🚀 go-pugleaf

Okay, so it looks like the target for Mesa is Microsoft Excel.

Excel 4.0 is a very nice product.  It is also the forth major revision of  
a product that has been on the market for 6+ years now.  We use it as a  
benchmark, but I'd like to get input as to why (and please be specific)  
Excel is such a good program.  For example, please don't say "it has  
better graphs", but "the 3-D shadowing of the pie chart makes my reports  
look better."  If we have specific examples, we can work hard to satisfy  
those needs.

Let me also say that Mesa has features that Excel does not.  First of all,  
Mesa allows a lot of direct manipulation (colors, fonts, ranges, etc.)   
and has modeless inspectors rather than modal dialogs.  Next, we have a  
visual report builder which is much better than anything Excel has in  
terms of getting your output to look good.  Mesa has formula inheritance,  
a first on any spreadsheet and a very powerful tool.  Mesa has far  
superior links into SQL database systems.  Finally, Mesa comes with an  
object library that allows custom apps to interface with the spreadsheet  
including the ability to place live spreadsheet views in the custom app.

If you folks on the net tell us what specific features, graph types, etc.  
in Excel make it good, we will work to include those in Mesa.  Please  
remember to be specific about the feature that you like and the benefit of  
that feature.  Mesa is 10 months old.  Excel has at least 6 years  
development lead time on us.  We will work hard to not only keep up, and  
also provide great spreadsheet features not found in any other product at  
any price.

David
-- 
David Pollak - dpp@athena.com - NeXTMail Compliant
Attorney at Law,
Feeder of the Bears, Athena Design, Inc.