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 OPUS200.DOC.