Software:GNU Oleo
 Oleo with a Motif GUI | |
| Original author(s) | Tom Lord,[1] |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 1992[1] |
| Written in | C |
| Type | Spreadsheet |
| License | GPL-3.0-or-later |
| Website | www |
GNU Oleo is a discontinued[citation needed] lightweight free software spreadsheet[2] originally designed as a text-based spreadsheet using the curses library. The last development version of Oleo, 1.99.16, was released in 2001.
History
The project was started in 1992 by Tom Lord,[1] and became part of the GNU initiative around 1994.[3] At the time, the only open source alternative was the older text-based sc, both products having similar functionality to early versions of Lotus 1-2-3 or Microsoft Excel. Oleo's key bindings however were inspired from the Unix world, and similar to those used by the emacs editor, which frustrated novice users familiar with the DOS counterparts.[4] Oleo and sc were the first Unix spreadsheet applications to acquire a graphical user interface.[5] Because Oleo was officially part of the GNU project, it was dubbed "GNU's response to Excel" in a 1996 article in iX magazine.[6] It claimed to be "better than the high priced spread",[7] a reference to old oleomargarine advertisements promoting margarine over the more expensive butter. Oleo also worked well in a BSD environment; a FreeBSD port was available.[3]
By 1995, sc had acquired an X Window front-end called xspread, which added graphics capabilities.[4] In 1998,[1] Oleo acquired a Motif-like GUI, relying on the royalty-free LessTif widget set. A GTK version was also under development. By 1999 Oleo was still judged as "not completely usable",[8] due to the awkward graphical interface lacking in user friendliness like X-style cut, copy, and paste or tear-off menus.[5] In the 1995 version, to type a number into a cell the user had to hit the "=" key first, similar to the early versions of Excel.[4] This was later changed to typing a number directly, although typing a number in a cell that already contains one appends to it rather than overwrite it.[9] Graphics are drawn using the device-independent library libplot, the centerpiece of the GNU plotutils. Oleo offers spreadsheet access to the GNU Scientific Library, a large collection of mathematical functions. It also offers some database connectivity, allowing access to MySQL database via queries, Xbase and DBF file access.[3] It has support for macro programming, and for printing purposes it supports ASCII and PostScript output.[10] Still, by 2000 it could not import Excel spreadsheets, while newer open source alternatives like Gnumeric offered this feature,[3] and could also import Oleo spreadsheets.[11]
Oleo was still recommended as a console spreadsheet application in a 2005 article in Linux.com, but the reviewer warns that "I had expected Oleo to be more intuitive, but I needed multiple sessions with the info file before I could use it proficiently. Even cell reference syntax was not what I had expected."[10] By default, Oleo uses numbers for both rows and columns; a cell reference uses a syntax like r12c26.[9] A single Oleo process does not support the display of more than one file at a time, but GNU screen or multiple terminals can be used as a work-around. Oleo supports editing the same spreadsheet in concurrent application instances.[10]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 https://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/ChangeLog
- ↑ "Oleo - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation)". 2016-05-11. https://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/oleo.html.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Clifford Smith, "Spreadsheets under BSD (part 2)". Archived from the original on February 24, 2001. https://web.archive.org/web/20010224080613/http://www.bsdtoday.com/2000/August/Features262.html. Retrieved 2010-01-17., BSD Today, August 2000
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 "Novice to Novice | Linux Journal". https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/1132.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 "The Xxl Spreadsheet Project | Linux Journal". https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3186.
- ↑ online, heise (1996-03-17). "GNU mal wieder" (in de). https://www.heise.de/hintergrund/GNU-mal-wieder-505192.html.
- ↑ "Oleo 1.99.13:". https://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/doc/oleo.html#FOOT1.
- ↑ "xxl: A Free Spreadsheet for Linux | Linux Journal". https://www.linuxjournal.com/article/3217.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Oleo: a commandline spreadsheet". http://tuxtraining.com/2008/03/23/oleo-a-commandline-spreadsheet.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 10.2 "Articles about Code Red are invading the Internet" (in en-US). 2001-08-06. https://www.linux.com/news/articles-about-code-red-are-invading-internet/.
- ↑ Hall, Michael. "Suites for the Sweet: GNOME Office". http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/previews/1926/2/.
External links
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