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98-426: Although its concepts have 'names' and definitions in various natural languages, Gellish is a natural-language -independent formal language . Any natural language variant, such as Gellish Formal English is a controlled natural language . Information and knowledge can be expressed in such a way that it is computer-interpretable, as well as system-independent and natural language independent. Each natural language variant

196-668: A database management system. Programs within a suite use similar commands for similar functions. Usually, sharing data between the components is easier than with a non-integrated collection of functionally equivalent programs. This was particularly an advantage at a time when many personal computer systems used text-mode displays and commands instead of a graphical user interface . Humans have organized data into tables , that is, grids of columns and rows, since ancient times. The Babylonians used clay tablets to store data as far back as 1800 BCE. Other examples can be found in book-keeping ledgers and astronomical records. Since at least 1906

294-441: A spoken language or a sign language . Natural languages are distinguished from constructed and formal languages such as those used to program computers or to study logic . Natural language can be broadly defined as different from All varieties of world languages are natural languages, including those that are associated with linguistic prescriptivism or language regulation . ( Nonstandard dialects can be viewed as

392-791: A wild type in comparison with standard languages .) An official language with a regulating academy such as Standard French , overseen by the Académie Française , is classified as a natural language (e.g. in the field of natural language processing ), as its prescriptive aspects do not make it constructed enough to be a constructed language or controlled enough to be a controlled natural language . Controlled natural languages are subsets of natural languages whose grammars and dictionaries have been restricted in order to reduce ambiguity and complexity. This may be accomplished by decreasing usage of superlative or adverbial forms, or irregular verbs . Typical purposes for developing and implementing

490-526: A workbook . A workbook is physically represented by a file containing all the data for the book, the sheets, and the cells with the sheets. Worksheets are normally represented by tabs that flip between pages, each one containing one of the sheets, although Numbers changes this model significantly. Cells in a multi-sheet book add the sheet name to their reference, for instance, "Sheet 1!C10". Some systems extend this syntax to allow cell references to different workbooks. Users interact with sheets primarily through

588-403: A 3rd party for authentication or maintenance. Collabora Online runs LibreOffice kit at its core, which grew from StarOffice that was launched 39 years ago in 1985. Notable current spreadsheet software: Discontinued spreadsheet software: Several companies have attempted to break into the spreadsheet market with programs based on very different paradigms. Lotus introduced what is likely

686-536: A Gellish database in another language (say Chinese), whereas the answer can be presented in English. Information models can be distinguished in two main categories: All these categories of models can include drawings and other documents as well as 3D shape information (the core of 3D models). They all can be expressed and integrated in Gellish. The classification relation between individual things and kinds of things makes

784-459: A Gellish dictionary, or the definition of any concept should be ad hoc within the collection of Gellish expressions. Knowledge bases can be created by using the Gellish language and its concept definitions in a Gellish Dictionary. Example applications of a Gellish dictionary are usage as a source of classes for classification of equipment, documents, etc., or as standard terminology ( metadata ) or to harmonize data in various computer systems, or as

882-406: A Naming Table: The inverse indicator is only relevant when phrases are used to denote relation types, because each standard relation type is denoted by at least one standard phrase as well as at least one standard inverse phrase. For example, the phrase <is a part of> has as inverse phrase <has as part>. Both phrases denote the same kind of relation (a composition relation). However, when

980-701: A SQL-based database or otherwise, as a STEPfile (according to ISO 10303 -21), or as a simple spreadsheet table, as in Excel, such as the Gellish Dictionary itself. Gellish database tables can also be described in an equivalent form using RDF / Notation3 or XML . A representation of “Gellish in XML” is defined in a standard XML Schema . An XML file with data according to that XML Schema is recommended to have as file extension GML, whereas GMZ stands for “Gellish in XML zipped”. One of

1078-464: A category contains the same standard columns, or of a subset of the standard ones. This provides standard interfaces for exchange of data between application systems. The content of data tables may also include constraints and requirements ( data models ) that specify the kind of data that should and may be provided for particular applications. Such requirements models make dedicated database designs superfluous. The Gellish Data Tables can be used as part of

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1176-404: A central database or can form distributed databases, but tables can also be exchanged in data exchange files or as body of Gellish Messages. A Naming Table relates terms in a language and language community ('speech community') to a unique identifier. This enables the unambiguous use of synonyms, abbreviations and codes as well as homonyms in multiple languages. The following table is an example of

1274-466: A compatible web browser, it can be used online and offline (with or without internet connectivity). Google Sheets originated from a web-based spreadsheet application XL2Web developed by 2Web Technologies , combined with DocVerse which enabled multiple-user online collaboration of Office documents. In 2016 Collabora Online Calc was launched, notable in that the web based spreadsheet could be hosted and integrated into any environment without dependency on

1372-418: A controlled natural language are to aid understanding by non-native speakers or to ease computer processing. An example of a widely-used controlled natural language is Simplified Technical English , which was originally developed for aerospace and avionics industry manuals. Being constructed, International auxiliary languages such as Esperanto and Interlingua are not considered natural languages, with

1470-725: A fact that expresses that something shall be the case in a particular context or that something is by definition always the case. These semantic differences cause that the various categories of information models require their own subsets of standard relation types. Therefore Gellish makes a distinction between the following categories of relation types: Gellish is typically expressed in the form of Gellish Data Tables. There are three categories of Data Tables: A Gellish Database typically consists of one or more Naming Tables and one or more Fact Tables together. Data Tables and Fact Tables are one-to-one equivalent to Message Tables. All table columns are standardised, so that each Gellish data table of

1568-436: A manual request to recalculate since the recalculation of large or complex spreadsheets often reduced data entry speed. Many modern spreadsheets still retain this option. Recalculation generally requires that there are no circular dependencies in a spreadsheet. A dependency graph is a graph that has a vertex for each object to be updated, and an edge connecting two objects whenever one of them needs to be updated earlier than

1666-604: A number of auxiliary facts about the main fact. Examples of auxiliary facts are author, date, status, etc. To enable an unambiguous interpretation, Gellish includes the definition of a large number (more than 650) of standard relation types that determine the rich semantic expression capability of the language. In principle, for every natural language there is a Gellish variant that is specific for that language. For example, Gellish Dutch (Gellish Nederlands), Gellish Italian , Gellish English , Gellish Russian, etc. Gellish does not invent its own terminology, such as Esperanto , but uses

1764-474: A pre-programmed function in a formula. Spreadsheet programs also provide conditional expressions, functions to convert between text and numbers, and functions that operate on strings of text. Spreadsheets have replaced paper-based systems throughout the business world. Although they were first developed for accounting or bookkeeping tasks, they now are used extensively in any context where tabular lists are built, sorted, and shared. LANPAR, available in 1969,

1862-553: A relatively short period of time through the development of a pidgin , which is not considered a language, into a stable creole language . A creole such as Haitian Creole has its own grammar, vocabulary and literature. It is spoken by over 10 million people worldwide and is one of the two official languages of the Republic of Haiti . As of 1996, there were 350 attested families with one or more native speakers of Esperanto . Latino sine flexione , another international auxiliary language,

1960-473: A subtype of⟩ , ⟨is classified as a⟩ , ⟨has as aspect⟩ , ⟨is quantified as⟩ , ⟨can be a performer of a⟩ , ⟨shall have as part a⟩ , etc. Such standard relation types and concept definitions enable a Gellish-powered software to correctly and unambiguously interpret Gellish expressions. Gellish expressions may be expressed in any suitable format, such as SQL or RDF or OWL or even in

2058-440: A thesaurus or taxonomy in a search engine . Gellish enables automatic translation, and enables the use of synonyms, abbreviations and codes as well as homonyms, due to the use of a unique natural language independent identifier (UID) for every concept. For example, 130206 (pump) and 1225 (is classified as a). This ensures that concepts are identified in a natural language independent way. Therefore, various Gellish Dictionaries use

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2156-763: A value based on the contents of other cells. The term spreadsheet may also refer to one such electronic document. Spreadsheet users can adjust any stored value and observe the effects on calculated values. This makes the spreadsheet useful for "what-if" analysis since many cases can be rapidly investigated without manual recalculation. Modern spreadsheet software can have multiple interacting sheets and can display data either as text and numerals or in graphical form. Besides performing basic arithmetic and mathematical functions , modern spreadsheets provide built-in functions for common financial accountancy and statistical operations. Such calculations as net present value or standard deviation can be applied to tabular data with

2254-576: A variant used in VisiCalc and known as "A1 notation". Additionally, spreadsheets have the concept of a range , a group of cells, normally contiguous. For instance, one can refer to the first ten cells in the first column with the range "A1:A10". LANPAR innovated forward referencing/natural order calculation which didn't re-appear until Lotus 123 and Microsoft's MultiPlan Version 2. In modern spreadsheet applications, several spreadsheets, often known as worksheets or simply sheets , are gathered together to form

2352-416: A version that ran on IBM mainframes was introduced under the name AutoTab . ( National CSS offered a similar product, CSSTAB, which had a moderate timesharing user base by the early 1970s. A major application was opinion research tabulation.) AutoPlan/AutoTab was not a WYSIWYG interactive spreadsheet program, it was a simple scripting language for spreadsheets. The user defined the names and labels for

2450-441: Is a language that includes a grammar as well as a dictionary-taxonomy and ontology. Gellish is meant to be used by computer system developers as well as by end-users and can also be used by ontology developers when they want to extend the Gellish ontology or build their own domain ontology. Gellish does not make a distinction between a meta-language and a user language; the concepts from both 'worlds' are integrated in one language. So,

2548-402: Is a structured subset of that natural language and is suitable for information modeling and knowledge representation in that particular language. All expressions, concepts and individual things are represented in Gellish by (numeric) unique identifiers (Gellish UID's). This enables software to translate expressions from one formal natural language to any other formal natural languages. Gellish

2646-485: Is accompanied by a number of auxiliary facts that provide additional information relevant for the main facts. Examples of auxiliary facts are: the intention, status, author, creation date, etc. A Gellish Fact Table consists of columns for the main fact and a number of columns for auxiliary facts. The auxiliary facts enable to specify things such as roles, cardinalities, validity contexts, units of measure, date of latest change, author, references, etcetera.: The columns for

2744-590: Is also intended for the expression of knowledge and requirements about such things. The definition of Gellish can be derived from the definition of Gellish Formal English by considering 'expressions' as relations between the Unique Identifiers only. The definition of Gellish Formal English is provided in the Gellish English Dictionary-Taxonomy , which is a large ' smart dictionary ' of concepts with relations between those concepts (earlier it

2842-489: Is an integration and extension of the concepts that are defined in both standards. The main difference with both ISO standards is that Gellish is easier to implement and has more (precise) semantic expression capabilities and is suitable to express queries and answers as well. The specific philosophy of spatio-temporal parts that is used in ISO 15926 to represent discrete time periods to represent time can also be used in Gellish, however

2940-531: Is available. For example, the phrase ⟨is classified as a⟩ and the phrase ⟨ist klassifiziert als⟩ are denotations of the same UID 1225. For example, a computer can automatically express the second line in the above example in German as follows: Questions (queries) can be expressed as well. Queries are facilitated through standardized terms such as what, which, where and when. They can be used in combination with reserved UID's for unknowns in

3038-464: Is indistinguishable from a batch compiler with added input data, producing an output report, i.e. , a 4GL or conventional, non-interactive, batch computer program. However, this concept of an electronic spreadsheet was outlined in the 1961 paper "Budgeting Models and System Simulation" by Richard Mattessich . The subsequent work by Mattessich (1964a, Chpt. 9, Accounting and Analytical Methods ) and its companion volume, Mattessich (1964b, Simulation of

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3136-446: Is intended for the expression of facts (statements), queries, answers, etc. For example, for the complete and unambiguous specification of business processes, products, facilities and physical processes; for information about their purchasing, fabrication, installation, operation and maintenance; and for the exchange of such information between systems, although in a system-independent, computer-interpretable and language-independent way. It

3234-448: Is no longer widely spoken. Spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation , organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets . The program operates on data entered in cells of a table. Each cell may contain either numeric or text data, or the results of formulas that automatically calculate and display

3332-550: Is simpler but it makes expressions ambiguous and makes data integration and automated translation significantly more complicated. OWL can be regarded as an upper ontology that consists of 54 'language constructs' (constructors or concepts). The upper ontology part of Gellish currently consists of more than 1500 concepts of which about 650 are standard relation types. In addition to that the Gellish Dictionary-Taxonomy contains more than 40,000 concepts. This indicates

3430-511: Is usually referenced by its column and row (C2 would represent the cell containing the value 30 in the example table below). Usually rows, representing the dependent variables , are referenced in decimal notation starting from 1, while columns representing the independent variables use 26-adic bijective numeration using the letters A-Z as numerals. Its physical size can usually be tailored to its content by dragging its height or width at box intersections (or for entire columns or rows by dragging

3528-426: The personal computer from a hobby for computer enthusiasts into a business tool. VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet that combined many of the essential features of modern spreadsheet applications, such as a WYSIWYG interactive user interface, automatic recalculation, status and formula lines, range copying with relative and absolute references, and formula building by selecting referenced cells. Unaware of LANPAR at

3626-462: The professor and manipulate it to represent it and show ratios etc. In 1964, a book entitled Business Computer Language was written by Kimball, Stoffells and Walsh. Both the book and program were copyrighted in 1966 and years later that copyright was renewed. Applied Data Resources had a FORTRAN preprocessor called Empires. In the late 1960s, Xerox used BCL to develop a more sophisticated version for their timesharing system. A key invention in

3724-400: The relational structure of a database. Spreadsheets and databases are interoperable—sheets can be imported into databases to become tables within them, and database queries can be exported into spreadsheets for further analysis. A spreadsheet program is one of the main components of an office productivity suite , which usually also contains a word processor , a presentation program , and

3822-456: The semantic web . Gellish can be used in combination with OWL, or on its own. There are many similarities between the two languages, such as the use of unique identifiers (Gellish UIDs, OWL URIs ) but also important differences. The main differences are as follows: OWL is a metalanguage , including a basic grammar, but without a dictionary. OWL is meant to be used by computer system developers and ontology developers to create ontologies. Gellish

3920-611: The Apple II, this helped it grow in popularity. Lotus 1-2-3 was the leading spreadsheet for several years. Microsoft released the first version of Excel for the Apple Macintosh on September 30, 1985, and then ported it to Windows, with the first version being numbered 2.05 (to synchronize with the Macintosh version 2.2) and released in November 1987. Microsoft's Windows 3.x platforms of

4018-572: The Federal Circuit (CCPA), overturning the Patent Office in 1983 — establishing that "something does not cease to become patentable merely because the point of novelty is in an algorithm." However, in 1995 a federal district court ruled the patent unenforceable due to inequitable conduct by the inventors during the application process. The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld that decision in 1996. The actual software

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4116-509: The Firm through a Budget Computer Program ) applied computerized spreadsheets to accounting and budgeting systems (on mainframe computers programmed in FORTRAN IV ). These batch Spreadsheets dealt primarily with the addition or subtraction of entire columns or rows (of input variables), rather than individual cells . In 1962, this concept of the spreadsheet, called BCL for Business Computer Language,

4214-511: The Gellish Dictionary (Taxonomy) is used to create ISO 15926 -4. Gellish in RDF is being standardized as ISO 15926 -11. Natural language In neuropsychology , linguistics , and philosophy of language , a natural language or ordinary language is any language that occurs naturally in a human community by a process of use, repetition, and change without conscious planning or premeditation. It can take different forms, typically either

4312-521: The Gellish English dictionary contains concepts that are equivalent to the OWL concepts, but also contains the concepts from an ordinary English dictionary. OWL can be used to explicitly represent the meaning of terms in vocabularies and the relationships between those terms. In other words, it can be used for the definition of taxonomies or ontologies . The terms in such a vocabulary do not become part of

4410-434: The Gellish language. Therefore, Gellish English is a subset of natural English. Gellish makes a distinction between concepts and the various terms that are used as names (synonyms, abbreviations and translations) to refer to those concepts in different contexts and languages. Every concept is identified by a unique identifier that is natural-language-independent and can have many different terms in different languages to denote

4508-484: The OWL language. So OWL does not include definitions of the terms in a natural language, such as road, car, bolt or length. However, it can be used to define them and to build an ontology. The upper ontology part of Gellish can also be used to define terms and the relations between them. However, many of such natural language terms are already defined in the lower part of the Gellish dictionary-taxonomy itself. So in Gellish, terms such as road, car, bolt or length are part of

4606-457: The X and Y locations. X locations, the columns, are normally represented by letters, "A," "B," "C," etc., while rows are normally represented by numbers, 1, 2, 3, etc. A single cell can be referred to by addressing its row and column, "C10". This electronic concept of cell references was first introduced in LANPAR (Language for Programming Arrays at Random) (co-invented by Rene Pardo and Remy Landau) and

4704-438: The business plans that they were presenting to venture capitalists. They decided to save themselves a lot of effort and wrote a computer program that produced their tables for them. This program, originally conceived as a simple utility for their personal use, would turn out to be the first software product offered by the company that would become known as Capex Corporation . "AutoPlan" ran on GE's Time-sharing service; afterward,

4802-416: The cell itself. Alternatively, a value can be based on a formula (see below), which might perform a calculation, display the current date or time, or retrieve external data such as a stock quote or a database value. The Spreadsheet Value Rule Computer scientist Alan Kay used the term value rule to summarize a spreadsheet's operation: a cell's value relies solely on the formula the user has typed into

4900-404: The cell. The formula may rely on the value of other cells, but those cells are likewise restricted to user-entered data or formulas. There are no 'side effects' to calculating a formula: the only output is to display the calculated result inside its occupying cell. There is no natural mechanism for permanently modifying the contents of a cell unless the user manually modifies the cell's contents. In

4998-420: The cells. A given cell can hold data by simply entering it in, or a formula, which is normally created by preceding the text with an equals sign. Data might include the string of text hello world , the number 5 or the date 10-Sep-97 . A formula would begin with the equals sign, =5*3 , but this would normally be invisible because the display shows the result of the calculation, 15 in this case, not

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5096-436: The cells. Formulas say how to mechanically compute new values from existing values. Values are general numbers, but can also be pure text, dates, months, etc. Extensions of these concepts include logical spreadsheets. Various tools for programming sheets, visualizing data, remotely connecting sheets, displaying cells' dependencies, etc. are commonly provided. A "cell" can be thought of as a box for holding data . A single cell

5194-418: The column- or row-headers). An array of cells is called a sheet or worksheet . It is analogous to an array of variables in a conventional computer program (although certain unchanging values, once entered, could be considered, by the same analogy, constants ). In most implementations, many worksheets may be located within a single spreadsheet. A worksheet is simply a subset of the spreadsheet divided for

5292-407: The concept. This enables automatic translation between different natural language versions of Gellish. In OWL, the various terms in different languages and the synonyms are in principle different concepts that need to be declared to be the same by explicit equivalence relations (unless the alternatives are expressed in terms of the alternative label annotation properties). On one hand, the OWL approach

5390-426: The context of programming languages, this yields a limited form of first-order functional programming . A standard of spreadsheets since the 1980s, this optional feature eliminates the need to manually request the spreadsheet program to recalculate values (nowadays typically the default option unless specifically 'switched off' for large spreadsheets, usually to improve performance). Some earlier spreadsheets required

5488-408: The definitions, knowledge and requirements about kinds of things available for the individual things. Furthermore, the subtype-supertype hierarchy in a Gellish Dictionary-Taxonomy implies that the knowledge and requirements that are specified for a kind of thing are inherited by all their subtypes. As a consequence, when somebody designs an individual item and classifies it by a particular kind, then all

5586-462: The development of electronic spreadsheets was made by Rene K. Pardo and Remy Landau, who filed in 1970 U.S. patent 4,398,249 on a spreadsheet automatic natural order calculation algorithm . While the patent was initially rejected by the patent office as being a purely mathematical invention, following 12 years of appeals, Pardo and Landau won a landmark court case at the Predecessor Court of

5684-404: The dictionary contains concepts with composed names, such as 'hairpin heat exchanger', which will not appear in ordinary dictionaries. The main difference with ordinary dictionaries is that the Gellish dictionary also includes definitions of standard kinds of relations ( relation types ), which are denoted by standard Gellish English phrases. For example, it defines relation types such as ⟨is

5782-513: The differences between Gellish and RDF, XML or OWL is that Gellish English includes an extensive English Dictionary of concepts, including also a large (and extendable) set of standard relation types to make computer-interpretable expressions (in a form that is also readable for non-IT professionals). On the other hand, 'languages' such as RDF, XML and OWL only define a few basic concepts, which leaves much freedom for their users to define their own 'domain language' concepts. This attractive freedom has

5880-446: The disadvantage that users of 'languages' such as RDF, XML or OWL still don't use a common language and still cannot integrate data that stem from different sources. Gellish is designed to provide a real common language, at least to a much larger extent and therefore provides much more standardization and commonality in terminology and expressions. OWL ( Web Ontology Language /Ontological Web Language) and Gellish are both meant for use on

5978-499: The early 1990s made it possible for their Excel spreadsheet application to take market share from Lotus. By the time Lotus responded with usable Windows products, Microsoft had begun to assemble their Office suite. By 1995, Excel was the market leader, edging out Lotus 1-2-3, and in 2013, IBM discontinued Lotus 1-2-3 altogether. In 2006 Google launched their beta release Google Sheets , a web based spreadsheet application that can be accessed by multiple users from any device type using

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6076-404: The first "non-procedural" computer languages) as opposed to left-to-right, top to bottom sequence for calculating the results in each cell that was used by VisiCalc , SuperCalc , and the first version of MultiPlan . Without forward referencing/natural order calculation, the user had to refresh the spreadsheet until the values in all cells remained unchanged. Once the cell values stayed constant,

6174-418: The form of spreadsheet tables , provided that their content is equivalent to the tabular form of Gellish Naming Tables (which define the vocabulary) and Fact Tables (together defining a Gellish Database content) or equivalent to Gellish Message Tables (for data exchange). An example of the core of a Message Table is the following: A full Gellish Message Table requires additional columns for unique identifiers,

6272-411: The formula itself. This may lead to confusion in some cases. The key feature of spreadsheets is the ability for a formula to refer to the contents of other cells, which may, in turn, be the result of a formula. To make such a formula, one replaces a number with a cell reference. For instance, the formula =5*C10 would produce the result of multiplying the value in cell C10 by the number 5. If C10 holds

6370-479: The intention of the expression, the language of the expression, cardinalities, unit of measure, the validity context, status, creation date, author, references, and various other columns. Gellish Light only requires the three above columns, but then it does not support, for example, capabilities to distinguish homonyms ; automated translation; and version management, etc. Those capabilities and several others are supported by Full Gellish. The following example illustrates

6468-451: The inverse phrase is used to express a fact, then the left hand and right hand objects in the expression should have an inverse position. Thus, the following expressions will be recognized as two equally valid expressions of the same fact (with the same Fact UID): So, the inverse indicator indicates for relation types whether as phrase is a base phrase (1) or an inverse phrase (2). A Fact Table contains expressions of any facts, each of which

6566-416: The knowledge and requirements that are known for the supertypes of that kind will also be recognized and can be made available automatically. Each category of information model requires its own semantics, because the expression of the individual fact that something real is the case requires other kinds of relations than the expression of the general fact that something can be the case, which again differs from

6664-466: The large semantic richness and expression capabilities of Gellish. Furthermore, Gellish contains definitions of many facts about the defined concepts that are expressed as relationships between those concepts. OWL has a fixed set of concepts (terms) that are only extended when the OWL standard is extended. Gellish is extensible by any user, under open source conditions. Gellish is a further development of ISO 10303 -221 (AP221) and ISO 15926 . Gellish

6762-521: The largest market share on the Windows and Macintosh platforms. A spreadsheet program is a standard feature of an office productivity suite . In 2006 Google launched a beta release spreadsheet web application , this is currently known as Google Sheets and one of the applications provided in Google Drive . A spreadsheet consists of a table of cells arranged into rows and columns and referred to by

6860-594: The legacy batch system into each user's spreadsheet monthly. It was designed to optimize the power of APL through object kernels, increasing program efficiency by as much as 50 fold over traditional programming approaches. An example of an early "industrial weight" spreadsheet was APLDOT, developed in 1976 at the United States Railway Association on an IBM 360/91, running at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, MD. The application

6958-405: The main fact in a Fact Table are: These columns also appear in a Message Table as shown below. A full Gellish Message table is in fact a combination of a Naming Table and a Fact Table. It contains not only columns for the expression of facts, but also columns for the names of the related objects and the additional columns to express auxiliary facts. This enables the use of a single table, also for

7056-524: The model to view results of underlying formulas. His idea became VisiCalc. VisiCalc for the Apple II went on to become the first killer application , a program so compelling, people would buy a particular computer just to use it. It was ported to other computers, including CP/M machines, Atari 8-bit computers , and the Commodore PET , but VisiCalc remains best known as an Apple II program. SuperCalc

7154-423: The most successful example, Lotus Improv , which saw some commercial success, notably in the financial world where its powerful data mining capabilities remain well respected to this day. Spreadsheet 2000 attempted to dramatically simplify formula construction, but was generally not successful. The main concepts are those of a grid of cells , called a sheet, with either raw data, called values, or formulas in

7252-438: The numbers within a range. Spreadsheets share many principles and traits of databases , but spreadsheets and databases are not the same things. A spreadsheet is essentially just one table, whereas a database is a collection of many tables with machine-readable semantic relationships. While it is true that a workbook that contains three sheets is indeed a file containing multiple tables that can interact with each other, it lacks

7350-542: The other. Dependency graphs without circular dependencies form directed acyclic graphs , representations of partial orderings (in this case, across a spreadsheet) that can be relied upon to give a definite result. This feature refers to updating a cell's contents periodically with a value from an external source—such as a cell in a "remote" spreadsheet. For shared, Web-based spreadsheets, it applies to "immediately" updating cells another user has updated. All dependent cells must be updated also. Once entered, selected cells (or

7448-426: The possible exception of true native speakers of such languages. Natural languages evolve, through fluctuations in vocabulary and syntax, to incrementally improve human communication. In contrast, Esperanto was created by Polish ophthalmologist L. L. Zamenhof in the late 19th century. Some natural languages have become organically "standardized" through the synthesis of two or more pre-existing natural languages over

7546-418: The programming language from the end-user. Through IBM's VM operating system , it was among the first programs to auto-update each copy of the application as new versions were released. Users could specify simple mathematical relationships between rows and between columns. Compared to any contemporary alternatives, it could support very large spreadsheets. It loaded actual financial planning data drawn from

7644-403: The range 1-100. This enables Gellish expressions for queries, such as: Gellish-powered software should be able to provide the correct answer to this query by comparing the expression with the facts in the database, and should respond with: Note that the automatic translation capability implies that a query/question that is expressed in a particular language, say English, can be used to search in

7742-400: The recommended representation of time in Gellish is the more intuitive method that specifies that facts have a specified validity duration. For example, each property can have multiple numeric values on a scale, which is expressed as multiple facts, whereas for each of those facts an (optional) specification can be added of the moment or time period during which that fact is valid. A subset of

7840-427: The right order ("Forward Referencing/Natural Order Calculation"). Pardo and Landau developed and implemented the software in 1969. LANPAR was used by Bell Canada, AT&T, and the 18 operating telephone companies nationwide for their local and national budgeting operations. LANPAR was also used by General Motors. Its uniqueness was Pardo's co-invention incorporating forward referencing/natural order calculation (one of

7938-464: The rows and columns, then the formulas that defined each row or column. In 1975, Autotab-II was advertised as extending the original to a maximum of " 1,500 rows and columns, combined in any proportion the user requires... " GE Information Services, which operated the time-sharing service, also launched its own spreadsheet system, Financial Analysis Language (FAL), circa 1974. It was later supplemented by an additional spreadsheet language, TABOL, which

8036-415: The sake of clarity. Functionally, the spreadsheet operates as a whole and all cells operate as global variables within the spreadsheet (each variable having 'read' access only except its containing cell). A cell may contain a value or a formula , or it may simply be left empty. By convention, formulas usually begin with = sign. A value can be entered from the computer keyboard by directly typing into

8134-414: The same UID's for the same concept. This means that those dictionaries provide translations of the names of the objects, as well as a translation of the standard relation types. The UID's enable that information and knowledge that is expressed in one language variant of Gellish can be automatically translated and presented by Gellish-powered software in any other language variant for which a Gellish dictionary

8232-486: The specification and use of synonyms and homonyms, multiple languages, etcetera. The core of a Message Table is illustrated in the following table: In the above example, the concepts with the names, as well as the (standard) relation types are selected with their UID's from the Gellish English Dictionary. A Gellish Database table can be implemented in any tabular format. For example, it can be implemented as

8330-480: The term "spread sheet" has been used in accounting to mean a grid of columns and rows in a ledger. And prior to the rise of computerized spreadsheets, "spread" referred to a newspaper or magazine item (text or graphics) that covers two facing pages, extending across the centerfold and treating the two pages as one large page. The compound word 'spread-sheet' came to mean the format used to present book-keeping ledgers—with columns for categories of expenditures across

8428-566: The terms from natural languages. Thus, the Gellish English dictionary-taxonomy is like an (electronic) ordinary dictionary that is extended with additional concepts and with relations between the concepts. For example, the Gellish dictionary-taxonomy contains definitions of many concepts that also appear in ordinary dictionaries, such as kinds of physical objects like building, airplane, car, pump, pipe, properties such as mass and color, scales such as kg and bar, as well as activities and processes, such as repairing and heating, etc. In addition to that,

8526-416: The time, PC World magazine called VisiCalc the first electronic spreadsheet. Bricklin has spoken of watching his university professor create a table of calculation results on a blackboard . When the professor found an error, he had to tediously erase and rewrite several sequential entries in the table, triggering Bricklin to think that he could replicate the process on a computer, using the blackboard as

8624-418: The top, invoices listed down the left margin, and the amount of each payment in the cell where its row and column intersect—which were, traditionally, a "spread" across facing pages of a bound ledger (book for keeping accounting records) or on oversized sheets of paper (termed 'analysis paper') ruled into rows and columns in that format and approximately twice as wide as ordinary paper. A batch "spreadsheet"

8722-454: The use of some additional columns in a Gellish Message Table, where UoM stands for 'unit of measure'. The collection of standard relation types define the kinds of facts that can be expressed in Gellish, although anybody can create their own proprietary extension of the dictionary and thus can add concepts and relation types as and when required. As Gellish is a formal language, any Gellish expression may only use concepts that are defined in

8820-508: The user was assured that there were no remaining forward references within the spreadsheet. In 1968, three former employees from the General Electric computer company headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona set out to start their own software development house . A. Leroy Ellison, Harry N. Cantrell, and Russell E. Edwards found themselves doing a large number of calculations when making tables for

8918-473: The value 3 the result will be 15 . But C10 might also hold its formula referring to other cells, and so on. The ability to chain formulas together is what gives a spreadsheet its power. Many problems can be broken down into a series of individual mathematical steps, and these can be assigned to individual formulas in cells. Some of these formulas can apply to ranges as well, like the SUM function that adds up all

9016-631: Was a spreadsheet application published by Sorcim in 1980, and originally bundled (along with WordStar) as part of the CP/M software package included with the Osborne 1 portable computer. It quickly became the de facto standard spreadsheet for CP/M. The introduction of Lotus 1-2-3 in November 1982 accelerated the acceptance of the IBM Personal Computer . It was written especially for IBM PC DOS and had improvements in speed and graphics compared to VisiCalc on

9114-476: Was called LANPAR — LANguage for Programming Arrays at Random. This was conceived and entirely developed in the summer of 1969, following Pardo and Landau's recent graduation from Harvard University. Co-inventor Rene Pardo recalls that he felt that one manager at Bell Canada should not have to depend on programmers to program and modify budgeting forms, and he thought of letting users type out forms in any order and having an electronic computer calculate results in

9212-520: Was called STEPlib). The Dictionary-Taxonomy is called a 'smart dictionary', because the concepts are arranged in a subtype -supertype hierarchy, making it a taxonomy that supports inheritance of properties from supertype concepts to subtype concepts. Furthermore, because together with other relations between the concepts, the smart dictionary is extended into an ontology . Gellish has basically an extended object-relation-object structure to express facts by relations, whereas each fact may be accompanied by

9310-463: Was developed by an independent author, Oliver Vellacott in the UK. Both FAL and TABOL were integrated with GEIS's database system, DMS. The IBM Financial Planning and Control System was developed in 1976, by Brian Ingham at IBM Canada. It was implemented by IBM in at least 30 countries. It ran on an IBM mainframe and was the first application for financial planning developed with APL that completely hid

9408-553: Was implemented on an IBM 1130 and in 1963 was ported to an IBM 7040 by R. Brian Walsh at Marquette University , Wisconsin . This program was written in Fortran . Primitive timesharing was available on those machines. In 1968 BCL was ported by Walsh to the IBM 360 /67 timesharing machine at Washington State University . It was used to assist in the teaching of finance to business students. Students were able to take information prepared by

9506-419: Was the first electronic spreadsheet on mainframe and time sharing computers. LANPAR was an acronym: LANguage for Programming Arrays at Random. VisiCalc (1979) was the first electronic spreadsheet on a microcomputer, and it helped turn the Apple II into a popular and widely used personal computer. Lotus 1-2-3 was the leading spreadsheet when DOS was the dominant operating system. Microsoft Excel now has

9604-546: Was used successfully for many years in developing such applications as financial and costing models for the US Congress and for Conrail . APLDOT was dubbed a "spreadsheet" because financial analysts and strategic planners used it to solve the same problems they addressed with paper spreadsheet pads. The concept of spreadsheets became widely known due to VisiCalc , developed for the Apple II in 1979 by VisiCorp staff Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston . Significantly, it also turned

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