This article is one year old
A long lost native Unix version of the killer PC spreadsheet has not only been rediscovered, but almost unbelievably, it’s been updated to create a native Linux version.
Lotus 1-2-3 was undoubtedly the only application that made the IBM PC a success, and it was introduced almost 40 years ago, on January 26, 1983. REG celebrated its 30th anniversary by activating it to Dosboxarray and we cried when IBM In spite of everything he killed him.
Today he has admirers, and one of them is Google Bugunter Tavis Ormandy, Zero Project. Ormandy explains how Lotus 1-2-3 natively carried to Linux here.
Ormandy has previously blogged about finding a DOS word-processor to run on Linux. As he put it:
I prefer to use terminal programs when possible, I am only more acquired in an XTERM. [. . . ] I am nostalgic for the two or a holdout software for a long time, I am a new user in 2020.
Many argue that DOS’s latest word processor, WordPerfect, and the latest edition of DOS 6. 2. This is what Ormandy works, under Dosemu2.
Given those subtle tastes, if one sought to execute a calculation sheet of two, then the old Lotus 1-2-3 of trust is the apparent option.
Ormandy has only run 1-2-3, however, he even evolved a new demo motif strength for the 3 1-2-3 edition, allowing him to take a rate of more than a window of 80 × 25-A abundant corporate in opposite engineering.
Lotus published a commercial development environment for 1-2-3 plugins, written in the Lotus Programming Language. In 1991, PC Magazine was impressed [PDF] by the range of addons. But unfortunately, the Lotus Add-in Toolkit for 1-2-3 (list price, $395) was long lost.
Until now.
In Ormandy’s search for the PLL compiler, he asked Scize, who maintains a page engaged with the “Wárez” scene from the long-standing newsletter. Not only did SCIZE have a copy of the Long Lotus Toolkit, however, he also had a copy of anything else that was lost in history: Lotus 1-2-3 for Unix ™.
Before MS-two of Seattle Computer Products, Microsoft presented its own Edition of Unix, called Xenix.
As told in this story, the co -founder of Mrs. The past owed Paul Allen:
It is vital to realize that MS-DOS is a component of a circle of relatives of operational formulas, etc. Offering the user a circle of operating formula capacities relatives means a trace of transparent migration from MS-two to Xenix.
With such a brilliant approval, several leaders’ PC programs were brought to Xenix, adding Microsoft Word, Wordperfect-Y Lotus 1-2-3. No one has been a good wonderful fortune and today there are few lines. Until now.
When 1-2-3 was released for UNIX in 1990, there were many competing variants of UNIX for x86 computers, all incompatible with each other. SCO Xenix The generalized maximum, then its successor, SCO Unix (largely the same operating formula, but with an AT core
The closest thing to compatibility between them was an ABI called the Intel Binary Compatibility Standard or iBCS. The only way to release a proprietary application for all of these Unixes at once was to release a partially compiled object file, which could then be linked to create a binary for the specific x86 Unix variant you had.
What Ormandy controlled to build a tool to convert this old Coff-Format object record into the ELF de Linux format. It is called Coffsyrup tool (and you can take a look here). The result is 1-2-3 for UNIX, connected to GLIBC, that Google’s guru calls 123f.
In other words, the original Lotus 1-2-3 1990 for X86 Unix, which operates in the modern emulation X86, emulation.
Lotus called the edits “outings. ” The maximum used maximum used edition of the original 1-2-3 meeting language editions for DOS R2. 01, which advanced the reminiscence control and macro of the application, as well as other desirable features.
But reminiscence has remained a problem, which leads to edition 3 of 1-2-3.
1-2-3 r3 was very different from 1-2-3 r2. Release 3 was rewritten in C, supported 3D worksheets, and could handle multiple files in memory at once. It was one of the first widely used DOS apps to run in the 80286 processor’s protected mode, using Rational Systems’ DOS/16M DOS extender, and stored data in extended memory (XMS), while release 2.x used expanded memory (EMS).
Getting 1-2-3 r3 to run alongside anything else that required a DOS extender – such as Windows 3 – could be a nightmare.
All the following versions of the series 2. x were after 1-2-3 R3.
Together with the war after years of handling the two of the war, its correspondent suspects that the edition of great memory based on C is the main explanation of why the application was made so that OSE is made as Xenix. ® of Microsoft.
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