Apache OpenOffice (AOO) Bugzilla – Issue 22662
Improv style multiple dimensions
Last modified: 2013-02-07 22:32:47 UTC
A long time ago, I used visi-calc, and later 1-2-3. THat was early 80's. About 10 years ago, I was re-introduced to modern spreadsheets with Improv, bundled with my NextStation 2.x system. If you don't know, Improv did away with the concepts of exactly 2 dimensions, labeled X and Y; one sheet; using multiple areas of a sheet for different purposes. Instead, you had up from 1 to 8 dimensions, re-arrangable in three display axises. A given cell was named by all of the dimensions. A file consisted of multiple sheets of information, each sheet used for a single purpose, and zero or more displays, that don't actually have inputs, but just display data from different sections of different sheets. Formulas did not exist in the cells, but were per-sheet. As a brief example, a checkbook register could be defined by BalanceForward[This] = EndingBalance[Prev] EndingBalance[This] = BalanceForward[This]+Deposit[This]-Debit[This] Refinements could handled cleared/not cleared, etc. The formulas did not have to be repeated for each row. Multiple dimensions? Well, instead of having just a single "date", you might have "Year", "Month", and "Day" -- and then, at graphing time, re-arrange things so that you were looking at a single plot over time, or how the monthly cycles ran (how every january compared to other januaries), or the dailies (how the first of each month compared). Or, you might have dimensions of "Team", "Position", "Period". Or ... How does this compare to "Modern" open office? Well, ... Open office assumes that the top row (the column names) is always called A, B, C, etc. This means that row #1 has to have data labels. Suddenly, Row #1 is different from every other row. You can't actually give the columns titles; you have to have special case rows that don't behave like other rows. Open Office requires that formulas be duplicated all over the place. And, it assumes that the spreadsheet is "Infinite" -- as you scroll around, new cells appear by magic in the display. But these new cells don't contain the formulas until you manually copy them in. You can't even make a template row, and even if you could, different areas would have different templates. Open Office does have multiple sheets, so you could just have each sheet for a single purpose. However, I haven't (yet) seen a way to generate a "summary" sheet with data from each of a bunch of input/calculation sheets. I'd like to see this sort of functionality in OO spreadsheet. Michael [My inbox is spam flooded. If you need to reach me about this, use 805, 640, 1195.]
Hi Bettina, a bit complicated for most users, but anyway it's your decission. Frank
OpenOffice.org Issue Tracker - Feedback Request. The Issue you raised has the status 'New' pending further action, but has not been updated within the last 4 years. Please consider re-testing with one of the latest versions of OOo, as the problem(s) may have already been addressed. Either use the recent stable version: http://download.openoffice.org/index.html or consider trying the new OOo 3 BETA (still in testing): http://download.openoffice.org/3.0beta/ Please report back the outcome so this Issue may be Closed or Progressed as necessary - otherwise it may be Resolved as Invalid in the future. You may also wish to search for (and note) any duplicates of this Issue that may have advanced further by checking the Issue Tracker: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/query.cgi Many thanks, Andrew Cleaning-up and Closing old Issues as part of: ~ The Grand Bug Squash, pre v3 ~ http://marketing.openoffice.org/3.0/announcementbeta.html
To grep the issues easier via "requirements" I put the issues currently lying on my owner to the owner "requirements".