6 ms·

Lotus 1-2-3 For Linux

363 points by rcarmo 3y ago

nickt 3y ago
Some good discussion from last year (May 2022] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968
31337Logic 3y ago
Keep up the great work! I'm also proud to see that "90s BBS scene" lend a crucial hand here, too!
RyanAdamas 3y ago
That is sick. Was just watching an old Computer Chronicles on Lotus 1-2-3
- agumonkey 3y ago
  and youtube suggested me a tiny video about the spreadsheet wars, visicalc/lotus/excel.. something in the air
  - loloquwowndueo 3y ago
    “Something in the air” - that’s google watching everything you do.
    - agumonkey 3y ago
      sadly plausible
    - somat 3y ago
      That is the worrisome thing. the uncertainty. There is a very real phenomena where you learn something new. Then start seeing that thing every where, at a frequency you "know" was not present before. It is quite uncanny. Now on top of that we have these massive engines of silicone designed with the sole purpose of identifying your patterns so they can infiltrate your thought processes and make you buy something you otherwise would not have. When is it just learning something new and when is it a subversive engine?
boricj 3y ago
Funnily enough I'm doing something similar, but with the extra step of turning parts of programs into object files first. That means I'm not limited to extant object files, but it requires some amount of reverse-engineering to make it work. I have a proof-of-concept with aln [1], the Atari Jaguar linker. I start with a Linux x86 a.out executable, which I delink into an ELF object file and then relink as an ELF x86 executable, working around mismatched ABIs as needed. [1] https://forums.atariage.com/topic/354341-porting-the-original-atari-jaguar-sdk-to-elf/ https://forums.atariage.com/topic/354341-porting-the-origina...
rasengan 3y ago
This intrigued me for a number of reasons: 1. It's cool AF how you made getting UNIX -> Linux binary seem to be, even without source code and without original compiler and language. This is HN :D 2. You reminded us all that people still use Usenet for something more than rars in 2023! 3. You reminded us all of the past BBS scene which definitely helped to bring enthusiasm (and great shareware distribution of software) to the masses long before the popular of the internet, thus opening up great memories of the past I imagine for many. Thank you for the post, and looking forward to your progress.
- sydbarrett74 3y ago
  The BBS ethos is returning, I think. Especially in light of the implosion of Twitter (and all 'social' media, eventually). The older Zoomers are so infatuated with '80's and '90's retro stuff that many are downloading modem negotiation sequences as ringtones! My 23 year-old niece just recently did so. American Horror Story, Stranger Things, and other shows of that ilk are feeding the nostalgia. It just proves the old saying: 'If you wait long enough, everything comes back into fashion.'
  - rasengan 3y ago
    That’s pretty awesome!
andrea76 3y ago
Is there any curses based good spreadsheet?
- teleforce 3y ago
  sc-im - Spreadsheet Calculator Improvised -- An ncurses spreadsheet program for terminal: https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im
- sprak 3y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24318367#24318518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24318367#24318518 VisiData, Oleo, Teapot
  - mutex_man 3y ago
    Found visidata last week. I was blown away by how much it can do.
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Emacs Org-Mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15aDIvb5LJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15aDIvb5LJs
nickstinemates 3y ago
Linked from this excellent article is https://scenelist.org/ https://scenelist.org/, which is just the nostalgia bomb I needed this morning. Excellent trip down memory lane; highly recommended.
mrlonglong 3y ago
In fact, I had forgotten all about 1-2-3 as I'd tried this out some time last year. I still have the 123 binary working happily under Linux. It's quite an achievement to have something that's been obsolete for many years "Just Work".
qwerty456127 3y ago
I always wanted this - a terminal-based spreadsheet (I don't use much fonts and pictures in spreadsheets anyway). Glad to know it's finally here! I hope it's going to get ported to Mac and Windows as well.
- Borg3 3y ago
  Yeah, cool idea. Same here, im very heavy terminal user, and simple spreadsheet in terminal sounds like a cool idea.
- SpaceNoodled 3y ago
  There's already sc: https://www.unix.com/man-page/linux/1/sc/ https://www.unix.com/man-page/linux/1/sc/
- baruchel 3y ago
  On the very same website, you also have a review of various terminal linux spreadsheet programs: https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/spreadsheet.html https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/spreadsheet.html
- cmrdporcupine 3y ago
  Emacs has had a spreadsheet mode (SimpleEmacsSpreadsheet) for a really long time. I've never used it, but it might be worth checking out. But also, Org-Mode in Emacs (which itself is a bottomless pit of awesome I have never explored) also has a way of using org-mode table cells like a spreadsheet using the Emacs 'Calc' stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15aDIvb5LJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15aDIvb5LJs That looks really powerful. And of course, can run in either terminal or in window like all of emacs.
  - TimTheTinker 3y ago
    > Emacs has had a spreadsheet mode If course it has. :-)
    - bitwize 3y ago
      If the GNU project had a marketing team, they should adopt the slogan "Emacs: There's a mode for that." I'd also recommend "Guile goes with everything" for another GNU product.
TheBlight 3y ago
Having flashbacks to being 7 years old and asking my dad for a Nintendo and instead getting a 286 with Lotus 123 and Indiana Jones text adventure.
- segmondy 3y ago
  At least you got a computer. :-D
  - chasil 3y ago
    You have obviously never used a Timex/Sinclair 1000.
    - qingcharles 3y ago
      LOL. I loved my ZX81.
- SpaceNoodled 3y ago
  Sounds like you made out much better
- emeril 3y ago
  I got an apple 2gs with leisure suit larry that neither me nor my much older brother could reliably figure out the answers to the "age verification questions" at start-up
  - raverbashing 3y ago
    Interesting, apparently these are the questions http://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.html http://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.htm...
    - m463 3y ago
      next step: figure out the jokes for the punchlines. :)
bosse 3y ago
My dad had a ton of 123 files on a secondary laptop with an ancient Windows version, just because these had important information that he still needed to look at from time to time. I was a bit worried about the resiliency of this setup, to put it mildly. Recently I realized that LibreOffice could convert Lotus files to ODF/ODS files, even in the CLI, so I made a very simple bash script to convert them all, and bulk uploaded them on my Nextcloud with Collabora, and gave my dad a login and a crash course. So now he can look up his files online, and they get properly backed up as part of my normal routine on the server. Big tip of the hat to data archeologists like OP and the LibreOffice contributors.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  Now I'm pretty curious what kind of files they are, that they're so old yet still important?
  - bosse 3y ago
    I assume it's letters to friends and family, some work journals, investment spreadsheets, things like that.
mikae1 3y ago
> He had kept tape backups from old BBS systems, and was able to recover a warez copy of the SDK – unbelievable! It actually worked, I was able to build a few sample plugins! Why History Needs Software Piracy[1] [1] https://www.technologizer.com/2012/01/23/why-history-needs-software-piracy/ https://www.technologizer.com/2012/01/23/why-history-needs-s...
- seanp2k2 3y ago
  I was just thinking about trying to create an archive of all the manuals, firmware updates, drivers, and any software utilities for current synthesizers, eurorack and otherwise, since they’re actually hardware that will still be around in a few decades. I already keep copies of all this stuff for gear I own, organized by manufacturer in my personal cloud storage drive, but it seems like it would be a public benefit for the community to have something centralized and more importantly long-lived. I was thinking about how to potentially have some kind of yearly distribution of such an archive, maybe have some type of archival blu-ray that people could pay for a physical copy of that would hopefully last 100 years, then the odds of /someone/ out there having a copy of that last esoteric firmware .bin that you need to save your corrupted firmware on your ARM-based DSP eurorack module should approach 1.
  - Tijdreiziger 3y ago
    Uploading to archive.org should work.
    - KETHERCORTEX 3y ago
      While archive.org still exists.
layer8 3y ago
Previous discussion (83 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968
dang 3y ago
Related: Lotus 1-2-3 for Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35807639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35807639 - May 2023 (73 comments) Lotus 1-2-3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35872758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35872758 - May 2023 (117 comments) Lotus 1-2-3 For Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968 - May 2022 (83 comments) Lotus 1-2-3 arbitrary resolution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316637 - March 2021 (123 comments)
lproven 3y ago
My article about it from the time (18mth ago) in which I try to describe some of the history, relevance, technology etc. https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/25/lotus_123_for_linux_appears/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/25/lotus_123_for_linux_a...
blackbit 3y ago
Sadly, Lotus 1-2-3/M (The mainframe version of it, for VM and MVS) seems to be lost forever.
wlindley 3y ago
I really wish someone could resuscitate Javelin (it "Understands the Arrow of Time" to quote the old ads). Where you can create a variable and define its time period: is it a monthly value, a daily value, a quarterly value, and so on -- and then simply chart, compare, add or subtract values without having to jump through hoops or manually try and push values into groupings. Javelin was the 1984 PC Magazine product of the year but there doesn't seem to have been anything since that works that way.

363 points by rcarmo 3y ago

Some good discussion from last year (May 2022] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968

31337Logic 3y ago

Keep up the great work! I'm also proud to see that "90s BBS scene" lend a crucial hand here, too!

RyanAdamas 3y ago

That is sick. Was just watching an old Computer Chronicles on Lotus 1-2-3

agumonkey 3y ago
and youtube suggested me a tiny video about the spreadsheet wars, visicalc/lotus/excel.. something in the air
- loloquwowndueo 3y ago
  “Something in the air” - that’s google watching everything you do.
  - agumonkey 3y ago
    sadly plausible
  - somat 3y ago
    That is the worrisome thing. the uncertainty. There is a very real phenomena where you learn something new. Then start seeing that thing every where, at a frequency you "know" was not present before. It is quite uncanny. Now on top of that we have these massive engines of silicone designed with the sole purpose of identifying your patterns so they can infiltrate your thought processes and make you buy something you otherwise would not have. When is it just learning something new and when is it a subversive engine?

boricj 3y ago

Funnily enough I'm doing something similar, but with the extra step of turning parts of programs into object files first. That means I'm not limited to extant object files, but it requires some amount of reverse-engineering to make it work. I have a proof-of-concept with aln [1], the Atari Jaguar linker. I start with a Linux x86 a.out executable, which I delink into an ELF object file and then relink as an ELF x86 executable, working around mismatched ABIs as needed. [1] https://forums.atariage.com/topic/354341-porting-the-original-atari-jaguar-sdk-to-elf/ https://forums.atariage.com/topic/354341-porting-the-origina...

rasengan 3y ago

This intrigued me for a number of reasons: 1. It's cool AF how you made getting UNIX -> Linux binary seem to be, even without source code and without original compiler and language. This is HN :D 2. You reminded us all that people still use Usenet for something more than rars in 2023! 3. You reminded us all of the past BBS scene which definitely helped to bring enthusiasm (and great shareware distribution of software) to the masses long before the popular of the internet, thus opening up great memories of the past I imagine for many. Thank you for the post, and looking forward to your progress.

sydbarrett74 3y ago
The BBS ethos is returning, I think. Especially in light of the implosion of Twitter (and all 'social' media, eventually). The older Zoomers are so infatuated with '80's and '90's retro stuff that many are downloading modem negotiation sequences as ringtones! My 23 year-old niece just recently did so. American Horror Story, Stranger Things, and other shows of that ilk are feeding the nostalgia. It just proves the old saying: 'If you wait long enough, everything comes back into fashion.'
- rasengan 3y ago
  That’s pretty awesome!

andrea76 3y ago

Is there any curses based good spreadsheet?

teleforce 3y ago
sc-im - Spreadsheet Calculator Improvised -- An ncurses spreadsheet program for terminal: https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im
sprak 3y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24318367#24318518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24318367#24318518 VisiData, Oleo, Teapot
- mutex_man 3y ago
  Found visidata last week. I was blown away by how much it can do.
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Emacs Org-Mode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15aDIvb5LJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15aDIvb5LJs

nickstinemates 3y ago

Linked from this excellent article is https://scenelist.org/ https://scenelist.org/, which is just the nostalgia bomb I needed this morning. Excellent trip down memory lane; highly recommended.

mrlonglong 3y ago

In fact, I had forgotten all about 1-2-3 as I'd tried this out some time last year. I still have the 123 binary working happily under Linux. It's quite an achievement to have something that's been obsolete for many years "Just Work".

qwerty456127 3y ago

I always wanted this - a terminal-based spreadsheet (I don't use much fonts and pictures in spreadsheets anyway). Glad to know it's finally here! I hope it's going to get ported to Mac and Windows as well.

Borg3 3y ago
Yeah, cool idea. Same here, im very heavy terminal user, and simple spreadsheet in terminal sounds like a cool idea.
SpaceNoodled 3y ago
There's already sc: https://www.unix.com/man-page/linux/1/sc/ https://www.unix.com/man-page/linux/1/sc/
baruchel 3y ago
On the very same website, you also have a review of various terminal linux spreadsheet programs: https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/spreadsheet.html https://lock.cmpxchg8b.com/spreadsheet.html
cmrdporcupine 3y ago
Emacs has had a spreadsheet mode (SimpleEmacsSpreadsheet) for a really long time. I've never used it, but it might be worth checking out. But also, Org-Mode in Emacs (which itself is a bottomless pit of awesome I have never explored) also has a way of using org-mode table cells like a spreadsheet using the Emacs 'Calc' stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15aDIvb5LJs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15aDIvb5LJs That looks really powerful. And of course, can run in either terminal or in window like all of emacs.
- TimTheTinker 3y ago
  > Emacs has had a spreadsheet mode If course it has. :-)
  - bitwize 3y ago
    If the GNU project had a marketing team, they should adopt the slogan "Emacs: There's a mode for that." I'd also recommend "Guile goes with everything" for another GNU product.

TheBlight 3y ago

Having flashbacks to being 7 years old and asking my dad for a Nintendo and instead getting a 286 with Lotus 123 and Indiana Jones text adventure.

segmondy 3y ago
At least you got a computer. :-D
- chasil 3y ago
  You have obviously never used a Timex/Sinclair 1000.
  - qingcharles 3y ago
    LOL. I loved my ZX81.
SpaceNoodled 3y ago
Sounds like you made out much better
emeril 3y ago
I got an apple 2gs with leisure suit larry that neither me nor my much older brother could reliably figure out the answers to the "age verification questions" at start-up
- raverbashing 3y ago
  Interesting, apparently these are the questions http://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.html http://allowe.com/games/larry/tips-manuals/lsl1-age-quiz.htm...
  - m463 3y ago
    next step: figure out the jokes for the punchlines. :)

bosse 3y ago

My dad had a ton of 123 files on a secondary laptop with an ancient Windows version, just because these had important information that he still needed to look at from time to time. I was a bit worried about the resiliency of this setup, to put it mildly. Recently I realized that LibreOffice could convert Lotus files to ODF/ODS files, even in the CLI, so I made a very simple bash script to convert them all, and bulk uploaded them on my Nextcloud with Collabora, and gave my dad a login and a crash course. So now he can look up his files online, and they get properly backed up as part of my normal routine on the server. Big tip of the hat to data archeologists like OP and the LibreOffice contributors.

Tijdreiziger 3y ago
Now I'm pretty curious what kind of files they are, that they're so old yet still important?
- bosse 3y ago
  I assume it's letters to friends and family, some work journals, investment spreadsheets, things like that.

mikae1 3y ago

> He had kept tape backups from old BBS systems, and was able to recover a warez copy of the SDK – unbelievable! It actually worked, I was able to build a few sample plugins! Why History Needs Software Piracy[1] [1] https://www.technologizer.com/2012/01/23/why-history-needs-software-piracy/ https://www.technologizer.com/2012/01/23/why-history-needs-s...

seanp2k2 3y ago
I was just thinking about trying to create an archive of all the manuals, firmware updates, drivers, and any software utilities for current synthesizers, eurorack and otherwise, since they’re actually hardware that will still be around in a few decades. I already keep copies of all this stuff for gear I own, organized by manufacturer in my personal cloud storage drive, but it seems like it would be a public benefit for the community to have something centralized and more importantly long-lived. I was thinking about how to potentially have some kind of yearly distribution of such an archive, maybe have some type of archival blu-ray that people could pay for a physical copy of that would hopefully last 100 years, then the odds of /someone/ out there having a copy of that last esoteric firmware .bin that you need to save your corrupted firmware on your ARM-based DSP eurorack module should approach 1.
- Tijdreiziger 3y ago
  Uploading to archive.org should work.
  - KETHERCORTEX 3y ago
    While archive.org still exists.

layer8 3y ago

Previous discussion (83 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968

dang 3y ago

Related: Lotus 1-2-3 for Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35807639 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35807639 - May 2023 (73 comments) Lotus 1-2-3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35872758 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35872758 - May 2023 (117 comments) Lotus 1-2-3 For Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31455968 - May 2022 (83 comments) Lotus 1-2-3 arbitrary resolution - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26316637 - March 2021 (123 comments)

lproven 3y ago

My article about it from the time (18mth ago) in which I try to describe some of the history, relevance, technology etc. https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/25/lotus_123_for_linux_appears/ https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/25/lotus_123_for_linux_a...

blackbit 3y ago

Sadly, Lotus 1-2-3/M (The mainframe version of it, for VM and MVS) seems to be lost forever.

wlindley 3y ago

I really wish someone could resuscitate Javelin (it "Understands the Arrow of Time" to quote the old ads). Where you can create a variable and define its time period: is it a monthly value, a daily value, a quarterly value, and so on -- and then simply chart, compare, add or subtract values without having to jump through hoops or manually try and push values into groupings. Javelin was the 1984 PC Magazine product of the year but there doesn't seem to have been anything since that works that way.