, and finding a way to exchange files with your MS Office using business partners will probably deter most users from switching. But if the file compatibility is good enough, there's hardly any reason left not to switch!

Incidentally, that is why I would not at all be surprised if Microsoft has indeed 'sponsored' the proposal brought forward by Ireland for the EU laws on patents, in which it would also be possible to patent file formats.

Re:Let me be the first

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Let me be the first

[trashme]

I have not compared Excel to Gnumeric, but you seem to judge that Excel is better just because more people use it. Is Internet Explorer the best browser because that is what most people use?

Your logic is faulty. Especially since Gnumeric can read and write Excel spreadsheets.

Pretty Cool

[JoeShmoe950]

This is a great step forwards. Way to go guys! I can't wait to download it and give it a go. The more compatability, the better...

Re:Pretty Cool

[JoeShmoe950]

Did I ever imply it was free? No! You pay for spreadsheets on windows. Just because you need to pay for this doesn't mean it doesn't give you better compatibility. I wasn't trolling.

Re:Pretty Cool

[AstroDrabb]

It would be a little silly to sell a product when you distribute the source for it on your website.

Huh? MySQL, Red Hat, Mozilla CD, Slackware Store, etc, etc.

Re:Pretty Cool

[perlchild]

the two are orthogonal, not ordered. You have have free as in beer code that's not free as in speech. Freeware to which you don't get source is one example. But you can also have the source to an app you paid(Custom Software usually follows that model). Just because there's only one word "free" doesn't mean there aren't two different kinds of freedom(there's actually more than two, including "free to redistribute").

Re:Pretty Cool

[plutoiddiamonds]

I assume most people aren't going to build or tweak the code. I am sure the company is just trying to accelerate their enhancement process. Cheers, Jake

Pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

50 bux for a spreadsheet app? I'll stick with the free Gnumeric instead.

Re:Pfft

[Alexis de Torquemada]

Well, that's better than Excel's 50 bugs per buck.

Re:Pfft

[repetty]

You have to wonder about a guy that thinks $50 is a lot of money.

--Richard

Any bets..

[bugmenot]

on how long it will take until MS changes Excel to make it incompatible with this application?
My guess is that they will release a new security patch for Excel within a month.

Re:Any bets..

[dncsky1530]

I think the better question might be, "when is MS office going to be able to save files in other formats?" there will come a time when MS will have to adapt to the other programs and formats. Microsoft is supposed to be about ease of use, and compatability, which is why so many people use their products.

Re:Any bets..

[coolgeek]

All office apps already have that option. The problem is the average moron doesn't know enough to choose a different format.

Re:Any bets..

[Jody Goldberg]

Not really feasible. The Ms Excel xls format has been mostly frozen for years. Microsoft needs to contend with all the ancient versions of XL that are still in use. I'm betting this is a significant part of the reason that they have not expanded the number of cols/rows it would take a major shift in the file format.

Even if they did sit down and work out ways to crash the various competing importers the advantage would be short lived. It's quite easy to debug a crash/failure in your own code. For me it's much harder to export xls, figuring out why Excel is crashing is an irritating process of bit twiddling.

Re:Any bets..

[aristotle-dude]

Stop spreading FUD. I dislike MS and there tactics as much as the next guy but the format has not changed for several years now and only when they needed to add new features.

They left out Gnumeric

[Travis Fisher]

One of the best spreadsheets for linux, gnumeric has support for 100% of Excel's functions as well as most of its other features. Its one of the highest quality and most stable pieces of software I've ever seen for linux. Its amazing they overlooked this as competition.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[Tarantolato]

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.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[XeRXeS-TCN]

Well they have a comparison page with screenshots of Excel, OOo and their product, choosing every example to ensure that OOo messes it up, and makes their product look better... wouldn't look so good if the free GNUMeric could do everything that their closed-source equivalent could do, would it? ;) Yes it would be a fair test, but if you're going all out to slam other products and make yours look like it's the best, clearly a biased test is in order. Although if they wanted it done properly, they could have asked the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution to set up the tests for them ;)

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[Anonymous Coward]

As the vast bulk of the excel spreadsheets I deal with are embedded in word documents, the "bundling" in Open Office is far more important to me than anything else, and Open Office's excel compatibility is already "good enough" for most people.

This is what FreeDesktop.org people need to realise: The single MOST IMPORTANT thing you can do is agree on a standard Linux component embedding (OLE/COM) technology, and then maybe one day people _will_ have the choice of using gnumeric instead of OOo Calc to read excel data embedded in word documents being edited in OOo Writer. But
it DOESN'T WORK YET.

Microsoft just dictates their OLE in their normal stalinist style, but we can't. So we need to have a lively technical debate, and then broad agreement on a baseline set. I recommend specifying protocol, not binary API, in the normal X fashion, but make it good!

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[tashanna]

As much as I applaud Gnumeric for their great implementation, it's still a Linux/Unix only implementation. PlanMaker and OO are both cross-platform for those who can't ditch Windows. If a user can't leave Windows behind, that places Gnumeric out of the running.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[XeRXeS-TCN]

This is true, but if you're limited to Windows, there's a case to just use MS Office. If you're looking for cheap (free) implementations, OpenOffice is certainly the way to go, and PlanMaker is certainly something to consider, but if you're going to go with a closed-source application on a Windows platform *anyway*, it makes sense (as much as it's uncharacteristic to admit it) to consider MS Office as a full office package. After all, if you're on Windows, you won't necessarily have too much issue with the concept of proprietary software, especially as a business, so why fight with emulation and whether your alternatives can handle all the Excel stuff properly? Why not use MS Office, where you don't have compatibility issues? You've got the choice to use something else, which is good, but on the Windows platform, you also have the choice of considering MS Office.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[leandrod]

> As much as I applaud Gnumeric for their great implementation, it's still a Linux/Unix only implementation.

No, it is a Gnome implementation. That means it can be relatively easily ported to MS Windows (Red Hat Cygwin) or Mac OS X. There were some Gnome ports around, don't know if they live still.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[Mitchell Mebane]

We already have it. It's called KParts. :D

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[Anonymous Coward]

KParts make the same mistake as microsoft OLE - they work on the concept of particular programs being associated with embedded data. What should be the case, is the embedded data should have a mimetype, and _any_ embeddable program that can handle that mimetype should be able to edit it-the parent program should query for a data handler i.e. specify protocol, not method.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[Compenguin]

As much as I applaud Gnumeric for their great implementation, it's still a Linux/Unix only implementation. PlanMaker and OO are both cross-platform for those who can't ditch Windows. If a user can't leave Windows behind, that places Gnumeric out of the running.

Gnumeric 1.4 with Windows support is just around the corner. Abiword List post by Jody

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[Qwavel]

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.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[XeRXeS-TCN]

And as much as it's the position I would normally take, you're taking the open source / free software opinion which in this case is somewhat biased.

But to get MS Office means sending a lot more of your money to MS

The application in question is *not* free software. It is closed source, and it requires payment for it. One way or the other, you have to spend money on each, so that arguement is moot.

And if you do buy MSOffice you're going to start spreading MSOffice documents.

You're assuming, of course, that the user or business in question cares about spreading MSOffice documents. I would rather that open standards were universally applied, rather than the proprietary standards enforced by Microsoft and other companies, many (most?) users and businesses don't give a rat's ass about proprietary document formats, so once again, this is a moot point.

If you install some cross-platform MSOffice alternative you'll be one (giant) step closer to moving to a free OS.

Again, you're assuming that the person or business in question has any desire whatsoever to move closer to a free OS. Many businesses and individual users are perfectly content with Windows systems, and with Microsoft. I think it's a foolish notion myself, and I would prefer more widespread adoption of a free operating system, but it's narrow-minded to assume that everyone would hope for the same.

Give some thought to your arguement in future, and don't let your desire for open source and standards bias your opinion, so you flame anyone for suggesting that *considering* a Microsoft program on their own platform.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnumeric sucks in one crucial way: it is a Gnome app which makes it as bloated and memory hungry as OOo if you use a light weight WM.

I love Linux but I absolutely hate Gnome and KDE and especially applications that require either one to function.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[Jody Goldberg]

I've fixed a few of the other issues in 1.2.13. CVS head has support for the radar plots too. We still don't handle word art, and our gradients in charts are a bit different. Thanks to the planmaker folk for the additional test cases. I don't consider them terribly indicative of xls import quality on the whole, we already have lots of things that failed or crashed planmaker, but it was interesting.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[Jody Goldberg]

We run on osx www.openosx.com
and cvs head is ready and all of its dependencies compile under win32 with gtk-2.4.x. We're very very close to getting a release out.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[martin-k]

Jody, if you used our test cases to improve your filters, why don't you give me the files where PlanMaker failed?

-mk

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[Jody Goldberg]

Sure. They're publicly avaialble on the web
http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/function-in fo.shtml

We've got lots of other tests that we have not run through planmaker. Would you be interested in swapping test suites ?

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[martin-k]

Thank you for the link, Jody. Much appreciated.

We don't really have many "formal" test suite files, just random stuff we picked from the web. No problem at all in sending you those, and I am always interested in test files.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[killjoe]

"The application in question is *not* free software. It is closed source, and it requires payment for it. One way or the other, you have to spend money on each, so that arguement is moot."

I don't think so. I think it's important to support ethical busineness people. When you send money to MS you are helping them continue their sleazy busineness practices. You are helping them fund SCO and ADTI. You are helping them lobby governments to make open source illegal. You are helping them to patent double clicks.

Every cent you give to MS makes the world a worse place to live.

Please don't.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[IamTheRealMike]

KParts is little more than a glorified C++ classloader, it's definitely NOT an equivalent to OLE feature-wise. If you think it is, you need to learn more about OLE ....

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[Brandybuck]

Your description of what KParts should be is remarkably like what KParts actually is!

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[doinky]

No, most people get MS Office with their computer _too_. Same argument applies there.

Re:They left out Gnumeric

[Mitchell Mebane]

I know. :P OLE was probably Microsoft's best technical achievement, and the one the Linux desktop needs the most.

For scientific calculations, clones are useless

[stroustrup]

The greatest limitation of excel for scientific calculations is that number of rows is limited to 64k.

I was hoping the open source or free versions would overcome this limitation but none of them do so as this makes them incompatible with excel.
can't someone figure out a smart solution for this without asking the user to modify the source themselves??

Re:For scientific calculations, clones are useless

[Sweetshark]

can't someone figure out a smart solution for this without asking the user to modify the source themselves?
If you need more than 64k of data use a app made for scientific work, like R, mupad or Mathematica.

Re:For scientific calculations, clones are useless

[stroustrup]

R is a programming lanugage / statistical package. Its usability is way low compared to spreadsheets. It's only advantage is it's free.
The other two you mentioned are the similar and moreover, are not free.

Re:For scientific calculations, clones are useless

[DougJohnson]

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.

Re:For scientific calculations, clones are useless

[scotch]

"64k rows should be enough for anybody" - MS Excel Lead Developer

Re:For scientific calculations, clones are useless

[mkendall]

I think the market for number of people needing > 64K rows must be pretty slim.

Excel is very handy for ad hoc analysis of data. It is common for me to leave a test or an experiment running overnight, logging data to a text file, then import the results into excel to get a quick look at what I have.

The 64k rows limit is tedious, and even worse is that the number of points in a plot seems to be limited to 32k. If you plot more it simply fails silently and omits the missing rows. (I generally use x-y scatter plots, perhaps there is a limit of 64k values, each pair counting as two).

These days I use gnuplot to quickly plot these kind of ad hoc graphs, but it would be convenient in many situations if spreadsheets would handle unlimited rows.

Re:For scientific calculations, clones are useless

[fermion]

I never found excel that useful for scientific analysis in the first place. It was slow and I never trusted it completed. Even with macros I found it to be lacking in throughput. Instead I did data filtering C/C++/Fortran, and then plotted data in Gnuplot. It was fast an reliable.

Re:For scientific calculations, clones are useless

[ameoba]

I like to use screw-drivers as crowbars some times, unfortunately, when the forces get too high, they bend and break. Somebody should make me a stronger screwdriver.

Re:For scientific calculations, clones are useless

[ErikZ]

Wow, more than 64k rows? That sounds like a lot of data. If only there was a program out there to base all your data in.

Some sort of "Data base" who's function is to handle a lot of data. Man, I bet there would be a big demand for this sort of program if anyone wrote one.

More sense

[barcodez]

Wouldn't it make more sense to work with OO.o not against them?

Re:More sense

[Sique]

In this case the question is simply wrong. SoftMaker is around longer than most software companies. I remember the first SoftMaker adverts in a PC magazine in 1987, where they announced their TextMaker for 149,- DM (Deutschmark), which was a 5th of the usual price for a text processing software at the time. Germany had always several small office productivity companies, and one of them brought us on the road to OpenOffice (StarDivision, now bought by SUN), and SoftMaker is also still alive and kicking, working from the beginning with a "sell cheap, sell enough" model for their software.

They survived all the storms of time by getting large contracts with public administrations like towns and counties. And there they probably got most of their bugreports from, because a town administration can be sure to get lots of quite strange documents, in content and in form.

Re:More sense

[orzetto]

This is for-pay, just below 50 euros. I guess you cannot take OOo sources and license it proprietary...

Re:More sense

[Sweetshark]

I guess you cannot take OOo sources and license it proprietary...
... unless you are SUN ...

Re:More sense

[bubkus_jones]

Maybe they don't feel that OO.o is being developed in the "right" way, and they feel that they can do better? Or maybe they didn't want to do all that development to just give it away?

Re:More sense

[Sique]

You can charge money. You just have to provide the sourcecode. See the GNU FAQ. You can't change the license because you got other people's work with this license and THEY have to agree to the change.

Re:More sense

[trashme]

I am sure you read the article and thought carefully before posting. The moderators have even seen fit to mod your post as insightful. Maybe you could tell me how they could word together.

How might the creators of PlanMaker, a proprietary and for-pay spreadsheet work together with the open source OO.org group? I am seeing an impasse with regards to licensing, but you must have thought of a solution to this? Right?

Re:More sense

[Jody Goldberg]

This is a difficult proposition and a question that the Gnumeric team has wrestled with. OOo is a strong community and does excellent work. Unfortunately, it has no incentive to share. It takes work to split out interesting subsystems
- EMF rendering
- OLE2 in/out
the OOo developers have other things to do. None of the other projects get to cross polinate. This makes it an all or nothing proposition. In contrast gnumeric has spawned several supporting projects (eg libgsf) that are used by other projects (abiword, kword ...).

I can now go Linux at work.

[JohnFromCanada]

I still am going to have to test it out to make sure that I am not going to have compatibility issues but this would let me go 100% Linux at work as Excel is the last application that I was having compatibility issues with. OpenOffice, although great, still tends to have problems with a lot of the chart features in Excel. This means that the only time I will see Windows will be to play some old games, to do some Windows programming or on the screens of my co-workers and friends.

Re:I can now go Linux at work.

[Technonotice_Dom]

Try out Gnumeric - it's a native Gnome application but is rather lost because of OO's "mindshare".

Re:I can now go Linux at work.

[Jody Goldberg]

I'd be interested in any workbooks you've got that don't import smoothly. We (Gnumeric) are doing a fair amount of work chart import/export right now. A test case will ensure your pet feature is handled.

Re:I can now go Linux at work.

[JohnFromCanada]

"I'd be interested in any workbooks you've got that don't import smoothly."

Jody I must say I didn't try a new version of Gnumeric with the spread sheets with complex charts. I was referring to issues with OpenOffice, however I will test them in Gnumeric as soon as possible and will pass along all information if I encounter any compatibility issues or other errors.

gnumeric it is too good

[Sweetshark]

Its amazing they overlooked this as competition.
Maybe it is too good?

Re:gnumeric it is too good

[kasperd]

Maybe it is too good?

That may very well be the case. After all the comparision is done by people trying to sell a product. Their product have to be better (in at least one way) than every product they compare themselves to. If they couldn't find any advantage of their own product over gnumeric, it makes sense to exclude gnumeric from the comparision.

Re:gnumeric it is too good

[kasperd]

Softmaker provide the xls files on their web page.

Chosing test files is part of the comparision. I wouldn't be surprised if the result would look differently by trying a set of xls files relevant for your own work. Of course in my case that set would be empty, I can't remember when I last came across an xls file. If I ever need to open such a file it will probably be because somebody email me one, there is no way I'm going to pay this amount of money for a program to read a file somebody send to me. At least I learned one thing from this discussion, if I ever need to read such a file, I should try both gnumeric and ooo.

Remember This Marketing Strategy

[illuminata]

Write up a story that makes your software shine brighter than the sun, submit it to Slashdot, and reap the benefits!

Hey, the guy who wrote this software clone did it. What do you bet that if it clones something that Microsoft's done and runs on Linux, it'll always make the main page? I bet they have scripts that look for them and automatically slap them up!

Shit, what Microsoft product hasn't been cloned for Linux yet? I want to make some fast cash! Let me know so I can get coding...

Re:Remember This Marketing Strategy

[vijaya_chandra]

Shit, what Microsoft product hasn't been cloned for Linux yet? I want to make some fast cash! Let me know so I can get coding...

Please get this cloned for linux and I would send you ten penguins for dinner ( sorry no 'wine' in stock )

Non-Free

[4im]

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.

Re:Non-Free

[thinkfat]

This attitude is nice and honorable, if you're an OSS activist/evangelist. But I doubt it will get you anywhere fast. In a professional environment you can hardly just dump every XLS file you get as an attachment and shout at the sender to use OpenOffice (or Gnumeric, Kspread, whatever).

If you think that FOSS is automatically better than proprietary, you should probably read ESRs' rant over CUPS.

For me it'd be a great relief if I was able to use some native linux software, FOSS or not. I'd not have to rely on using Crossover Office and still having to pay for M$ for an Office licence.

Re:Non-Free

[AstroDrabb]

What is wrong with paying for software? I would love for all the commercial/proprietary apps under MS Windows to be available for Linux as well. That would just offer more choice to me as a Linux user. I could use an Open Source app, or if I felt that a proprietary app offered something extra for the money, then maybe it would be worth it. Choice is a good thing and wide industry support is a great thing IMO.

Re:Non-Free

[Bob Uhl]

Nothings wrong with charging for software--it's charging for software and not passing on the source which is unkind, like selling a car with the hood welded shut.

How long can this last?

[RLiegh]

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?

Re:How long can this last?

[Sique]

Not until software patents are valid in Germany. There is still a certain way to go. Of course Microsoft could stop the distribution in the U.S. by legal means, but SoftMakers market right now is Germany, and they are slowly expanding to the E.U.

Re:How long can this last?

[mrjb]

> how long until Microsoft eliminates them through legal means?
It depends. Maybe they paid MS for a .so port of some .dll. Who knows?

Re:How long can this last?

[Jody Goldberg]

XLS and OLE2 are not patented.
You're probably confusing them with the reports of the xml schema being patented. The binary formats that are still used in the vast majority of cases had parts of their specs published long ago. There was alot of work figuring out the undocumented, or incorrectly documented bits, and lots still to do. However, I have not heard of any patents.

Obvious question

[mrjb]

We all assume that once it being a Linux product, it's open source, but I see nothing in the article mentioning that it is. So.

Is it open source?

Second, they claim better Excel compatibility than OOo, how did they manage this.

Maybe they licensed some code?

I like having good compatibility, from a technical point of view, we are only going to benefit from better compatibility if there is documentation on how it was achieved. Could anyone mail OOo a link to those specs?

Re:Obvious question

[kasperd]

Is it open source?

The newsforge review have a pretty clear answer to that question: License Proprietary

Re:Obvious question

[Jody Goldberg]

1) not open source
2) They certainly have good filters for such a young project, but the claim of _better_ seems questionable. The test cases they provide are not consistent with my testing of the beta.

Why not buy Win4Lin/Wine and run Excel?

[t482]

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.

Re:Why not buy Win4Lin/Wine and run Excel?

[Tarantolato]

Compatibility for WordArt is not at the top of my requirements list for compatibility. Oh Jesus! People here bitch about Flash, but they obviously haven't been in an office where WordArt is in heavy use. It's a fucking monstrosity that offends god and man, I tell you.

It's definitely on my list of things I don't want to see compatibility for.

Re:Why not buy Win4Lin/Wine and run Excel?

[willCode4Beer.com]

I wouldn't recommend it.

I use the Code Weaver's Office product with MS Office 2000. Basically it sucks. Even if you ignore UI problems like repainting issues and menus being kind of wacky shifted. Its very unstable. MSWord and Excel crash very very frequently. I find the product is only usable for viewing documents I have received from others and printing. If you are modifying docs then you are playing on borrowed time.

Re:Why not buy Win4Lin/Wine and run Excel?

[iantri]

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?

Err.. because $50 is less than $99 + >$100?

Re:Why not buy Win4Lin/Wine and run Excel?

[FuzzieNorn]

Have you tried asking Codeweaver for support on that? It works wonderfully here..

gnumeric is also very good

[frontloader]

i havent bothered to look at planmaker, but i use gnumeric [over OO.org] for spreadsheet work.. and it rocks the house.

besides.. :

tengu:/home/mschupp# apt-get install planmaker
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package planmaker

Macros rear their ugly head again.

[Gilesx]

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.

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 .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.

I guess at the end of the day, lockdown isn't lockdown after all when there isn't a viable alternative.

Re:Macros rear their ugly head again.

[StuartFreeman]

Sounds like the problem is that you are using spreadsheets where you should be using a database.

Re:Macros rear their ugly head again.

[X]

Well Gnumeric for sure has you covered, and OpenOffice has most working. Don't know about this new thing.

Re:Macros rear their ugly head again.

[Gilesx]

A good point, but there are two issues here.

Firstly, the data is mostly numbers in particular time slots on certain days. These require manipulation, and the most straightforward way to do this is in a spreadsheet environment.

Secondly, ease of use - it's easier to train a relatively new user to use Excel for mathematical functions and for some data analysis, rather than to train a relatively new user in Excel for mathematical work, and Access for data analysis.

Re:Macros rear their ugly head again.

[cliffiecee]

Another point to mention is how these applications get created in the first place. (At least, this is how it happened to me...)

Initially you've got an Excel spreadsheet that you've got to update, so maybe you write a small macro that does a few repetitive tasks. Then someone says 'Hey, wouldn't it be great if...' and you slap together an interface for your colleague.

Next thing you know, people are modifying and extending this simple program into something really useful. And all without having to install any extra software. Sure, it's slower and more crash-prone than a stand-alone DB; as long as people save their work, we can recover.

There's just not enough benefit to writing a full-fledged DB for a (relatively) simple task.

Re:Macros rear their ugly head again.

[arkhan_jg]

I'm sorry, but if these data handling functions are business critical, then you need a proper database (sql, basically) combined with proper data in/out.

The number of cases of huge excel/macro combinations dieing messily, or corrupting the data is legion. I'm no database specialist (network admin myself), but the guy I work with who is, has several stories of companies that regretted relying on access or excel/vb for critical data processing, and one of them nearly went under when they found one of their (many) linked spreadsheets had been corrupted and had been feeding bad data into their conclusions for months.

Seriously, PLEASE don't rely on a cheap and cheerful desktop products (which is what ms office and openoffice are) to manage your company dataflow. Get a proper system on the backend. Use excel to munge a bit on the front end, do the graphs etc, fine - but put your data-storage and processing into a proper database system. It'll cost you more, but it just ain't worth the risk.

Re:Macros rear their ugly head again.

[fiendo]

What about the Macros?

From the article:

"The Windows edition does have a certain amount of programmability through a bring-your-own-language method. By importing PlanMaker's type library into Visual Basic or Borland Delphi, you can program macros and scripts in an interface similar to that of Microsoft Excel. SoftMaker does have a VBA-compatible macro language called BasicMaker, but currently it is only supported in the Windows version of the SoftMaker office suite in the German language. Translation of BasicMaker into English is underway and will be available in future editions of PlanMaker for Windows; the GNU/Linux edition will also have macro support eventually."

Eventually (for linux anyway) isn't the same as now, but I think is better than never.

Re:Macros rear their ugly head again.

[bigbird]

I'm sorry, but if these data handling functions are business critical, then you need a proper database (sql, basically) combined with proper data in/out.

Unfortunately, in the investment banking arena where I work, use of Excel to make financial decisions is extremely common - and is unlikely to change. Analysts love Excel for modelling, and the alternative - using developers who don't understand their financial models - also has its dangers.

Re:Macros rear their ugly head again.

[TrumpetPower!]

I'm sorry, but if these data handling functions are business critical, then you need a proper database (sql, basically) combined with proper data in/out.

Absolutely correct.

However...it's also absolutely unrealistic. Accountants know Excel. Databases are mysterious black boxes, normal forms probably have something to do with Kung Fu or Yoga, and SQL is the second movie in the series.

As a result, it's quite common to find true nightmares of home-grown behemoths based on incredibly complex intertwined Excel spreadsheets. It's hard to prevent these sorts of things from coming into being in the first place. Once they're there, it's damned hard to just figure out what the heck they're doing, let alone replace them with a real solution.

So...I gotta agree. As much as I hate Excel, I just couldn't recommend any alternative spreadsheet to most any office that uses it extensively. The parasite's just too tightly wound through its host.

Cheers,

b&

Intergration is important

[eamacnaghten]

As end office users become more and more savy - which in my experience they are - the importance of OLE type functionality is becoming more and more essential. The ability to embed spreadsheets in word processor files, presentations etc etc is becoming vital, as is the ability for third party apps to insert data into it. I cannot see any mention of this on their site.

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.

Re:Intergration is important

[Decaff]

The ability to embed spreadsheets in word processor files, presentations etc etc is becoming vital,

In my experience of teaching supporting, teaching and using office software, this kind of thing was very fashionable a few years ago, but most experienced users don't do it.

Why? Because its a memory hog, and it is extremely version and system dependent. Its a very mixed software world, and not everyone runs Office XP. Far more important than embedding applications is the ability to exchange the information that the applications contain. Imagine the problems trying to send such an embedded document as an e-mail attachment to a machine with unknown software.

Shameless.

[Raven42rac]

This is utterly shameless. You can save things in compatibilty mode in excel, so that they can be read by previous versions of the software, most users know this already. How the hell is it OOO's fault if the file is password protected? The chart is from the company that makes the software, not a unbiased third party, I could craft a document that would work better in one program or the other, I have not seem OOO stoop to that level. And another thing, Planmaker costs money $50 USD or Euro. This is an advertisement masked as an article.

Re:Shameless.

[Raven42rac]

Pardon the run-ons, I meant for some of those commas to be periods.

Re:Shameless.

[Conor Turton]

This is utterly shameless. You can save things in compatibilty mode in excel, so that they can be read by previous versions of the software

And of course an employee working in a predominantly MS Office environment is automatically going to save them in compatibility mode isnt s/he? YEAH RIGHT. Perhaps if you took that Linux/OSS blindfold off you might see how things work in the real corporate MS dominated world and then you'd realise just how much of a battle you had on your hands.

Re:Shameless.

[Raven42rac]

First of all, I have no blinders on of any shade, I have a Powerbook, a Linux PC and an XP PC. They all have their purposes. XP for games, Linux to mess with, and OS X to run every day. I administer a windows network, and yes, most of my users know to save things in compatibility mode, and we don't rush to the latest just because it is the latest. Office 2000 works fine for 99.9% of people.

Re:Shameless.

[JabberWokky]

If it is an advertisement masked as an article, then every review of hardware is an advertisement masked as an article.

Or is it possible that some people use Linux because they like Unix? I was using BSDi and Coherent before that. I've bought hundreds of dollars worth of commercial Linux software over the years, and been very happy with it.

Many of the things that people have bitched about being "not available for Linux" have just not been available _free_ for Linux. Over time, there have been FOSS projects to replace those to the point that the only commercial software I run nowadays are developer and database tools.

--
Evan

Re:Shameless.

[Raven42rac]

I see your point regarding advertising and reviews. One of the links led to a chart that was totally biased toward that company's own product, not very impartial, IMHO. I don't mind paying for Linux software either, Crossover plugin comes to mind, as does Winex. I agree that there is plenty of software available to replace common Windows apps, you just have to pay for them sometimes. Most Linux users recognize the difference between free as in beer, and free as in speech.

Re:Shameless.

[Conor Turton]

Many of the things that people have bitched about being "not available for Linux" have just not been available _free_ for Linux.

THats exactly the point. There's been decent 3D and multiple monitor support for Linux for ages but it costs money. There's a perfect MS software compatibility solution (Codeweaver CRossover) but it costs money.

Why oh why do alot of people bitching about MS compatibility/missing Windows applications equivalents in Linux continue to do so when there are viable solutions to those problems? Is it because they actually involve paying out some money?

There's too many people in here making Linux look like the poor mans OS by their ranting against any software that has a price tag attached.

Re:Shameless.

[jsebrech]

This is an advertisement masked as an article.

The story submitter, martin-k, is also a moderator in the forums of the planmaker site, likely meaning he works for them. Still, I don't mind him pimping his stuff, and I don't mind slashdot enabling his pimping, because we can always use new entries in the desktop software market, even (and especially) if they are commercial.

I would take everything said in the story with a grain of salt though. And like the review said, planmaker has no macro support, so it's not perfectly compatible with excel.

Re:Shameless.

[SydShamino]

>> How the hell is it OOO's fault if the file is password protected? It's not. It's OO.o's fault that it apparently cannot open password-protected Excel files, because this new competition apparently can. I assume both Excel and PlanMaker brought up windows, let the user enter the password, then displayed the file, while OO.o just errored out. I really, really, tried to like OO.o's spreadsheet for Linux. I couldn't do it. I switched back to Excel (via Crossover Office) and am happy until something better comes along.

Re:Shameless.

[SydShamino]

Grr. Time I fix having HTML formatting as default when logged in....

Much better..

Non-Free, Why not just use Excel?

[dilute]

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?

Re:Non-Free, Why not just use Excel?

[jsebrech]

In sum, who needs another me-too piece of proprietary software?

rms, is that you? ;)

Be honest here, do you honestly believe that existing open source software is always "acceptable" for any kind of job? There is a place for proprietary software in the world, and if there's a place within the desktop market for planmaker, we'll find out. Let the market decide, that's what I say.

Re:Non-Free, Why not just use Excel?

[chgros]

Because Excel is even less free?

Re:shhh

[Lord Bitman]

dont tell the linux users.. they think all integration is a security flaw

Re:It's not free.

[Conor Turton]

The best stuff usually isn't.

Comprehensive compatibility list?

[chrysrobyn]

Does anyone maintain a list of features OO doesn't support?

I know that the only incompatibility I found was when I had a formula that referred to a calculated value in another tab, and then yet another cell that referred to the first formula, I got an error when I opened the file in Excel. When I opened it in Excel, went to the formula and hit enter, it recalculated and got a non-error.

To example, sheet 1 A1 = 1, sheet 1 A2 = A1 * 2, sheet 2 A1 = sheet 1 A2 * 4, sheet 2 A2 = sheet 2 A1 * 5. In this example, sheet 2 A2 is an error in all versions of Excel I could find, and was good as of all versions of OO I could find last December.

I always got the OO errors about how data may be lost by saving in the non-native file format, but aside from the above case, I never lost any content.

Re:Comprehensive compatibility list?

[amorsen]

When you save in non-native formats you lose a little formatting and some structure information. It's not that bad, but it can be annoying. It's better to keep the OpenOffice.org file around for later editing, if possible.

Re:Comprehensive compatibility list?

[Ruliz Galaxor]

sheet 1 A1 = 1, sheet 1 A2 = A1 * 2, sheet 2 A1 = sheet 1 A2 * 4, sheet 2 A2 = sheet 2 A1 * 5

You get an error in Excel idd, but thats because you made a mistake, not because Excel did. The following sequence does work (in Excel 2003 that is):

sheet 1 A1 = 1
sheet 2 A2 = A1 * 2
sheet 2 A1 = sheet1! A2 * 4
sheet 2 A2 = sheet2! A1 * 5

Notice the additional ! when you use "sheet" in a formula.

sig(h)

Re:Comprehensive compatibility list?

[chrysrobyn]

You get an error in Excel idd, but thats because you made a mistake, not because Excel did

My "mistake" you caught is actually a simplification. Those equations are not what I used in context either. If you generate syntactically correct equations from my pseudocode in OO 1.0.0, 1.0.3 or 1.1.0 (IIRC), export that file into .xls, then open in Excel (97, 2000 or XP), you recieve errors in the last example you cite. If we merely highlight the first cross sheet reference calculation, put the cursor at the end of the line, then press enter, Excel resolves the error to the correct answer that OO calculated just 5 minutes before.

I'm not trying to point out a problem with OO accepting input, nor with Excel accepting input, but rather with the file format that OO exports. Exclamation points are as relevant to this conversation as the soft error rate calculations I was performing.

My previous example included unnecessary text. The Excel problem with the OO format is when Excel must calculate something that references a cell that itself references another sheet.

sheet 2 A2 = A1 * 5 is sufficient.

Yawn...

[minotaurcomputing]

Another Excel clone? Wake me up when someone makes a Lotus Improv clone for *nix.

-m

My father, Linux, and the spreadsheet battle

[meganthom]

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.

Re:My father, Linux, and the spreadsheet battle

[Rude Turnip]

Bulleted lists are done in wordprocessors. I use Excel heavily and have never seen any facilities for bullet lists.

Re:My father, Linux, and the spreadsheet battle

[meganthom]

Oh, don't I know it. Unfortunately, my father manages to find a reason to have both tables (which involve calculations not easily managed in a word processor) with bulleted lists (he's making footnotes, I suppose). He has somehow found a fast way to do this in Excel, so he wants something similar in an open-source spreadsheet program.

If you think that's odd, you wouldn't even believe his internet browser tab wishes...

Re:My father, Linux, and the spreadsheet battle

[Rude Turnip]

Even though there is no bullet formatting function specifically in Excel, I guess he could concatenate an asterisk in front of a formula result or the system code number for a proper bullet.

Re:My father, Linux, and the spreadsheet battle

[Alexis de Torquemada]

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.

PlanMaker is not open source. There's no bulleted list feature in OOo Calc, but you can manually begin each line with a bullet symbol, e.g. Unicode 2022 (Insert -> Special Character). You can speed this up if you want to insert many points by concatenating text from a hidden column, e.g. by inserting =IF(A1 <> ""; CONCATENATE("* "; A1); ""), where * is your bullet symbol, into cells B1 downwards. You can then just type text into A1 downwards and later hide the column. An ordered list would look somewhat like =IF(A1 <> ""; CONCATENATE(ROW(A1); ". "; A1); "").

Re:My father, Linux, and the spreadsheet battle

[Jody Goldberg]

A bulleted list ? /me scratches head
I'm not sure what you mean. Send a recipe for how to do this in MS Excel to me (jody@gnome.org) and I'll see about adding it to Gnumeric.

Re:My father, Linux, and the spreadsheet battle

[Blaine Hilton]

I have seen people do this all of the time by using a circle auto shape. Don't ask me why, I've questioned it myself, but they insist on doing it. When trying to find out why they I am given a lecture about how moving graphic items (i.e. flowcharts) in Word 97 is very hard because it keeps moving the text. AFAIK you can not create a "standard" bulleted list in Excel.

I don't care about Excel, what about OO

[OYAHHH]

Can it open OpenOffice spreadsheets? And how fast can it do it?

As a person who writes software which can read/write OO files I see a couple reasons why OO sheets may tend to read/write more slowly.

- The OO files are compressed zip files. Gotta spend a few precious seconds uncompressing them.

- The files contain very verbose XML which has to be parsed. My guess is that Excel sheets in a lot of cases have far fewer bytes to accomplish the same thing.

Re:I don't care about Excel, what about OO

[martin-k]

OpenOffice filters are being worked on, they aren't finished yet, though.

Re:I don't care about Excel, what about OO

[Jody Goldberg]

Frankly I prefer MS Excel's xml to OOo's OASIS xml. We've got parsers for both in Gnumeric, although neither has seen alot of testing. The oasis format irritated my because it felt like it had been designed by the xml people rather than the spreadsheet people. For example, there is no explicit cell addresses in the content. The structure is implicit in the ordering. This means that people can't easily lookup the content of a specific cell without at least a moderate amount of parsing. It also completely ignores share expressions, a huge performance loss.

You people are getting on my nerves

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

What is, exactly, the problem?

[DFAoBolinho]

In speaking of not talking about GNUmeric because people may not like Miguel de Icaza for the Mono project:

I don't really understand what is the real problem about it. Yes, .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.

Re:What is, exactly, the problem?

[alext]

The "ECMA and ISO ideas" only cover a small part of Dotnet, the rest is proprietary.

The problem is that Mono falls between two stools: it's neither a complete Dotnet clone, meaning that users get no true Dotnet/Mono portability; nor has it confined itself to merely "adapting" ideas from Dotnet - it's similarity is a good deal closer than that.

Mono is therefore asking its users to risk infringing MS's IP without delivering the associated benefit of real portability. There's little likelihood of Mono ever being a route for getting Photoshop-sized applications from Windows to Linux, for example.

Now of course Mono itself may be multiplatform, meaning that applications are portable from one Mono environment to another, but shifting to this goal (as you appear to be doing in your last sentence) immediately negates the value of the cloning effort. If applications are only written for Mono, there's no reason to stick to MS APIs, languages or bytecode - Mono doesn't need to be any closer to Dotnet than Dotnet is to Java, meaning that the FOSS world will be "free to innovate", to borrow an expression.

You're not alone in being misled by the gap between Mono's stated goals and the reality, and indeed my impression is that leading Mono proponents see little to gain at the present time by clarifying the situation.

Re:What is, exactly, the problem?

[coolgeek]

.NET is the next step in the logarithmically expanding Microsoft security problem. DUH!

Re:What is, exactly, the problem?

[DFAoBolinho]

And that is why the Microsoft stack is separated from the Mono stack.. You have all the Microsoft's patented ideas in one stack for the purpose of Dotnet compatibility, and on the other hand you have a set of all-new APIs that are mono-specific. My point in the previous post is: I don't see Mono as a bridge between Windows-Dotnet and Linux-Mono - but a way to DEVELOP true multiplatform aplications using Mono. You can even compare it to Java - but then you have more languages and a more reliable open source VM (because in a free software's point of view, java is not really that safe)

Re:What is, exactly, the problem?

[alext]

OK, you've confirmed my understanding of your previous statement - Mono for you is a multiplatform environment in its own right, not a "bridge" from Dotnet that is "helping people migrate their existing knowledge and applications to Unix" as described in the Mono Roadmap. That's fine.

We can then move on to look at the merits of Mono, Java, Parrot etc. from the same standpoint. Regarding the VM, I'd be interested in your source indicating that the Mono VM is safer and more reliable than the "Java" VM. You don't mention whether it's the Sun, IBM, BEA, Kaffe or some other one that was tested - I'm sure you appreciate that such details will be important to someone seriously evaluating these platforms.

Name does matter

[vijaya_chandra]

'Planmaker' sounds like some organising or project management software not like a spreadsheet software

gnumeric sounds relevant though I can't say the same about Excel again

The Row Limit is Definitely Frustrating

[azzurro]

I definitely agree here. I can't tell you how many times I've had to resort to an unneeded amount of hoop-jumping to do some work with a large spreadsheet. I work at a cellular company (RF engineering) and I frequently need to work with extremely large amounts of data (for example, data collected in the field can have millions upon millions of rows). There are work-arounds, but they typically result in me having to whip up a program in C that I will use only once. In a spreadsheet program, the same thing would take me much less time because I am doing something that really should be done with a spreadsheet application.

I've always wondered why this limit exists. If anyone can enlighten me about the technical reasons, that would be much appreciated.

Re:The Row Limit is Definitely Frustrating

[martin-k]

I've always wondered why this limit exists. If anyone can enlighten me about the technical reasons, that would be much appreciated.

Performance. We will increase PlanMaker's row limit (basically, the sky is the limit) once we have tweaked certain routines, like sorting and transposing.

Re:The Row Limit is Definitely Frustrating

[Sweetshark]

(for example, data collected in the field can have millions upon millions of rows)
Use a numeric package. Also concider using a database for the data - for simple accounting SQL provides enough functionality ....

Re:The Row Limit is Definitely Frustrating

[upsidedown_duck]

In a spreadsheet program, the same thing would take me much less time...

Are you sure? If you re-use the generic data-loading and array-populating code and simply insert the routines you need for a given task, custom C code really might be the fastest way. You can then have a really small and fast program that probably is very bug-free and is actually more reliable (you can be sure it is 64-bit safe, etc.). Keep it small with some basic documentation, and even your colleagues could use it.

Re:The Row Limit is Definitely Frustrating

[1u3hr]

I frequently need to work with extremely large amounts of data (for example, data collected in the field can have millions upon millions of rows). There are work-arounds, but they typically result in me having to whip up a program in C that I will use only once. In a spreadsheet program, the same thing would take me much less time because I am doing something that really should be done with a spreadsheet application.

Actually, I venture that you really should be doing it in a database program. Spreadsheets are basically WYSIWYG, you use the mouse to do stuff to slabs of data you can see, but there is no way you can do that with millions of rows.

Much simpler to keep clean code too, when you just have a few lines or pages of code, as opposed to embedding it in a huge spreadsheet.

This seems a bit like the people who try to lay out books in PhotoShop, because that's what they know, rather than using PageMaker or the like.

Re:The Row Limit is Definitely Frustrating

[Jody Goldberg]

- download gnumeric
- edit SHEET_MAX_ROWS in gnumeric.h
- compile

Re:The Row Limit is Definitely Frustrating

[ishmaelflood]

Yes, matlab is the biz for big datasets, but of course it is a bit expensive.

Has anyone had any luck with SciLab? it is cross platform, open source (I think) and free.

I have downloaded it and had a look at the demos, but not used it for anything.

Re:The Row Limit is Definitely Frustrating

[azzurro]

I don't agree with you here. I completely understand where you are coming from, and I like your Photoshop example, but this isn't the case for me.

If there is one thing that I want to get away from, it is databases (we have enough of them here). I want to work quickly and directly with the data. I stress here that I am not doing any sort of calculations. What I need to do is manipulate the way that the data is presented (a WYSIWYG thing) so that I can then use this data somewhere else. I am doing things that are very well suited for a spreadsheet, a very different thing from authoring a book in Photoshop.

Of course a custom program will work, and this is typically my approach, but they all end up being used once and are thus a large waste of time.

Re:The Row Limit is Definitely Frustrating

[1u3hr]

Perhaps a method like using a sample of the data in the spreadsheet, doing what you want; these operations are recorded and translated to some database langauge and run on the large dataset? Like Photoshop's (using that metaphor again) preview when you use a filter. Something like this doesn't seem too hard to my naive understanding, as long as you limited the functions you use, at least to start with.

No support for macros

[wytcld]

The review says it has no support for macros.

What sort of serious spreadsheet user doesn't employ macros?

And they're selling it for Linux - a platform where most users know how to do a bit of scripting.

If I were in a Linux shop and had to do power-user type spreadsheet stuff, and this were the only Linux option, it would be enough to motivate me to sneak in a copy of Windows so I could get my job done efficiently.

Re:No support for macros

[zhangyong]

Totally useless if no support of macros. Why don't you DL a excel reader from M$? I'm sure it has better compatibility with excel. Stop imitating, be innovative.

numeric package for science, DB for accouting

[Sweetshark]

Its usability is way low compared to spreadsheets.
Thats just wrong - it depends on the task. Spreadsheets are the right tools for a budget calulation resulting in a nice formatted table for the boss. If you have more then 64K lines of data, you should use something like R, mupad, mathematica or octave - simply because they are more useable for this task - 64k lines of data do not need a pretty layout - they will (almost) never get printed - they need a tool to be transparently processed. Spreadsheets dont do this well (for example, you will hardly ever notice it if a cell was left out in a "Edit->Fill->Down" maneuver or if the formula in a cell was accedently modified while moving over the sheet). A high-level numerical computation language is far superior here. And BTW, if someone claims to be unable to use these high-level tools, I would hardly trust his/her "research".
64k lines is enough for everybody - because speadsheets with more than 5-10k lines are not savely manageable. Use a numeric package for these, if you do science or a database if you do accouting.
Always use the right tools for the job.

Re:numeric package for science, DB for accouting

[amber_of_luxor]

64k lines is enough for everybody - because speadsheets with more than 5-10k lines are not savely manageable.

I use a spreadsheet with 50K rows often. Its gets a little slow to save/load, but it works.

Use a numeric package for these, if you do science or a database if you do accouting.

That application I use, requires the entry of roughly 100K numbers. A database program might simplify things.

• Can you point to a database program that is cross-platform? [ *BSD *Nix, Win*, MacOS 7.5+, Mac OS X, BeOS ]
• As easy, or easier to use than a spreadsheet, for Joe Sixpack?

Always use the right tools for the job.

The problem with database programs is that they are not part of most office suites.

MSOffice Small Business Edition does not include a database program.

OOo does include one, but there is virtually no documentation about it. [At one point, the OOo website stated that OOo did not include a database program. Those who explored OOo did find it.]

CorelOffice used to contain a database program. I don't know if still does. [Haven't looked at it in years.] Lotus SmartSuite included a database program. But how many people use(d) either Lotus SmartSuite, or CorelOffice?

Amber

Re:numeric package for science, DB for accouting

[Sweetshark]

Can you point to a database program that is cross-platform? [ *BSD *Nix, Win*, MacOS 7.5+, Mac OS X, BeOS ]
MySQL is available cross-platform, as is R (statistics package).
As easy, or easier to use than a spreadsheet, for Joe Sixpack?
For small stuff (for a DB - 100K numbers is small for a DB) SQLite is the silver bullet. It supports basic SQL and expressions like abs, sum, like, min, max, avg and count. The available java wrapper makes it pretty cross-platform. For bigger stuff, set up mysql and phpmyadmin and show Joe only the php frontend.
SQL is very easy to learn and is very powerful for "spreadsheet"-like operations.
If you need advanced math and a spreadsheet-like visualisation use some scientific package like Origin from OriginLabs or SPSS (both expensive). Or use R - it is cross-platform, powerful, but requires some learning ...

Re:numeric package for science, DB for accouting

[mrchaotica]

If you need to deal with datasets large enough that a database is the right tool, then perhaps it's worth learning how to use it, even if it's beyond the grasp of Joe Sixpack.

Re:numeric package for science, DB for accouting

[k8to]

Yeah SQLite or maybe BerkeleyDB are what you need for fast single table situations.

I expect it to be several times faster than excel at 100K entries.

So you are using Excel as a database?

[RAMMS EIN]

``99% of the sheets I use here involve macros to open many .csv files, process the data in a particular way and then dump it all into pivot tables that are linked to other Excel spreadsheets.''

That sounds like a database to me. Using Excel as a database is one of the most harmful things there are. It's slow, eats a lot of memory, and I have seen entire databases go to hell because of slight bugs in the macros or the interpreter.

Re:So you are using Excel as a database?

[cliffiecee]

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)...

Re:So you are using Excel as a database?

[armando_wall]

It can't be that difficult to create a nice front end in whatever language/platform you choose.

Re:So you are using Excel as a database?

[Clansman]

MAybe not - the databases are in the csv's excel is acting as a transformation engibe if anything, and pivot tables are just the business.

Theis approach also has a great accessibility factory for competent wired up folks and does not mean putting Access on the desktop (which is not that common)

J

Statistics too...

[MisanthropicProgram]

Excel has some very nice built in statistical functionality that I use often. So these packages have that capability too?

No. I don't have the time nor the expertise to write my own.

Re:Statistics too...

[Jody Goldberg]

Gnumeric includes a super set of MS Excel's statistics support
Additionally the analytics it includes are of significantly better quality.

http://www.csdassn.org/software_reports.html

hmm

[StuartFreeman]

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

Re:hmm

[martin-k]

Speed. Price. Multi-platform support -- there are even versions for Pocket PCs and Handheld PCs, and we are also working on a Zaurus port.

Gnumeric on Windows via Cygwin

[CdBee]

GnuMeric, as with the rest of GNOME 1.4 or KDE 3.1.4, runs just fine on Windows when compiled in the Cygwin Linux API implementation. You can also use Cygwin as a host for XFree86, this is the only way to get a free, fully featured X-server on Windows.

References.
Cygwin homepage
Gnome 1.4 apps for Cygwin
Cygwin Gnome homepage
KDE on Cygwin homepage

Cygwin is a brilliant tool to help manage a migration from Windows to Linux. I don't know why we dont hear of it more.

Re:Gnumeric on Windows via Cygwin

[leandrod]

There's already Gnome 2 for Cygwin, but Gnumeric wasn't ported (or at least packaged) yet.

It would be nice if Debian MS W32 went forward, so that we'd have a better installer than Cygwin's.

64k row spreadsheets!?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but this just seems bizarre to me. I do scientific calculations all the time I almost never even think about using a spreadsheet.

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.

Included with SUSE 9.1

[Roger Whittaker]

This (and the company's word processor, textmaker) are included in the boxed version of SUSE 9.1 Professional.

It's not free.-Master-charge.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The best stuff usually isn't."

So, you pay for sex?

Openoffcie is not GPLed ...

[Sweetshark]

... it is published under the LGPL-2 and the Sun Industry Standards Source License.

Re:Gnumeric on Windows via Cygwin - More detail

[CdBee]

Apparently, though, if you wish to run GNOME 1.4 you need to use an older version of Cygwin (1.3) and XFree86 4.2. The Cy-GNOME project team are working on porting GNOME 2 and are unlikely to make the necessary changes to the 1.4 tree to support it on current Cygwin releases.

Whether this means currently the available binaries won't run, I'm not sure. It may be necessary to do a manual compile from the Gnumeric source code using Cygwin-GCC. This has caught my attention now.....

It works well for me

[Guenhwyvar]

I have some xls files that contain a several graphs that are generated from thousands of data points.

• Open Office takes 10 minutes or more to open them.
• Gnumeric opens them quickly but doesn't draw the graphs correctly.
• KSpread doesn't draw the graphs.

However, I just tried the trial version of PlanMaker for LInux and it had no trouble displaying the graphs exactly as they should and was able to open even the largest file in just a few seconds.

Horay for a viable alternative, even if it is not open source.

Re:It works well for me

[Jody Goldberg]

Please send me the files. We're always looking for test cases.
Our standard confidentiallity policy can apply if necessary.

MS Office Doesn't Stink

[BoomerSooner]

Actually it's an excellent product. Granted the Mac Version is better (amazing by how much), but it is in my opinion the best office suite available. My only complaint is the price.

I like OpenOffice as well, however I never use any features that would conflict between OO and MS Office with the exception of passwords. However, you should never use an MS password if what your storing is actually important. Downloading cracking tools is very easy and free (astalavista.box.sk). Real encryption is necessary for critical documents/spreadsheets not the garbage built into access/excel/word. I've cracked so many competitors stupid presentation info it's sad really that they trust adding a password at all (pdf's as well).

MS Office is great but overkill for my company so we just use OO and it works well and is missing any license violations/bsa audits.

Re:MS Office Doesn't Stink

[Bri3D]

It's interesting how 2 comments so far saying just "Gnumeric is better" have been modded +5 and this post, With REASONS, is at 2.

Disclaimer: I agree with the post, especially the mac version is better part.

Re:MS Office Doesn't Stink

[whereiswaldo]

The only negative thing I can see about this software is its creator, Microsoft, but that does not bother me in the slightest.

Maybe when you have to buy 50 legitimate licenses you will add one more negative thing to your list. MSOffice is expensive. If you've got a pirated copy, cheap student edition, or 2nd hander from ebay, of course you're not complaining.

Re:MS Office Doesn't Stink

[Bert64]

Actually, as someone who uses msoffice on a daily basis (well, word 2003 and excel a little) i have to say it DOES stink, it is incredibly buggy and has poor support for its own file formats between versions (many of our excel spreadsheets from 2000 ceased working properly with 2003) it's only advantage is that openoffice is even worse..
I would love a decent stable office suite, one that doesnt randomly crash or otherwise fuck up.. or do incredibly strange things half the time..
I have so many niggling little problems with word, i have many documents that exhibit these problems too but unfortunately theyre private company documents or else i'd share them here.
I seem to remember wordperfect being much better but i heard it's gone downhill in recent years, wordworth on the amiga was awesome but alas the amiga is no more and wordworth is no longer developed.

Integration

[nurb432]

While it might be nice to have more compatiblity, the days of a single 'standalone' app are long gone in the business world ( the target for this product ).

Integration is what is reqired, to be able to interact directly with other applactions natively, i.e. a 'suite'.

Re:Integration

[martin-k]

We have TextMaker and are working on DataMaker and presentation-graphics package as well. PlanMaker is just one part of SoftMaker Office.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

CLI

[Faux_Pseudo]

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.

Re:CLI

[Jody Goldberg]

Gnumeric includes just that
ssconvert foo.xls foo.csv

Whaddaya mean compatible?

[Sensible Clod]

I went through the whole key sequence TWICE, but it wouldn't let me into the Hall of Tortured Souls OR the Spy Hunter game!!

Re:Whaddaya mean compatible?

[mrchaotica]

No, no, no! Excel has a flight simulator - Spy Hunter is in Word.

Re:Planmaker uses GTK Toolkit

[martin-k]

That would be news to me, and I _should_ know.

ldd planmaker
libc.so.6 => /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40021000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)

That's it.

Excel's power

[MoronGames]

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been programming with Visual Basic and Excel Spreadsheets for a major corporation (The Visual Basic + Excel part is not by choice). I have really learned about how powerful Excel is.

I think the main thing Open Source spreadsheet programs need to compete with Excel is something fully compatible with Visual Basic code, as crappy as it might be. Or at least something to migrate from the Visual Basic to some other kind of scripting language with the same functionality.

Took exactly 2 minutes to install - and delete

[rkaa]

It this some OO ripoff? It has the exact same errors in interpreting my xls speadsheets as OO has. I downloaded, unpacked, ran it, tried to open 2 files, saw the same errors OO shows, and deleted the whole thing. In less than 2 minutes :)
Gnumeric still rules.

Re:Took exactly 2 minutes to install - and delete

[martin-k]

If you have files that are imported incorrectly, I'd gladly see them to fix any problems. Mail the files to info(at)softmaker.de and I'll make sure our developers will see them.

Re:Took exactly 2 minutes to install - and delete

[rkaa]

Just mailed you a slightly modified version of one of the spreadsheets, a shift-plan. Nice if you can fix it.

If Planmaker is related to the OpenOffice codebase, please port eventual fixes back to OpenOffice.

Re:Took exactly 2 minutes to install - and delete

[martin-k]

Hmm, haven't seen the file so far. Can you mail it directly to me at martin-k(at)softmaker.de ?

And, no, PlanMaker is not related in any way to OpenOffice.

OOo's is changing...

[Chordonblue]

The 2.0 version of OpenOffice.org is greatly extending the number of rows. Look for a beta sometime in the October/November timeframe.

TextMaker vs. OpenOffice

[SteamyMobile]

I have used TextMaker on Linux and it's great. It's fast and is all around an excellent word processor. It's affordable and I don't mind paying for it. However, I won't use it, because it still uses MS .doc file formats, and that's the thing that I'm trying to get away from. As long as my data are locked up in someone else's proprietary files, I'm in a bad situation.

Fortunately it seems like everyone is moving towards OpenOffice files. Future versions of TextMaker and PlanMaker are supposed to be using OpenOffice files, as are Koffice and perhaps others. In an ideal world, on Linux we would be able to choose among OpenOffice/StarOffice, SoftMaker (TextMaker etc), WordPerfect (yes, it runs on Linux), and Koffice, and all use one file format. That world is coming soon I think.

Re:TextMaker vs. OpenOffice

[mrchaotica]

What about RTF, LaTeX, etc? RTF, at least, is a standard that's been around a lot longer than OpenOffice's format. And LaTeX is human-readable (even though it's a full-blown typesetting language)

Graphs and Charts for Scientific Publication

[Linuxathome]

There is definitely a niche that needs to be filled (translation: make money here) -- pseudo-spreadsheets that generate best-fit curves for scientific publications. All of the more useful and intuitive applications such as GraphPad Prism, Sigmaplot, Kaleidagraph, and SlideWrite are (or were) applications developed in Windows and do not have Linux ports. These applications are geared towards non-math-centric researchers who need to generate good looking plots and line graphs without getting into the hard core formulae needed to do it. In other words, they don't want (nor have the time) to learn gnuplot, octave, Maple V, Mathematica to generate non-linear regression plots for biological data -- after all, they're not mathematicians, they're biologists.

As a grad student in biomedical sciences, this is one of the obstacles preventing me from working in Linux solely. I still need my laptop with XP because it still runs Excel and Prism, which I need to publish papers. I don't care about Excel all that much since it generates crappy plots anyway, what I would like to have is a Prism clone. Biomedical scientists are such an untapped demographic for Linux use -- these people would gladly migrate to Linux if all the applications they needed were available for Linux. All they care about is power and reliability -- both of which are fulfilled by Linux -- and a smattering of useful scientific applications. Linux has made leaps and bounds for scientists in the fields of physics, math, and engineering, and the next group of scientists it needs to concentrate on are the biologists.

Re:Graphs and Charts for Scientific Publication

[AstroDrabb]

Why don't you see if Prism will run in CrossOver Office Professional 3.0.1. It can run MS Office, Photoshop 7 and many other MS Windows based apps very well. It just may handle Prism, though I have not tried it yet myself.

Re:Compatibility is king

[Jody Goldberg]

Which is why we've worked so hard on seemless import/export of xls, and try to provide a strict superset of Ms Excel features when possible. Users can optionally even use XL style keybindings so that the finger feel remains the same.

Trying Gnumeric on those sheets

[Lars Clausen]

So I tried Gnumeric on their xls sheets (yeah, I know they're handpicked to show PlanMaker is better. Comes up with a proper sample.), and what I see is that Gnumeric is better than OO on the "spreadsheety" things like the array functions and passwords, but sucks on diagrams and WordArt (no big surprise, the last).

Screenshots available at http://www.raeder.dk/~larsrc/Gnumeric. Please mirror and crop.

-Lars

Karma Whore

[Stevyn]

Why not try Gnumeric

Or Open Office

They are both free alternatives and I'm sure I'm the first to inform everyone of these.

Re:Some actual problems...

[martin-k]

What about going to Extras>Preferences and setting the encoding to Central European? There's even a FAQ file for this very topic...

Excel for scince?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I would hate to use excel or anyother spreadsheet when my data size was approaching 64k! Too hard to manage the data. USE A FRIKIN DATABASE ALREADY!

Here's The Value, Dummies

[Master of Transhuman]

If this thing CAN IN FACT read all Excel commands and macros AND runs on Linux AND Windows, it offers companies a migration path from Windows to Linux, dealing with the Microsoft Office migration hassle.

If their TextMaker word processor can do the same for Word, that just leaves Access and PowerPoint to be trashed.

Now, there might be other issues vis-a-vis integration between their products vrs that of Office (or OpenOffice), and issues vis-a-vis file format (open or not). But having a product for Linux (free or not) that offers companies a migration path from Windows to Linux is a Good Thing for Linux.

The fact that it's not free is not relevant, either. Some companies won't migrate to free software like OO - they want to pay for support for a commercial product (why? Don't ask me! The usual excuses are weak.). This product satisfies that need for some companies.

Re:Careful When Ordering

[martin-k]

When you ask for a receipt, we fax that to you or send you a PDF file. Please e-mail info@softmaker.de to ask for that again. Also, as you are using your credit card internationally, some banks give you bad exchange rates or add an "international" surcharge. If they do, tell us the exact amount charged and we'll refund you what you paid extra. Honestly.

Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Re:Some actual problems...

[Maljin Jolt]

Unfortunately, from fonts which came with planmaker, only roman contains correct glyphs. And system fonts, which are proper elsewhere in mandrake shows incorrect kerning in your application. I am sorry but I still must qualify your product poorly supporting my native language.

Can you also explain what is a raw socket library doing in a spreadsheet application?

Re:Planmaker uses GTK Toolkit

[IamTheRealMike]

Well, he said that it was linked against GTK+ statically so by definition ldd would not show it.

Impressive...

[Phil John]

...I've just re-read that post and can't believe it. In the current climate of the customer is always right (unless it costs us money) your company is a breath of fresh air.

Bravo, and once I've moved over to linux (as soon as wine supports some of the apps I use, and yes, I'm working on some patches) I will be buying your product instead of running excel through wine.

If only other companies realised that this kind of attitude wins you customers (listen up RIAA) the world could be a better place.

Gnumeric is shit for charts.

[lubricated]

yeah, except Gnumeric sucks for charts, so it's useless for quite alot of people that only use excell for charts. I've read in excell files with some very simple bar graphs into gnumeric and it refused to even display them.

Re:Gnumeric is shit for charts.

[Jody Goldberg]

Have you tried any of the 1.2.x releases ? (current is 1.2.13) I've been doing alot of work on the chart importer and engine. Although we're limited to 2d plots right now, we should support all of the standards very well. In many ways we're more compatible with ms XL for corner cases like, missing values and implicit conversions. If you ever find a workbook that Gnumeric can not load properly please _contact us_ There are too many features to test all of them directly, we are dependent on people to report problems.

Thanks

Re:Gnumeric is shit for charts.

[lubricated]

no problem. Perhaps I spoke too hastily. I didn't know you guys were taking charting seriously. I'll contact you guys next time I get an xl file where charting isn't working.

Re:Compatibility is king

[ephraimhorse]

And thanks to you, Jody (and a few others), gnumeric is, in my opinion, leading the pack of spreadsheets for Linux. Thanks!!

Open suites on Windows

[yuri benjamin]

Most pre-packaged home Windows boxen come with MS-Works rather than MS-Office - OOo et al are improvements without the extra $$$

Open cross-platform suites leave one with the option of switching platforms later. Many non-techies are starting to care about that. Cross-platform suites running on the current platform are often part of a future migration plan.

Open document formats are a Good Thing. Some non-techies are starting to get the idea.

VBscript/WScript to the rescue!

[N8F8]

You can easily automate Excel to convert tons of Excel spreadsheets to any format you want (HTM,CSV,DBF, etc) with VBScript/WScript. The link below will take you to a file I wrote for converting workbooks on the fly to HTML but I also included the XL constants for other formats.

Simply save this file to your windows drive that contains the spreadsheets, rename to XLS2HTM.vbs and run. Edit the file to Change the SaveAs constant and the file extension you want and away you go. To get better results converting Excel or Word files to HTML also use HTMLTidy (tidy.exe) along with this config script

XLS2HTM.vbs.txt

Re:Planmaker uses GTK Toolkit

[martin-k]

Yes, my fingers were too quick...

Still, PlanMaker does not use any GTK, Gnome, Qt, or KDE libraries.

Hey

[burbilog]

i>I'm sorry, but if these data handling functions are business critical, then you need a proper database (sql, basically) combined with proper data in/out.

There are a lot of things in the world that must be done properly, but let's face the fact: there are shitloads of such macroses and they DO work. So if you want businesses to move to another office program you HAVE to provide them this compatibility no matter what you purists think about program design.

Re:Some actual problems...

[thinkfat]

Can you also explain what is a raw socket library doing in a spreadsheet application?

... talking to the X Server would be my first bet :-)

Re:Some actual problems...

[martin-k]

Roman-PS is our fallback font if other fonts don't support certain character set. It is therefore more full-featured than the other bundled fonts.

But PlanMaker can of course use any fonts installed in X11. Can you mail some more information (screenshots, your locale etc.) to info(at)softmaker.de so that we can track this bug down?

Sockets are used to access X11, btw.

that is great and good to know!

[jopet]

thank you for the info - I was considering buying the software, but since I will upgrade my SUSE 8.2 pro to 9.1 soon I now know that I do not have to.

Re:that is great and good to know!

[martin-k]

SUSE 9.1 has Free Editions of TextMaker and PlanMaker which can be freely copied but have limitations in their feature set.

Re:that is great and good to know!

[jopet]

Are you sure about that? I could not find a "free but limited" version anywhere - only a trial version that is limited to 30 days of use. And I also could not find any mention of limitations in the SuSE 9.1 product description (http://www.suse.com/us/private/products/suse_linu x/prof/office.html)

Re:that is great and good to know!

[martin-k]

Yes, I am sure :-)

The trial versions are available from our web site, and the Free Editions are part of SUSE Professional 9.1.

TextMaker Free Edition doesn't have spelling tools, and PlanMaker Free Edition is limited in sheet size. Otherwise, they can be freely used and do not time out.

Are Linux users prepared to pay?

[jopet]

This is really something I wanted to see for a long time: companies starting to offer commercial software for Linux. Linux can only become a serious alternative to Windows on the desktop if companies start to offer products and users start to buy those products. So it remains to be seen if Linux users simply expect to get everything open-source and free or if they accept to pay for things like on other OS' too. Linux needs to become an opportunity for people who want to earn money in order to become successful. That might be a sad or sobering insight to some, but in the world that we live in, it is an unavoidable fact.

Re:Are Linux users prepared to pay?

[sarob]

I agree. It is good for the industry. Microsoft has already started adjusting their sales and support models to compete with RedHat and Novell. We are also pushing them to compete with open source to improve their interop. So far the developers and their managers have responded.

That was fixed in Gnumeric in four years ago

[leonbrooks]

It's a compile time option, and list mails in 2000 indicate that 256k rows worked fine, so presumably megarow spreadsheets will too.

OOo's row limitation has already been raised to 64k (in non-production versions), and a plan is afoot to raise it again to "hundreds of millions" of rows, the bottlenecks being display code and a couple of memory-hungry accounting processes which will need redesign. The 64k rows is probably not a hard limit any more, you could probably compile a 128k or 256k row version of ooCalc 1.1.2 and suffer only performance/memory use penalties for going that high.

But as has been said so often above, you should probably be using a database at that scale, not a spreadsheet. Or perhaps awk or PERL will do the trick. (-: