Free Linux-Based Spreadsheets
General: Main page Early history A Brief History Historical Background
Software on windows: Excel Lotus 1-2-3
Software on Linux: Free Spreadsheets Commercial Spreadsheets
Free Linux-Based Spreadsheets
By Christopher Browne
Notable Gnumeric features include:
Ability to import and export Excel files
95% of Excel functions
Import of CSV, WK1, xBase data formats
Scriptable using Perl and Guile
CORBA interface using ORBit
Printing via gnome-print, thus providing support for things like Type 1 anti-aliased fonts, which allows high quality display.
Ongoing efforts to make Gnumeric embeddable with GNOME applications using the Bonobo compound document system
Various analysis tools including statistical functions and a ``goal seek'' tool
Table Editor And Planner, Or: Teapot!
Portable to any reasonably Unix-like OS; written in C. Uses a somewhat functional model. It can read Lotus 123 WKS files.
An X-based spreadsheet written in C and Scheme.
The package includes a word processing application called Pathetic Writer.
The spreadsheet package is somewhat ``interface independent;'' it has both Xlib and Gtk versions; it is also reported to have an interface based on the CURSES library that can thus run on any sort of ``dumb terminal.''
The various modules are gradually attaining increasing interoperability with such data formats as:
HTML
RTF (Rich Text Format)
WKS (Lotus 123's data format)
As the packages are extendible using Scheme, there is almost nothing that they cannot, at least in concept, do.
For those wishing to be on the bleeding edge, the latest and most unstable sources for Siag are now available through anonymous CVS. Set CVSROOT to :pserver:anoncvs@siag.edu.stockholm.se:/home/cvs , then execute: cvs login, and cvs checkout siag.
Development has not been real active lately; it appears that some developers have migrated to working on Gnumeric.
A recent further development is a version called KSIAG which works with the KDE desktop environment.
Recent claims to fame include:
Support of scripting languages: Guile,Tcl,and Python.
Multiple sheets
Improved Lotus 123 support
A number of GUI changes
Maxwell's Lemur was an attempt at a free (GPL) spreadsheet using Guile and the Gtk Toolkit. It borrows heavily from SIAG. (Scheme In A Grid)
It uses a custom Gtk widget called an NGrid, written especially for this purpose.
When the lemur gets smart enough, it may become part of the GNOME Project
It appears that the efforts have since been folded into Gnumeric.
OleoTk
A port of GNU Oleo 1.6 has been "GUIed" using TCL/Tk.
<jbailey@nisa.net>Jeff Bailey is presently the ``official maintainer'' of Oleo; he has plans to update it, providing such things as:
A scripting language - Guile
Redo the GUI using Gtk
Integrate into the GNOME Project
Loading of additional file formats (XLS, WK*, CSV, ...)
A port of the ``classic'' Unix spreadsheet program SC to X. Sources in C are freely available.
A Lotus 123 compatible character based spreadsheet. Once sold commercially, the binaries for Linux are freely redistributable.
Dismal - Spreadsheet for Emacs
This is a character mode spreadsheet package written in Emacs LISP that runs inside the Emacs editor. See also the Dismal Web Page
A spreadsheet that runs atop GNU Emacs.
Xxl is a free graphical spreadsheet developed at the University of Nice for Unix platforms. It is designed to be simple, easy to use and user friendly. Xxl is written in STk and is based on the tkTable widget.
ABS - a GPLed Unix/X11 Spreadsheet
Abs is a free spreadsheet with a graphical user interface.
Main functionality:
XY, Bar and Pie plot
Fig output (to TeX , printer, gif ...)
Compiled Visual Basic Scripting language
Multidocument management (cut and paste between sheets of different document)
Simple drawings
Excel import/export through Visual Basic macro files.
Moodss (Modular Object Oriented Dynamic SpreadSheet) is implemented in the Tcl language (requires at least versions 8.0 of Tcl and Tk).
Moodss is a modular application. It displays data described and updated in an independent module loaded when the application is started. Data is originally displayed in a table. Graphical views (graph, bar or pie charts) can be created from any number of table cells through a simple drag'n'drop operation. The table rows can be sorted in increasing or decreasing order by selecting any column.
This is a spreadsheet implemented in C/C++, which is extendable using TCL.
This is an ss derivative with rewritten menus and (incomplete) html on-line help added.
kspread - the fabled KDE spreadsheet
Presently seems to be vaporware rather than anything real...
Note: This page is modified from Christopher Browne's Web Pages.