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1. Really, really great looking graphs. Excel fails so hard at this it's unbelievable.

2. Easy navigation. The giant spreadsheet model is a very simple metaphor but sometimes I'd like a way to jump to different parts of it more easily.

3. Not be a spreadsheet. The one-big-sheet model might be better represented as a bunch of smaller tables floating in space with formulas interconnecting them. The letter/number convention has been around since the very first spreadsheet, surely we can do better.

4. Understand the internet. RSS, live stock quotes, etc. The address of a cell ought to be internet-compatible somehow, e.g. http://myspreadsheets.com/daily_report/C2 or http://myspreadsheet.com/daily_report/mynamedtable?x=Jan2007.... Google Docs does something like this, I think.

5. Allow scripting in a language that doesn't completely suck. Javascript or python would be good choices.




The newer excels have much much much better graphic capabilities


But do they adhere to principles preached by Edward Tufte and other data vis "gods?" (I don't know, I'm asking)


Amen to the end of one-big-sheet. Apple seems to have addressed that: http://www.apple.com/iwork/numbers/

(I don't know if their version is any good)


I'm still waiting for an Excel-like program that can make graphs as pretty as R.




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