🚀 go-pugleaf

I'll throw my two cents in to this debate.  The one thing missing from
everyone's spreadsheet application is compatibility with Excel*.  Yes, it's very
nice that everyone can read and write SYLK and 1-2-3 formats, but SYLK and 1-2-3
are not the dominant format for spreadsheets anymore, Excel is.  So why is this
important?  Because organizations have gone ahead and built "Mission-Critical"
applications using spreadsheets (notably Excel), they shy away from a new
product that forces them to re-engineer their application, and justifiably so.

Now this is not to say that the company that is first to bring an Excel
compatible spreadsheet to market is going to make a small fortune and capture
the lion's share of the NeXT spreadsheet market for years to come, and become a
major component in the suite of applications that sells thousands of NeXTs
(don't think this is possible?  Look at how memory sales increased after Apple
released Hypercard, or how laser printer sales increased with the advent of
mature desktop publishing applications), but if any of the four spreadsheet
vendors out their (Appsoft, Athena, Informix, or Lotus) expects to achieve that
goal, Excel compatibility is must be a key piece to that puzzle.

* What is Excel compatibility?  It is the ability to interpret correctly a
complete set of Excel features in an Excel spreadsheet, including references to
Macros, external documents (i.e. charts), formulas, the whole shebang.