Path: utzoo!utgpu!cunews!bnrgate!brtph3!brchh104!date '+%m/%d/%y %H:%M:%S'brchs1!bnr.ca!rice.edu!sun-spots-request
From: gnu@toad.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.sun
Subject: WingZ doesn't work well, even under SunView
Keywords: Software
Message-ID: <443@brchh104.bnr.ca>
Date: 26 Nov 90 17:30:00 GMT
Sender: news@brchh104.bnr.ca
Organization: Sun-Spots
Lines: 22
Approved: Sun-Spots@rice.edu
X-Original-Date: Sat, 10 Nov 90 18:35:27 -0800
X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 375, message 4
X-Note: Submissions: sun-spots@rice.edu, Admin: sun-spots-request@rice.edu

My company bought WingZ for handling our financial planning.  We have been
quite disappointed.  Not only does it not run under Open Windows 1.0 on a
SPARCstation-1 GX, SunOS 4.0.3c (it core dumps periodically), but even
when we take down the window system and run SunView (:-*), it's a lousy
spreadsheet.  Perhaps all spreadsheets are like this, but I couldn't
believe that there is no way in it to say 'this column of numbers should
come from the spreadsheet called "March", column 1, rows 1-50 every time I
open it' for example.  Building annual sheets involves copying all the
numbers by hand -- and they don't update when the originals update.  There
is some feature that purports to do this, but you have to laboriously open
up all twelve monthly spreadsheets on the screen and THEN open up the
annual one.  Haven't these guys heard of the file system?

The user interface is klunky in a number of other ways.  Perhaps this is a
state of the art spreadsheet, but in that case I think we need some
evolution in spreadsheet technology.  Perhaps it is just a hangover from
the DOS/Mac world where it is assumed that if anything gets done it is
because the user pushed a key or a mouse button.  But automation of
commonly done tasks is one reason we're all on Unix, and WingZ just
doesn't have that attitude.

	John Gilmore