Excel has been (and still is) one of the killer applications from Microsoft, which allowed the company to conquer its present market share. And it is a “killer” application because it kills concurrence: since it has been so popular for such a long time, there are not many alternative spreadsheet applications to choose from. Add to that the requirement to run something free on a Mac and you are basically restricted to OpenOffice and Gnumeric.
OpenOffice, and particularly its OS X native fork (NeoOffice), is full featured and works well. Unfortunately “full-featured” often rhymes with “bloated” and OO is not an exception. NeoOffice adds yet another layer between the core functionality and the display, to get native look and feel, which is good but adds some bloat. On the other hand, Gnumeric is small, efficient and very Excel compatible (which is a requirement these days, let’s face it). Its only drawback is that, unlike OpenOffice, there is no OS X port in development and it does not behave very much like you would expect from a Mac OS X application.
Thanks to the excellent Platypus script wrapper, I did an app bundle which would launch a Fink or MacPorts install of Gnumeric the Mac way. You can:
- double clic the Application icon to run it
- place it in your dock
- drop documents onto it
- quit it from the context menu in the dock
- associate Gnumeric with the file types it can open and get nice icons (judge for yourself from the screenshot below) – Icon design by Vinicus Depizzol for Tango.
Known issues
- Once a document is opened, new documents need to be opened from the File menu of Gnumeric. Dropping them on the application icon or double clicking them won’t open them since a Gnumeric instance is already running
Disclaimer
- This application bundle is provided as-is, without warranty that it won’t blow your computer up and so on… as usual.
- This application bundle is a wrapper, it won’t install Gnumeric for you. You need to install it yourself, from Fink or MacPorts
I installed gnumeric 1.8.1 via macports under os x 10.5 (Leopard) with some difficulties … found your gnumeric wrapper over Google, downloaded and installed it. Though it is version 1.7.9 it works fine with the 1.8.1 one, no problems, thanks a lot … PS Dont forget to mention, you have to start the X11.app first.
Actually you shouldn’t have to start X11 manually. I just forgot to update it for Leopard. Get the new version (from the same link) above, which works for all systems. I also updated the version number to make it specific to the wrapper rather than making it Gnumeric version number (it works with all versions of Gnumeric).
Great idea, although you should also probably mention that this is Intel-only, and doesn’t work on PPC. :(
Ooops sorry. I stripped down the PPC part of what is in my Applications folder and Platypus and the Gnumeric wrapper got caught in the way. I remade a new version which is universal. Try downloading it again.
I got the new version as you (JiHO) supposed on march 17 and yes indeed no need to start X11 manually. BTW I compiled gnumeric 1.8.2 from the sources (some dirty trick to manipulate the Portfile) which I can invoke without problems, thanks again.
I can’t make this work. The file I download is very small (452 KB) and when I start it, a gnumeric icon pops up for only a second and then nothing….
I have both fink and macports installed and the result is the same with and without X11 open and starting the app. from the Desktop and the applications folder. What am I missing?
I already did try with Fink and MacPorts but with no success – it took a looong time and I got some error messages. For MacPorts I used the exact line you suggest above, but how will your wrapper change be activated if I use this command? Do I have to put it some specific place? Sorry for being such a newbee – I’m completely new to Mac. I used to use Ubuntu where everything just installed on its own….
Ahh … I think I understand. This wrapper is just for starting Gnumeric once it is already installed, right? Any ideas why I can’t install Gnumeric with Fink or MacPorts? Sorry if it’s out-of-topic.
You should install gnumeric in Fink or MacPorts. This is just a wrapper. So:
sudo port install gnumericTo Peder,
after doing sudo port install gnumeric did you succeed with the installation? Otherwise the wrapper will not work, of course ;-) Which version you tried for installation? The last published one 1.8.1 has a few mistakes, because some files were not found (the download places had changed and nobody becoame aware of it :-( You have to do some correction by hand …
Works like a charm with gnumeric 1.8.2 from macports. Maururu! Tom
@peder: sorry it seems my comment feed is broken and I did not see your comments pass by. What happens when you start gnumeric from terminal (i.e. when you just type
gnumeric). What does:which gnumericoutputs?
Basically, for those wanting to know what happens when you start the app you can right click it, select “Show Package Contents”, navigate to Contents/Resources and open the file named “script” in a text editor. That’s all there is to it.
Other than that, you can also modify the file AppSettings.plist and change the key “OutputType” from “None” to “TextWindow” (without space). It will output some stuff there.
@JiHO and Erich (and other people having problems installing Gnumeric under OS X 10.5 Leopard to whom I hope this can be helpful).
Thanks for your comments guys and sorry for the late reply. I liked Gnumeric for Linux and wanted it for Mac but since I did not manage with Fink or Macports I decided to try out NeoOffice. Finally I have found that the NeoOffice spreadsheet should end with ‘it’ rather than ‘eet’ ;-) so I decided to give another go at porting. I tried out MacPorts since Fink does not have a binary for 10.5. Installation og MacPorts went fine except that the .profile file is not created and the port command cannot be accessed from anywhere. This is apparently a well known bug for 10.5 and will probably soon be fixed but untill then one can simply state the full path: “sudo /opt/local/bin/port”. Doing that I tried installing Gnumeric, but like last time I got _lots_ of errors. I tried installing again and noticed that I had fewer errors. Doing this a couple of times brought me to a steady state where I could see that there were some problems with python-installs (py25-*). I tried installing one of those files (py25-gtk) directly and got an error message with (py25-cairo). After sucesfully trying to install that directly I had another go at Gnumeric and it worked! Finally I got the wrapper and it now works like a charm. Thanks!
Thanks for updating this. Works great on my PPC now! Thanks again!
Thanks for this; it’s very helpful. I have a question about its inability to open dropped files after the program is already open — is this a limitation of Platypus, or something else?
Also, I noticed a few mistakes. In Info.plist, there is a key 10.3.9 with a value LSMinimumSystemVersion. I think the key and value are interchanged. Also, the CFBundleTypeTypeName (type description) for .xls files is misspelled as “Microsfot Excel File”.
Another question: I tried Platypus and made my own wrapper, but when I use the wrapper to open a file with spaces in its name, it doesn’t properly quote the filename. I use “$@” just like in your script. Your script opens files with spaces just fine though!
I tried changing the interpreter for the script (in Platypus) to bash instead of sh, and that fixed it, but it’s still mysterious because your script has sh set as its interpreter. So what’s special about yours that it correctly quotes “$@”?
Can you tell me how yo install it with macports? Ive never really used terminal and the intsructions to install this on a mac don’t seem to want to work for me.