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GNU Oleo

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Original author(s)Tom Lord,[1]
Initial release1992; 32 years ago (1992)[1]
Final release
1.6.16[2] Edit this on Wikidata / 10 March 1999
Preview release
1.99.16[3] Edit this on Wikidata / 10 March 2001
Written inC
TypeSpreadsheet
LicenseGPL-3.0-or-later
Websitewww.gnu.org/software/oleo/oleo.html

GNU Oleo is a discontinued[4] lightweight free software spreadsheet[5] 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

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The project was started in 1992 by Tom Lord,[1] and became part of the GNU initiative around 1994.[6] 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.[7] Oleo and sc were the first Unix spreadsheet applications to acquire a graphical user interface.[8] Because Oleo was officially part of the GNU project, it was dubbed "GNU's response to Excel" in a 1996 article in iX magazine.[9] It claimed to be "better than the high priced spread",[10] 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.[6]

By 1995, sc had acquired an X Window front-end called xspread, which added graphics capabilities.[7] 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",[11] due to the awkward graphical interface lacking in user friendliness like X-style cut, copy, and paste or tear-off menus.[8] 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.[7] 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.[12] 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.[6] It has support for macro programming, and for printing purposes it supports ASCII and PostScript output.[13] Still, by 2000 it could not import Excel spreadsheets, while newer open source alternatives like Gnumeric offered this feature,[6] and could also import Oleo spreadsheets.[14]

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."[13] By default, Oleo uses numbers for both rows and columns; a cell reference uses a syntax like r12c26.[12] 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.[13]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d https://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/ChangeLog [bare URL]
  2. ^ "ChangeLog". 22 November 2000. Archived from the original on 8 January 2001.
  3. ^ "Oleo - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation". 10 March 2001. Archived from the original on 1 April 2001.
  4. ^ "oleo - Summary [Savannah]". savannah.gnu.org. 2001-01-23. Retrieved 2024-02-18. Development Status: ? - Orphaned/Unmaintained
  5. ^ "Oleo - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation)". GNU.org. 2016-05-11. Retrieved 2023-10-21.
  6. ^ a b c d Clifford Smith, "Spreadsheets under BSD (part 2)". Archived from the original on February 24, 2001. Retrieved 2010-01-17.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link), BSD Today, August 2000
  7. ^ a b c "Novice to Novice | Linux Journal". www.linuxjournal.com. Retrieved 2023-10-21.
  8. ^ a b "The Xxl Spreadsheet Project | Linux Journal". www.linuxjournal.com. Retrieved 2023-10-21.
  9. ^ online, heise (1996-03-17). "GNU mal wieder". iX Magazin (in German). Retrieved 2023-10-21.
  10. ^ "Oleo 1.99.13". www.gnu.org. Retrieved 2023-10-21.
  11. ^ "xxl: A Free Spreadsheet for Linux | Linux Journal". www.linuxjournal.com. Retrieved 2023-10-21.
  12. ^ a b "Oleo: a commandline spreadsheet". Tux Training. Archived from the original on 2008-10-06.
  13. ^ a b c "Articles about Code Red are invading the Internet". Linux.com. 2001-08-06. Retrieved 2023-10-21.
  14. ^ Hall, Michael. "Suites for the Sweet: GNOME Office". LinuxPlanet. Archived from the original on 2000-08-23.
[edit]
  1. ^ AI Spreadsheet. Sourcetable Inc., 2024. Retrieved 2024-11-14.
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