Free and better alternatives to Windows applications

[Game_boy]

JHawkNH said:

kn said:
Ok, for those that are complaining about Open Office's calc program -- what do you use it for? I make pretty damn complex sheets with a lot of nested conditional "if" statements and other fairly complex calculations and the program works like a champ. Clearly Microsoft's Excel is the more polished version and, well, it's commercial.

If you have something specific that Calc won't do or fails at, please tell me what it is as I'm curious...

I have never used Calc before so here are a few of my questions:

1. Can you create macros in the Calc spreadsheets? ( and I am not talking about putting "=..." in a cell. I mean creating actually functions) And if so what language does it use?

2. How well can it comunicate with a database? Are there functions to have the spreadsheet automaticly pull data from a database and update the information when the sheet is opened?

1. Yes, OOo Basic (similar in functionality to VBA)

Sub ParaCount
'
' Count number of paragraphs in a text document
'
Dim Doc As Object, Enum As Object, Count As Long
Doc = ThisComponent
' Is this a text document?
If Not Doc.SupportsService("com.sun.star.text.TextDocument") Then
MsgBox "This macro must be run from a text document", 64, "Error"
Exit Sub
End If
Count=0
' Examine each component - paragraph or table?
Enum=Doc.Text.CreateEnumeration
While Enum.HasMoreElements
TextEl=Enum.NextElement
' Is the component a paragraph?
If TextEl.SupportsService("com.sun.star.text.Paragraph") Then
Count=Count+1
End If
Wend
'Display result
MsgBox Count, 0, "Paragraph Count"
End Sub

2. Don't know, but macros are OO.o wide so scripting ought to be able to do that.