🚀 go-pugleaf

In comp.sys.next.misc article <716000430.F00004@blkcat.UUCP> 
David.Gursky@p394.f70.n109.z1.fidonet.org (David Gursky) wrote:
> 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

[...]

> * 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.

Well,

one thing that may stand in your way is the complexity of the .biff format.   
For those of you who just said "What is biff"  it is the excel file format.   
You see,  unlike wks, or SYLK, biff is not a file format that was meant to be  
read by anything other than Excel.  It more or less consists of a partial dump  
of their VM memory system (on the Mac and Windows) to disk.  Therefore,  
interpreting it is no small task.

When I was at Ashton-Tate, PowerStep's (now Appsoft Solution) sister product  
(FullImpact on the Mac) could read Excel files up to 3.0.  And it was a small  
miracle.

If you really wanted to be of service to the Spreadsheet comunity, you could  
write a 3.0 filter service that cranked .biff to one of the 1-2-3 formats, wich  
are the ones that they all support.

So I agree that Excel file format from 4.0 or better (now the current rev) is  
highly desireable, it is not going to be easy.

Bruce