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I've noticed that none of the FOSS spreadsheets do as well with some things as Excel does. For example if I put 1, 2, 4, 8 and I highlight that and drag it to

I've noticed that none of the FOSS spreadsheets do as well with some things as Excel does. For example if I put 1, 2, 4, 8 and I highlight that and drag it to continue the series I get different results. Excel gets it right and provides 16, 32, 64, etc LibreOffice provides 2, 3, 5, 9, etc OpenOffice doesn't do any better. I haven't tried gnumeric in the last 10 years so I can't remember what it does but I'm not optimistic. There are a lot of these kinds of things where Excel really has polish and the others don't and probably never will because the code to make it work right is excruciatingly boring to write.

aw3c2 12y ago
"Gets it right" is incredibly subjective, you cannot really expect a spreadsheet to run some number series analysis to see if there is some logic behind numbers except for some trivial cases (this one might be one, but that's debatable). gnumeric does simply replicate the series, you get 1, 2, 4, 8, 1, 2, 4, 8, 1, etc. It does offer a tool to fill series though.
- c0nsumer 12y ago
  It is subjective, but one of the things that normal users have come to like about Excel is that it does things that they would expect... Such as the number series incrementing which msandford described.
- jackmaney 12y ago
  Correct. There are uncountably many sequences whose first four terms are 1, 2, 4, and 8.
- schoen 12y ago
  Although I think of the powers of two as the natural completion, OEIS finds about 1600 sequences that start 1, 2, 4, 8, and are of some mathematical or cultural interest. http://oeis.org/search?q=1%2C2%2C4%2C8&sort=&language=&go=Search http://oeis.org/search?q=1%2C2%2C4%2C8&sort=&language=&go=Se...
davidgerard 12y ago
This is a pretty obscure YMMV, you must admit ... full quirk-compatibility is an iterative process. What it'll take for LO Calc to compete with MSO is someone wanting to knock Excel off its perch and spend money on the drudge work. LO finally has decent data structures in Calc and the GPU calculation, now there's all the drudge to do to literally beat the best spreadsheet available. If you got the sort of serious spreadsheet that takes Excel 24 hours to run, and Calc ran it in 20 hours, people would pay any amount of money for such a thing. (I think Excel is the hook, because it's the one bit of MSO that the people who sign the cheques use personally. Maybe Powerpoint too.) As a word processor, Writer is every bit as good as MS Word, though of course slightly different. DOCX compatibility is improving noticeably every release; I haven't had any problems myself in several years. Compatibility quirks are important to someone when they bite them, but look at Google Docs - it's hugely popular (basically for non-sucky email) even though its word processor and spreadsheet are terrible. We use GApps in the day job and I keep LO to hand for when I need something not terrible. Or that offers non-terrible DOCX rendering. So I think what LO needs is something killer. Not sure what though.
- VLM 12y ago
  "even though its word processor and spreadsheet are terrible." How so? They seem extremely productive and reliable for the org I volunteer at as treasurer. I've never seen a financial report with an incorrect addition, or hear anyone complain about the word processor. My kids use google apps at school for things like writing essays and homework submission. Again, "just works".
  - davidgerard 12y ago
    Yeah, again it's a YMMV. GDocs' .docx rendering is dismally awful compared to LO, and using LO to talk to .docx is my main compatibility point. What I really want is LO to read/write to Google Drive transparently, but that's still an experimental feature (though it works well in TDF builds, but only for password authentication, not for two-factor). Again, it awaits someone spending money on it.
  - jtheory 12y ago
rmxt 12y ago
Dragging down on "1, 2, 4, 8" in Excel 2007 gives me "9.5, 11.8, 14.1, 16.4, 18.7".... but maybe newer versions have gotten better.
- jackmaney 12y ago
  Out of curiosity, I just tried the same thing on Excel for Mac 2011, and got the same results.
  - msandford 12y ago
    Maybe I'm remembering this wrong, but I seem to remember Excel doing some intuitive series extensions and both LibreOffice and OpenOffice not doing things that I would have found as intuitive. They're probably not unreasonable fall-back strategies if something isn't strictly linear, but just because I understand why the programmer might have done that doesn't mean it makes sense in general.
  - MrRogers 12y ago
    Excel 2010 for Windows also produced the same results.

aw3c2 12y ago

"Gets it right" is incredibly subjective, you cannot really expect a spreadsheet to run some number series analysis to see if there is some logic behind numbers except for some trivial cases (this one might be one, but that's debatable). gnumeric does simply replicate the series, you get 1, 2, 4, 8, 1, 2, 4, 8, 1, etc. It does offer a tool to fill series though.

c0nsumer 12y ago
It is subjective, but one of the things that normal users have come to like about Excel is that it does things that they would expect... Such as the number series incrementing which msandford described.
jackmaney 12y ago
Correct. There are uncountably many sequences whose first four terms are 1, 2, 4, and 8.
schoen 12y ago
Although I think of the powers of two as the natural completion, OEIS finds about 1600 sequences that start 1, 2, 4, 8, and are of some mathematical or cultural interest. http://oeis.org/search?q=1%2C2%2C4%2C8&sort=&language=&go=Search http://oeis.org/search?q=1%2C2%2C4%2C8&sort=&language=&go=Se...

davidgerard 12y ago

This is a pretty obscure YMMV, you must admit ... full quirk-compatibility is an iterative process. What it'll take for LO Calc to compete with MSO is someone wanting to knock Excel off its perch and spend money on the drudge work. LO finally has decent data structures in Calc and the GPU calculation, now there's all the drudge to do to literally beat the best spreadsheet available. If you got the sort of serious spreadsheet that takes Excel 24 hours to run, and Calc ran it in 20 hours, people would pay any amount of money for such a thing. (I think Excel is the hook, because it's the one bit of MSO that the people who sign the cheques use personally. Maybe Powerpoint too.) As a word processor, Writer is every bit as good as MS Word, though of course slightly different. DOCX compatibility is improving noticeably every release; I haven't had any problems myself in several years. Compatibility quirks are important to someone when they bite them, but look at Google Docs - it's hugely popular (basically for non-sucky email) even though its word processor and spreadsheet are terrible. We use GApps in the day job and I keep LO to hand for when I need something not terrible. Or that offers non-terrible DOCX rendering. So I think what LO needs is something killer. Not sure what though.

VLM 12y ago
"even though its word processor and spreadsheet are terrible." How so? They seem extremely productive and reliable for the org I volunteer at as treasurer. I've never seen a financial report with an incorrect addition, or hear anyone complain about the word processor. My kids use google apps at school for things like writing essays and homework submission. Again, "just works".
- davidgerard 12y ago
  Yeah, again it's a YMMV. GDocs' .docx rendering is dismally awful compared to LO, and using LO to talk to .docx is my main compatibility point. What I really want is LO to read/write to Google Drive transparently, but that's still an experimental feature (though it works well in TDF builds, but only for password authentication, not for two-factor). Again, it awaits someone spending money on it.
- jtheory 12y ago

rmxt 12y ago

Dragging down on "1, 2, 4, 8" in Excel 2007 gives me "9.5, 11.8, 14.1, 16.4, 18.7".... but maybe newer versions have gotten better.

jackmaney 12y ago
Out of curiosity, I just tried the same thing on Excel for Mac 2011, and got the same results.
- msandford 12y ago
  Maybe I'm remembering this wrong, but I seem to remember Excel doing some intuitive series extensions and both LibreOffice and OpenOffice not doing things that I would have found as intuitive. They're probably not unreasonable fall-back strategies if something isn't strictly linear, but just because I understand why the programmer might have done that doesn't mean it makes sense in general.
- MrRogers 12y ago
  Excel 2010 for Windows also produced the same results.