 Oleo with a Motif GUI | |
| Original author(s) | Tom Lord,[1] |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 1992; 33 years ago (1992)[1] |
| Final release | 1.6.16[2]  / 10 March 1999 |
| Preview release | 1.99.16[3] / 10 March 2001 |
| Written in | C |
| Type | Spreadsheet |
| License | GPL-3.0-or-later |
| Website | www |
GNU Oleo is a discontinued[4] lightweightfree softwarespreadsheet[5] originally designed as a text-based spreadsheet using thecurses library. The last development version of Oleo, 1.99.16, was released in 2001.
The project was started in 1992 by Tom Lord,[1] and became part of theGNU initiative around 1994.[6] At the time, the only open source alternative was the older text-basedsc, both products having similar functionality to early versions ofLotus 1-2-3 orMicrosoft Excel. Oleo'skey bindings however were inspired from the Unix world, and similar to those used by theemacs editor, which frustrated novice users familiar with theDOS counterparts.[7] Oleo andsc were the firstUnix spreadsheet applications to acquire agraphical user interface.[8] Because Oleo was officially part of the GNU project, it was dubbed "GNU's response to Excel" in a 1996 article iniX magazine.[9] It claimed to be "better than the high priced spread",[10] a reference to oldoleomargarine advertisements promoting margarine over the more expensivebutter. Oleo also worked well in aBSD environment; aFreeBSD port was available.[6]
By 1995,sc had acquired anX Window front-end calledxspread, which added graphics capabilities.[7] In 1998,[1] Oleo acquired aMotif-likeGUI, relying on the royalty-freeLessTif widget set. AGTK version was also under development. By 1999 Oleo was still judged as "not completely usable",[11] due to the awkward graphical interface lacking in user friendliness like X-stylecut, copy, and paste ortear-off menus.[8] In the 1995 version, to type a number into a cell the user had to hit the "=" key first, similar to the early versions of Excel.[7] This was later changed to typing a number directly, although typing a number in a cell that already contains one appends to it rather than overwrite it.[12] Graphics are drawn using the device-independent library libplot, the centerpiece of the GNUplotutils. Oleo offers spreadsheet access to theGNU Scientific Library, a large collection of mathematical functions. It also offers some database connectivity, allowing access toMySQL database via queries,Xbase andDBF file access.[6] It has support formacro programming, and for printing purposes it supportsASCII andPostScript output.[13] Still, by 2000 it could not import Excel spreadsheets, while newer open source alternatives likeGnumeric offered this feature,[6] and could also import Oleo spreadsheets.[14]
Oleo was still recommended as a console spreadsheet application in a 2005 article inLinux.com, but the reviewer warns that "I had expected Oleo to be more intuitive, but I needed multiple sessions with the info file before I could use it proficiently. Even cell reference syntax was not what I had expected."[13] By default, Oleo uses numbers for both rows and columns; a cell reference uses a syntax liker12c26.[12] A single Oleo process does not support the display of more than one file at a time, butGNU screen or multiple terminals can be used as a work-around. Oleo supports editing the same spreadsheet in concurrent application instances.[13]
Development Status: ? - Orphaned/Unmaintained
