![]() I do agree that Excel kicks ass-or at least that nothing else has come close to it. Maybe open-source is doomed to try to emulate Excel? The closest things I can think of are awk and Gnuplot, but unlike LaTeX's ability to replace a word processor, I can't imagine using awk and Gnuplot in place of a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet, at least to my knowledge, has no such Unix alternative. The other big "office suite" programs-word processing, email-have Unix alternatives that use a plain-text paradigm. I've often wondered if there is a "Unix way" to do spreadsheets-that is, a way to put data in a plain text file and then do analysis on it. Can you name me an open source spreadsheet-like program that is not an Excel clone? What this would look like, I don't know. I'd argue Gnumeric is a better Excel clone than OOo Calc, but it's still just an Excel clone. Gnucash, on the other hand, plays the Quicken and MS Money game and, I would argue, does not measure up.īut Gnumeric really is an Excel clone, just as OOo Calc is an Excel clone. It uses a completely different paradigm (the command line, and a plain text data file) and does it very well. Similarly, Ledger doesn't try to beat Quicken or MS Money at their own game. ![]() It doesn't try to beat word processors at their own game-and why should it? Unix text processing has a much longer history than WYSIWYG word processors. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2022
Categories |