Talk:Lotus 1-2-3/Archives/2013

Technical features muddle

The Technical Features section is incredibly muddled -- it reads like it the stream of conciousness by whoever wrote "The Twin", a 1-2-3 clone. I nominate it as the first section to get extensive cleanup :-) --Trixter 17:20, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Loyalty to OS/2?

I worked for Lotus during the time of the transition from DOS to Windows. Lotus was not an IBM subsidiary at that time. The idea that V1 of 1-2-3 for Windows was slow to market because Lotus preferred OS/2 is just not true. It is true however that V1 was a "screen scrape" of the then-current DOS verion. V1 of 1-2-3 for Windows was a disaster. Subsequent releases were much better.

This is not true, 1-2-3 for Windows was absolutely not delivered because of the focus on OS/2 with 1-2-3/G (shipped as 1-2-3 for OS/2) developed as the critical product. Manzi believed applications would drive the success of the platform and with 1-2-3 and Wordperfect (partnered with Lotus in delivering on OS/2) OS/2 would win making 1-2-3 for Windows moot. The release of Windows 3.0 (and really 3.1) proved that Windows would be the dominant platform and started a mad scramble at Lotus to deliver on Windows. A developer (I won't name him) sold Frank King (then SVP of Development and former IBMer) on the idea of using 1-2-3 R3 (the DOS product) as the engine for 1-2-3/W and presenting through Windows. The team killed themselves shipping it, after having just gone through heck shipping 1-2-3 3.1 but the product was not good (disaster is accurate). The next versions were much better and ultimately better than Excel (biased opinion) but it was too late. Southshore123 22:27, 11 September 2007 (UTC)southshore123

Suggestion

Need to reword the "writing video" part. It could confuse some people. Perhaps "writing directly to the display hardware bypassing the slower DOS routines"... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Andreas Toth (talk • contribs) 22:30, 21 January 2007 (UTC).

I did this just to get rid of "due to" in the sentence. Scott1329m 14:59, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Lotus 123 compatible serial dates?

Are gradually disappearing from the world, but lotus 123 compatible date calculations are still available on some platforms.

Advantages over Excel

The "Decline" section reads as follows: "Current releases of 1-2-3 still have advantages over Excel such as database connectivity; however, lack of interest and support by IBM has led to its decline."

I'm a little confused here.. maybe it's because I've never used 1-2-3, but I connect to databases all the time in Excel 2003. Perhaps someone in the know could illuminate the meaning behind this, or clarify this vague description of how 1-2-3's "database connectivity" is superior to that of Excel's.

Stylo101 (talk) 02:58, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

Lotus created the idea of standard connectivity from desktop applications with technology first called Blueprint. Peter Harris received a patent for this work. ODBC I believe is derivative of this idea and Microsoft made it the platform standard. At this time, Excel offers everything 1-2-3 did. Southshore123 (talk) 14:46, 20 April 2010 (UTC)

Menu discussion

Maybe a trivial detail, but early versions of Excel allowed a user to mimic 123 menu actions exactly (ie slash file erase, etc). I normally wouldn't favor inclusion of minute details, but since there are sections dealing specifically with both the menu lawsuits and the Excel competition it may be worth a mention. I do not have a source at this time, other than my memory.  :) //Blaxthos ( t / c ) 18:02, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Freely available wk4, wk3 File viewer, converter and editors

Removed this section. It is unsourced, and not very encyclopedic. --Hinata talk 18:40, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

"Because all of a spreadsheet needs to be resident in memory,"

"Because all of a spreadsheet needs to be resident in memory," Not really Boeing calc was swapping on drive. But it was very slow... http://www.boeingcalc.com/ Ericd (talk) 20:45, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

It was slow. Ericd (talk) 03:39, 25 February 2013 (UTC)