Opus v. 2.10 -------------- Spreadsheet and Charting program for the Atari ST by Doug Harrison This text file is meant to give a brief overview of the features of my spreadsheet program Opus, which originally appeared in the Sept. 1988 ST-Log. I released Opus 2.00 in March 1989; this file covers features common to Opus 2.00 and 2.10. I. What is Opus? Opus is a powerful, fast, and very user friendly GEM spreadsheet program including (but definitely not limited to!) the following features: - 255 columns by 999 rows, implemented as sparse matrix - over 80 mathematical functions - very fast natural order recalculation - excellent graphing capability utilizing GDOS for highest quality printer output, with printing from within Opus or from a separate program, OutChart, which is also provided - chart types: area, bar, stacked bar, line, scatter, and pie - easy plotting of regression lines and standard error bars on up to six data series - saves GEM metafiles of charts that may be loaded by any program that can load metafiles, including Publisher ST - maximum formula/label length: 100 characters - absolute and relative cell addressing - cell and block copying, moving, and deleting - whole and partial row/column insertion and deletion - data fill - ability to name cells and ranges for reference in formulas - column widths range from 1-99 characters - very flexible number formatting, including 0-7 decimal places, percent, dollar, scientific notation, trailing zero suppression, display of negative numbers in parentheses i.e. -2.22 displays as (2.22), format strings (i.e. assign the format "Part #`" to a cell containing the number 22, where ` designates the value position, and the cell displays as "Part #22") - very flexible date and time formatting - cell contents may be left, center, or right justified - bold, italics, and underlined text special effects - hidden and protected cells - detects circular references - ability to freeze rows, columns, or both - optional use of half-height font in monochrome to view twice as many rows - very fast file operations - fast sorting - set default paths, worksheet options, and chart options, and save these to a configuration file loaded at boot time - flexible worksheet printing with option to redirect output to a disk file - a program is provided to set printer control codes for any printer - many mouse functions II. System requirements - Atari ST with 1 megabyte of memory or more - one meg provides about 400K free with the control panel, G+Plus, and Swiss and Dutch fonts in 10, 12, 14, and 24 points installed. Enough memory for about 10,000 numbers or several thousand formulas. - color (medium resolution only) or monochrome monitor - one double-sided drive, two single-sided drives, or hard drive - GDOS or G+Plus, printer driver, META.SYS file, and fonts (meaning you own a GDOS application such as Easy Draw, Wordup, Microsoft Write, Publisher ST, etc. Please make sure one of your GDOS applications provides the META.SYS file, as not all do.) This is required to use the charting facility. Without GDOS, you can use the spreadsheet but will be unable to create charts. Without META.SYS, you can view charts on screen but will be unable to print them or save them as metafiles. III. Worksheet functions Recalculation speed is competitive with the fastest spreadsheets, including LDW Power. A. Miscellaneous +, -, *, / ABS, FAC, DIV, MOD, ROUND, TRUNC, ISERR, ISEMPTY, ERROR, FRAC, INT B. Trig SIN, COS, TAN, ASIN, ACOS, ATAN SINH, COSH, TANH, ASINH, ACOSH, ATANH RAD, DEG, PI C. Power EXP, LN, POW, LOG, SQR, SQRT D. Statistical SUM, PROD, MEAN, MEDIAN, VAR, VARP, SDEV, SDEVP, SERR, MIN, MAX, COUNT REGR (regression, returns M & B on following models) y = Mx+B (linear) y = B + M*ln x (log) y = Bx^M (power) y = Be^Mx (exponential) Note: Opus performs the transformation automatically on the non-linear models PREDV (figures M & B and calculates a y value for a given x) CORR (calculates the regression correlation coefficient) RAND (random number between two limits) COMB (combinations) PERM (permutations) E. Financial PV, FV, NPER, PMT, RATE F. Lookup VLOOKUP, HLOOKUP, INDEX, LOOKUP, MATCH, CHOOSE G. Cell COLUMN, ROW H. Range COLUMNS, ROWS I. Logical <, <=, >, >=, =, <> IF, AND, OR, NOT J. Date/Time DATE, YEAR, MONTH, DAY, WEEKDAY, DAYSMONTH, ISLEAP, TIME, HOUR, MINUTE, SECOND, NOW IV. Charting A. Overview Opus provides presentation quality graphing using GDOS. The charting facility is implemented as a separate screen with its own menu bar, and display is truly "what you see is what you get." The maximum chart size is 8 inches wide by 5 inches tall (roughly one-half the size of a standard page), and you have complete control of the chart size (within those limits) and may place the chart anywhere on the page. GEM metafiles may be created for later incorporation into documents produced by Publisher ST or any program that can load metafiles. Four completely separate charts are available, and they are saved along with the worksheet data. B. Chart Types - Scatter, Line, Bar, Stacked Bar, Area, and Pie Opus supports six data series ("y or dependent axis") in addition to the "x or independent axis" series. The axes may be rotated to provide such things as horizontal bar charts. C. Fonts Any number of fonts can be used, in any number of point sizes. Fonts and text effects may be selected independently for axis tic labels, axis titles, chart titles, legend text, and "values by markers" text. D. Axes All charts types except pie deal with axes. You have extensive and independent control of the axis formats. Some of the supported options are: - suppress drawing of axis - display major grid lines (solid lines extending from the tic marks) - display minor grid lines (dotted lines between the major grids) - suppress tics or change orientation (i.e. up, down, left, right, full) - tic label placement, including distance from axis - modify number format - set a skip value for the tic labels (i.e. draw every third tic label, for example) - choose where axis crosses other axis (Opus provides an intelligent default, however) - modify scaling of axes (again, intelligent defaults are provided) E. Regression lines and Standard error bars - easily plotted for each data series - control extent of regression line - maintain proper orientation even with rotated axes F. Legend - may appear below or on the right side of the chart - option to enclose in box or shadowed box G. Pie Charts - any number of slices may be exploded by clicking on them - option to display percentages and/or values, by slices or in the legend (legend text may even appear by slices) - complete control of fill patterns (also applies to bar and area charts) H. Bar charts - control distance between bars (for multiple series charts) and also bar distance from axis tics I. Values by markers - display data point values by the point markers for scatter and line charts, by bars for bar charts, or within bars for stacked bar charts J. Printing You may print charts either from within Opus or from a separate program, OutChart, which is also provided. Although Opus gives you all this control over chart appearance, it uses intelligent defaults for all options, so that creating a chart is usually as simple as selecting the ranges while in the worksheet and viewing the chart. However, you can get "just that look" when necessary with a minimum of fuss. V. Shareware If you enjoy Opus and use it on a regular basis, I ask that you recognize my efforts with a shareware donation. As Opus is a quite large archive, to save download time, I've decided to provide one free update to registered users. After that first update, I will upgrade registered users for free provided they send me a disk, self-addressed mailer with postage, etc. Full details are included in OPUS.DOC.