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Does anyone know of any open-source spreadsheet software with the following features:

  1. Free, open source.
  2. No arbitrary limits on the amount of rows or columns you can have.
  3. Fast. Won't take forever to open huge files.
  4. Supports functional programming-like constructs in formulas (map, reduce, filter, etc.)

If no such program exists, does anyone think it's worth writing and would anyone use it if I did write it?

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No offense intended, but I sincerely doubt you could write something like this by yourself. If all the people at Microsoft and the people who have worked on Open Office can't make a product that fulfills all your requirements, I don't see how you can, by yourself. – musicfreak Dec 9 '09 at 5:40
They can, but there's almost no demand for it, therefore why waste money and time on something only a "Handful" people will, if ever, use it. – Don Salva Dec 9 '09 at 11:02
@musicfreak: Actually, MS Office and OpenOffice.org are loaded with a lot of features. If you strip off everything you don't need you end up with basically one datagrid...which isn't that hard to write. It always depends what features you need. – Bobby Dec 9 '09 at 11:49
@musicfreak: The idea is that, if I were to write something like this, I would strip out a lot of features I don't use. It would be mostly for hardcore number crunching. – dsimcha Dec 9 '09 at 13:20
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3 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

Nothing like that exists, because some of those features seem a little, er, conflicting.

For example,

  • opens or creates spreadsheet files with no limits on the number of rows or columns
  • won't take forever to open them.

Still, if you can do it, I'm sure it will be popular ... especially if it's compatible with the software everyone uses now.

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up vote 3 down vote

No arbitrary limits on the amount of rows or columns you can have

It's not possible simply because there's, at worst, a physical limit: the RAM. There's only so much you can fill your ram with.

Most spreadsheets have a limit at 65536 rows and columns, I've yet to come across a spreadsheet which utilizes all 65536 rows AND columns.

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By arbitrary I meant limited by design, not just the amount of available RAM. – dsimcha Dec 9 '09 at 13:21
But you'll always have limits by design, by hardware design. Like I said, there's only so much RAM you can fill it with rows and columns. – Don Salva Dec 9 '09 at 16:46
Right, but my point is that you would never be limited to an arbitrary amount smaller than the amount of available RAM you have. – dsimcha Dec 9 '09 at 16:53
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up vote 1 down vote

Writing your own just doesn't seem very realistic. Contributing effort to an existing OSS project seems more reasonable.

OpenOffice.org bug id 30215 is targeted for 3.3 (currently at 3.1). It is currently in the "STARTED" state and it looks like it has a patch attached. I also saw a page about hacking the current OOo source to get what you want.

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I've tried to hack OOo before, but the codebase is old, crufty and hard to work with. Also, the build system is so complicated that, even if I did get something working, I'm not sure I could build it. – dsimcha Dec 9 '09 at 13:21
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