Spreadsheet 2000

Spreadsheet 2000 was a spreadsheet program for Apple Macintosh computers, published by Casady & Greene, a distributor of many "smaller" Mac releases. It appears to have seen little in terms of sales, and was withdrawn from the market after only a short time (ironically before the year 2000). Originally known as Let's Keep It Simple Spreadsheet, officially abbreviated Let's KISS, the product was renamed Spreadsheet 2000 for its 2.0 release.

Spreadsheet 2000, S2K for short, featured a unique way of building complex spreadsheets from a number of simpler ones containing only input or output data. This contrasts with the traditional spreadsheet model, where inputs, calculations and outputs are all placed into a single sheet and cannot be easily differentiated. For instance, if one wants to add two columns of three numbers, under a normal spreadsheet one would type the two sets of values into columns, say A and B, and then into C type the formula =A1+B1, which would appear on-screen as the results. The formula is then copied into the other cells in C. A user looking at the sheet would simply see three columns of numbers, and has no way to differentiate which values are the inputs and which the outputs.

Under SS2000 the same task is separated out to make it easier to understand. The user would first create two separate "sheetlettes" containing one column each, type the input numbers into them, and then connect the two together with the addition function, represented by an icon. The addition icon also has an output connector, and when this is connected to a third sheetlette, the results of the addition appear there automatically. The user could also connect the output to a sheetlette containing a single cell, in which case the addition function would sum the all of the cells and display the single result.

Since every step of a calculation was represented by input and output sheetlettes as well as the operator icons, SS2000 worksheets could become cluttered. In order to address this, whole groups of sheets and icons could be selected and collapsed into a "compound operator". From that point on the operator worked just like one of SS2000's built-in functions, allowing the user to connect inputs and outputs to it as normal.

The whole idea of SS2000 was to simplify the construction of simple spreadsheets. While it met that goal, the same features made more complex spreadsheets difficult to work with. For instance, trying to debug a complex formula in Excel simply requires the user to click on the cell and read the formula. The same task in SS2000 may be difficult, the formula filling several pages, or alternately being built several layers deep (compounds of compounds) so that there "is" no single view of the formula. Additionally SS2000's own set of built-in functions was rather limited.

SS2000 is also interesting for another reason; it was written entirely in Prograph. It appears to be one of a very few commercial programs that used this language/development system.

References

* [http://web.archive.org/web/20070310153241/http://www.hmug.org/Reviews/Spreadsheets/ Is there life beyond Excel?]
* [http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.13/13.04/Spreadsheet2000/index.html MacTech article by L.K.I.S.S. 2.0 designer]

ee Also

*Lotus Improv