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New additions to apps suite

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justin
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New additions to apps suite

I thought that you could put PortableGnumeric (when released) in the light version of the suite to give more functionality, yet still be lightweight.

John T. Haller
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Considering it...

I'm actually considering that. But I haven't gotten to play with it much yet. - John

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John T. Haller
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Not As Portable
Oddly, Gnumeric stores all settings in the registry (unlike AbiWord, OpenOffice, etc). So, I may have to backup and restore settings. Also, Gnumeric is a bit rough around the edges for an end-user at the moment. There's a command window up the whole time the app is running and all the open/save dialogs are GTK instead of Windows native. As such, I wouldn't really expect non-geeks to want to use it.

I may release a version of it anyway, but I probably will not be including it in the Suite as of yet.

Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!

justin
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yea.....

I was aware that it isn't very pretty, but I'll probably use it anyway. However, I would really like to see an open source spreadsheet that looks good and stands alone. Do .jar files work portably? It would be really good to see if someone would write one in Java. It could be one of your only cross-platform apps. Also, is there any way to change to change the way in which it stores settings? You can get the source after all. This may be too tedious though.

John T. Haller
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Avoiding Code Changes

I'm trying to avoid code changes to the base apps and handle everything in the launcher. JARs are portable, but need a launcher or batch file to point to the included JRE. Gnumeric's settings location probably can't be changed without code changes, unfortunately.

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justin
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yep

I figured that it wouldn't be practical to make a code change, plus there isn't enough demand for you to take time doing it. I would like to see Java explored more as a medium to tailor-make portable apps. A topic for your upcoming Development section perhaps?

dlray (not verified)
gnumeric 1.6.2 shows promise

I'm exploring the possibility of providing students with a free spreadsheet with which to do various assignments involving calculations, simple statistics and data visualization. If it is portable, so much the better. Since I've been working on introducing my general ecology students to some basic statistics, OOo works OK for some things as long as you know the formulas for the tests you want to perform, but it lacks an easily useable statistics module like the Excel data analysis add-on. (There is a very capable (if complicated) macro that would do the job, but quite honestly, it isn't for novices.) Gnumeric has a great little stats package. The recently released ver. 1.6.2 has gotten rid of the command window, so it is less intimidating. If you could ever work out those problems you mentioned, it would make a great, and relatively lightweight addition to your line-up. Keep up the good work.

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