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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Microsoft and Palm consider PDAs apt just for contact management, and multimedia. IMO, that's a much too limited view. I'm using them as a laptop replacement, and many of my customers do the same thing. With the right word processor and the right spreadsheet (shameless plug...) plus e-mail software and a web browser they could do what most people want from their laptop computers.
And with hires screens (640*480, yummy), you can actually see what you are editing.
But Microsoft and Palm are moving much too slowly. New features in PalmOS 5? It's ARM-compatible. New features in Windows Mobile 2003 SE? Landscape support. That's all! They should get off their a**es and improve the devices. What about putting more of the Windows API in Pocket PCs so that apps actually _get_ ported to Pocket PCs? What about speech recognition and dictation? What about making data replication work instead of relying on ActiveSync? etc. etc.
Make PDAs more useful and customers will buy them.
We are hedging our bets. We have a common code base that compiles for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Pocket PCs, Handheld PCs, CE.NET, and Sharp Zaurus. If we add a feature today, it will be available on all platforms immediately.
Furthermore, all the applications (word processor TextMaker, spreadsheet PlanMaker, database DataMaker and some unannounced ones) share at least 50%-60% of their source code. For example, a sheet cell in PlanMaker is basically a small text frame in which much of the code of TextMaker is working to do the text formatting.
With this approach to development, we can even make a business case for less popular platforms, say, AIX workstations -- and Linux is much stronger than that.
With 15 employees, we are much smaller than the better-known office suite manufacturers, and we have been concentrating exclusively on the German market till about 12 months ago. So, if you don't actively read German computer magazines, it would have been easy to miss us.
I have no problem competing with open source software, and authors of open source software usually don't have that towards commercial software. There is much more zealotry among the user base than under developers...
We have to clean up a few big-endian/little-endian issues in the source before the software runs successfully on PowerPCs, but this is being worked on.
But before the PPC version, we'll release a Zaurus version of both TextMaker and PlanMaker. The beta of TextMaker for Zaurus is about three weeks away.
My company has been selling word processing, spreadsheet, typefaces, and database software in Germany since 1987. It's not like we just entered this business yesterday.
I never complain to anyone about failed business ventures and, besides, Slashdot probably wouldn't accept the story...
It's commercial software, I need to make payroll every month. If you can get over this fact, the rest is really lenient. Remember Philippe Kahn's "just like a book" license? That's what our license is modeled after -- install on as many machines as you like, but only use as many copies concurrently as you have licenses.
If "free" is what you are after, get ahold of a copy of SUSE Linux 9.1. It ships with TextMaker Free Edition and PlanMaker Free Edition.
The current limit of 16384 rows is not set in stone. We had PlanMaker builds with 65536 and 256K rows, but then some functions (like sorting whole columns) were too slow -- remember that we are also supporting Pocket PCs and Handheld PCs, and CPU-wise, they are at a i286 or i386 level.
As soon as we have optimized some of these routines, the row limit will be raised.
OK, our hosting company cut us off because "some scripts were attacking our servers". When I told them about Slashdot, they never heard of the site. Oh well.
We have the source code to our own Visual Basic-compatible scripting engine, and before we put that into the product, we'll make sure it is sandboxed. That is: no accesses to the outside, file system etc. without explicit permission by the user. The worst thing a virus could then do is to modify the documents currently loaded.
Currently, PlanMaker imports the macros but doesn't touch them. When you save your file, they are saved in the output file as well.
Actual VBA macro support is our next step. PlanMaker for Windows and TextMaker for Windows have an OLE object model that is already close to Excel's and Word's, but we have to move that stuff to Linux as well.
Slashdot Mirror
SUSE 9.1 has Free Editions of TextMaker and PlanMaker which can be freely copied but have limitations in their feature set.
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.
And, no, PlanMaker is not related in any way to OpenOffice.
Still, PlanMaker does not use any GTK, Gnome, Qt, or KDE libraries.
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH
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.
What about going to Extras>Preferences and setting the encoding to Central European? There's even a FAQ file for this very topic...
-mk
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.
ldd planmaker /lib/libc.so.6 (0x40021000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
libc.so.6 =>
That's it.
We have TextMaker and are working on DataMaker and presentation-graphics package as well. PlanMaker is just one part of SoftMaker Office.
Speed. Price. Multi-platform support -- there are even versions for Pocket PCs and Handheld PCs, and we are also working on a Zaurus port.
Performance. We will increase PlanMaker's row limit (basically, the sky is the limit) once we have tweaked certain routines, like sorting and transposing.
OpenOffice filters are being worked on, they aren't finished yet, though.
And with hires screens (640*480, yummy), you can actually see what you are editing.
But Microsoft and Palm are moving much too slowly. New features in PalmOS 5? It's ARM-compatible. New features in Windows Mobile 2003 SE? Landscape support. That's all! They should get off their a**es and improve the devices. What about putting more of the Windows API in Pocket PCs so that apps actually _get_ ported to Pocket PCs? What about speech recognition and dictation? What about making data replication work instead of relying on ActiveSync? etc. etc.
Make PDAs more useful and customers will buy them.
Is it lack of manpower or of imagination?
-mk
Furthermore, all the applications (word processor TextMaker, spreadsheet PlanMaker, database DataMaker and some unannounced ones) share at least 50%-60% of their source code. For example, a sheet cell in PlanMaker is basically a small text frame in which much of the code of TextMaker is working to do the text formatting.
With this approach to development, we can even make a business case for less popular platforms, say, AIX workstations -- and Linux is much stronger than that.
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH
I have no problem competing with open source software, and authors of open source software usually don't have that towards commercial software. There is much more zealotry among the user base than under developers...
Martin Kotulla SoftMaker Software GmbH
But before the PPC version, we'll release a Zaurus version of both TextMaker and PlanMaker. The beta of TextMaker for Zaurus is about three weeks away.
-mk
I never complain to anyone about failed business ventures and, besides, Slashdot probably wouldn't accept the story...
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH
It's commercial software, I need to make payroll every month. If you can get over this fact, the rest is really lenient. Remember Philippe Kahn's "just like a book" license? That's what our license is modeled after -- install on as many machines as you like, but only use as many copies concurrently as you have licenses.
If "free" is what you are after, get ahold of a copy of SUSE Linux 9.1. It ships with TextMaker Free Edition and PlanMaker Free Edition.
See my other post. We can raise the limit as soon as we have recoded some slow routines.
As soon as we have optimized some of these routines, the row limit will be raised.
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH
Currently, I have moved things to:
Main page
PlanMaker for Linux page
Comparison page Excel, PlanMaker, OpenOffice.org
Let's see how quickly you slashdot those.
You cannot download the beta right now because the Python scripts point to softmaker.de which is currently no way. Just look at the pictures instead.
If someone wants to mirror us, please contact me at info (at) softmaker.de . Please. Pretty please.
Martin Kotulla SoftMaker Software GmbH
We have the source code to our own Visual Basic-compatible scripting engine, and before we put that into the product, we'll make sure it is sandboxed. That is: no accesses to the outside, file system etc. without explicit permission by the user. The worst thing a virus could then do is to modify the documents currently loaded.
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH
Currently, PlanMaker imports the macros but doesn't touch them. When you save your file, they are saved in the output file as well.
Actual VBA macro support is our next step. PlanMaker for Windows and TextMaker for Windows have an OLE object model that is already close to Excel's and Word's, but we have to move that stuff to Linux as well.
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH