Gnumeric, most of its competitors, is based on the deeply-flawed approach of a structureless expanse of cells. Now, there have been "multidimensional spreadsheets" whose paradigm was to operate on different objects -- time series, data tables, etc. -- using formulas to relate the objects to one another without even bothering with the expanse of cells that at any rate often results only in duplication and errors. Thus data, formulas, and presentation were decoupled, and great gains in productivity were possible. A number of these issues is discussed at http://cbbrowne.com/info/spreadsheets.html -- but of course, we're all familiar with them.
A particularly good product was produced by Javelin Software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Javelin_Software), but it died out. Lotus Improv (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_Improv) tried the same approach, but also failed apparently due to lack of popularity. The only similar product in existence today appears to be Quantrix (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantrix); cf. the demo and tutorial at http://www.quantrix.com/Quantrix_Video_Demos.htm?url_text=Product_Tours. Anybody thought about this? We could add the whole structured, data/model/presentation-decoupled paradigm to Gnumeric. Who said it has to be just a traditional spreadsheet? Jonathan _______________________________________________ gnumeric-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnumeric-list
