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NewsForge Reviews Excel Clone for Linux
martin-k writes "NewsForge has a glowing review about PlanMaker for Linux, a new spreadsheet for Linux that is much more compatible with Microsoft Excel than the competition and speedier, too. PlanMaker has Excel-compatible charting and AutoShapes and reads and writes any Excel file you throw at it. Here is a chart comparing Excel, OpenOffice.org, and PlanMaker." Yes, Virginia, NewsForge is also part of OSDN, like Slashdot.
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.
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50 bux for a spreadsheet app? I'll stick with the free Gnumeric instead.
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.
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??
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Wouldn't it make more sense to work with OO.o not against them?
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Whatever it's qualities may be, this PlanMaker thingie is non-free (as in speech and as in beer). This makes it very much uninteresting for quite some people. If there's a decent alternative that's free (hint: there are, several), then that's the way to go IMHO.
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.
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.
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Okay, so I always seem to be posting this in reply to any Excel clone news whatsoever, but I still feel it's a totally valid point, and whilst this is the case I shall continue to post it.
.csv files, process the data in a particular way and then dump it all into pivot tables that are linked to other Excel spreadsheets. These are business critical, and until these work 100%, with no additional effort (some of the people that have to use these sheets are barely computer literate at all), there is no way on God's earth that I can persuade the IT department to switch over to an alternative.
What about the Macros? Surely this is one of the most important parts of Excel, and could even be one of the things that makes it such an indespensable tool for many companies. It gives it the freedom to move outside of the solely number crunching arena, and into a million and one other places.
It's all very well having a new Excel clone for linux that can retain my conditional formatting better than ever, but 99% of the sheets I use here involve macros to open many
I guess at the end of the day, lockdown isn't lockdown after all when there isn't a viable alternative.
Sunday you're Thinking Different, Monday you're a huge tool, paying too much and waiting to think like everyone else.
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.
I hate sigs.
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?
The best stuff usually isn't.
Conor "You're not married,you haven't got a girlfriend and you've never seen Star Trek? Good Lord!" - Patrick Stewart
Does anyone know if you can make a bulleted list within PlanMaker without too much trouble? Yes, I know that this feature doesn't make much sense, but it's one of the major factors preventing my father from switching to Linux and from regularly using open-source office software. My dad gave up on Open Office in short order.
It seems that for open-source software, and Linux in particular, to appeal to the business world, the software must make the features business execs regularly use, such as tools for making memos, readily accessible and as similar as possible to the features in MS Office. My father, for example, is eager to try something new, but becomes frustrated when he needs to relearn everything or when he has trouble importing documents and spreadsheets from other programs
Maybe PlanMaker will convince him to give Linux another chance. I hope so.
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First of to all those screaming gnumeric, rtfa!
Second, I can understand that people want to run a system that is 100% open source. If you want to, do it, but please also stop your whining, that this has not been ported to linux and that has not been ported to linux.
Softmaker is offering a spreadsheat that seems to be more compatible with Excel then other spreadsheats on linux. I can't possibly see how this is bad.
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.
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
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.
----- If communism is a system where the government owns business, what do you call a system where business owns govern
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.
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.