[CLUE-Tech] Linux Spreadsheets

[Jed S. Baer]

Greetings folks.

In my continuing quest to retire my Windoze box, one thing I need is a
good, basic spreadsheet. All I'm talking about here is one column of
formulas, and two columns of numbers feeding into the formula column. I
don't need a macro language, or scripting, or plots. It'd be cool if it
were GTK based, but really any X11 implementation would be OK, although
I'd rather not have to use lesstif (I just like to keep my box as clean
as I can). curses would be a last resort.

Gnumeric: Last time I tried it, it crashed regularly. It's trying to be
to much like Excel for my taste anyway. Way more program there than I
need.

Oleo: rolled into Gnumeric?

xspread: I can't get it to run on my box. AFAICT, it hasn't been
maintained in years, and wants some very old libraries. I think it needs
lesstif.

ss and sc: I can't find the source, nor RPMs; it's not X based.

vote: Derivative of sc. Won't build on my box.

siag: AFAICT, unmaintained. Doesn't support copy/paste of formulas.
Seems sort of broken to me, actually. Mailing list appears to be dead.

abs: non-inuitive (for me anyway). Poor UI. IIRC, I couldn't figure out
how to get a formula into a cell.

There were a few others, coming out of universities. Definite "alpha"
feeling to the descriptions on their web pages. I'd prefer "stable".

Grant wrote:

> Your spreadsheet:
> Use SYLK or CSV to save it, then import it into whichever spreadsheet you
> actually like.

I don't need to convert the existing one. All I need for the transition
is to copy the last total and type in the formula, then replicate the
formula down the column. I might be missing something, but saving as a
CSV doesn't preserve the formula. Don't know what SYLK is.

The real question is finding which spreadsheet I want to use. Part of
that goal is to limit, to the extent possible, the number of libararies
I have to download, and continue to maintain, in the process. Since I
use Pan for news, I'm already tied into keeping current on the Gnome
libraries, so a GTK proggy would be great. I don't have any KDE stuff.

Thanks,
jed
-- 
"Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they've made a
 difference. Free Software developers don't have that problem."