This is a much modified version of the public domain spread sheet sc,
originally by James Gosling, and posted a number of years ago by Mark
Weiser as vc.

The current maintainer is Chuck Martin (nrocinu@myrealbox.com).  I
originally got involved with sc because I wanted a good text-based
spreadsheet program, and nothing I could find seemed to suit my needs.
After looking at several different programs, I settled on sc as the
program with the most promise, especially since source code was available,
which meant I could modify it to add the features I needed.  Since it
appeared that no one was maintaining it anymore, I decided to take up the
cause myself, although I don't want to claim ownership of the program.  I
would like to thank those who have made their own contributions to making
sc a better program.

I apologize for taking so long to release this version.  I've been wanting
to do it for quite some time, but have been holding off until I could find
the time to update the documentation properly, and other responsibilities
have prevented me from doing that until recently.  On the bright side,
this version has been in use more extensively, and I believe it to be
more stable and bug-free than any previous version.

The CHANGES file lists the changes from 6.1 to 7.16.  Although I've
already added all of the "must have" features I needed, and then some,
I'm willing to continue maintaining sc for as long as I'm able, and I'll
certainly share any new features and bugfixes I come up with.  If anyone
else finds any bugs or would like to contribute patches, please send them
to me.  If they're useful and they work, I'll probably add them.  I prefer
to keep it simple, though, since that's what drew me to sc instead of some
other "full-featured" spreadsheet in the first place.  I like the Unix
philosophy of making each program do one thing and do it well, and would
rather leave all the fancy graphics and other features to other programs
that are better suited for them.

Many of the items in the TODO list were there before I took over maintaining
sc, and although I won't be adding those features myself, I left them in
the list in case someone else still wants to add them.  I've added undo to
the TODO list because I feel it is a much needed feature, but I won't make
any promises as to when (or if) I will get to it.  If anyone else would
like to tackle it, feel free to do so.

I've tried to avoid changing key bindings any more than necessary because
it could be confusing to people who have been using sc for years if the
keybindings suddenly change, but in version 7.13, I finally decided to
change a few things for more compatibility with vi, so that it will be
easier to move back and forth between the two programs.  For example,
the ^F and ^B keys now work like J and K (or PageDown/PageUp).  Also,
the " key is no longer used for entering centered labels, but for named
delete buffers instead, as it does in vi.  The \ key will take its place
for entering centered labels.  This will also make it easier to enter a
so-called "wheel" for filling a cell with a character or string, since
you'll begin such a string by pressing \ twice.  Also, most keyboards have
the "\" and "|" on the same key, which should make it easy to remember
because | is already used for centering an existing string.  I'm sure
someone will let me know if this causes any problems. :)

In version 7.16, I've added a few more changes in sc's key bindings.
For one, the range commands now all begin with "r" instead of "/" because
I intend to add a new search feature that will be more powerful than the
goto command, and I want to use "/" for that feature.  Also, "n" is now
used to repeat the last search (the last goto, for now, but that will
change when the new search feature is implemented).  Since that conflicts
with the former usage of "n", which was for the note commands, these
commands now all begin with "*", and following a link to a note now
requires that "*" be pressed twice in succession.

I've started an announcement-only mailing list for those who would like
to find out when new versions of sc are available.  If anyone is interested
in being added to this list, please let me know.  This will not be an
automated list.  Everything will be done manually, and all names will be
put in a "Bcc:" header, so there will be no danger of being added to
someone's spam list.


Problems with color:

I'm no longer running ncurses 1.9.9g on any of my machines or machines
I work with, since it seems to have bugs in the handling of color that
I've been unable to find a work-around for, and upgrading to the latest
version seems to eliminate them.  If anyone else finds a way to work
around these bugs, patches are welcome.

If you have a problem getting highlighting to work when color is enabled,
you may want to check the value of ncv in your terminfo file (this can
be checked with the "tput ncv" command at the shell prompt).  This value
should be an even number in order for standout mode to work.  If ncv is
odd, try subtracting one and recompiling.  See the man pages for tic and
infocmp for how to do this.  The linux terminfo file in some older versions
of ncurses is known to have this problem, for example.  I've also found the
problem in some versions of the terminfo files for xterm and screen.


Compiling the program:

Before you compile, make sure to check the Makefile and uncomment the
lines that pertain to your system and comment out the lines for Linux.
If you run Linux, this step won't be necessary, since that's the default
(since that's what I run).  I haven't tried compiling or running sc on
anything else, but I've used it on both Slackware 4.0 (with ncurses upgraded
to version 5.2) and Slackware 7.1, so I hope I haven't broken anything for
anyone else.  If you get it to compile and run on something else, please
let me know.  If it doesn't work and you can fix it, please send me a patch.


A couple of notes from the previous maintainer:

1) If you have problems with lex.c, and don't care about arrow keys, define
   SIMPLE (-DSIMPLE in the makefile).  SIMPLE causes the arrow keys to not
   be used.

2) If you have problems with your yacc saying: too many terminals ...127...
   find a different yacc: bison, Berkeley yacc, Pd yacc, etc.  AT&T's Sys V
   yacc has small, fixed sized tables.  SCO will allow dynamic yacc tables
   when given the correct flags.


After you get it built, if you aren't familiar with sc, you might want
to try "sc tutorial.sc" for a simple introduction to the basic commands.
Most of the key bindings are patterned after the vi text editor, so if
you're familiar with that program or its variants, you shouldn't have
any problems learning sc.  The tutorial is a bit out-of-date, and doesn't
include any of the new features that have been added since I began
maintaining sc.  If anyone would like to rectify this situation, feel
free.  The same goes for the built-in help system (available by pressing
`?'), although the feature list has grown quite a bit, and that may not be
easy to do without some major changes to the way the help system works.

If you've used sc before, you may want to check out the CHANGES file
to see what's changed, and read the man page for more details.

To print a quick reference card, type the command:
	scqref | [your_printer_commmand]

If you have the command 'file' that uses /etc/magic, and it isn't there
already, you may want to add the following lines:

# sc:  file(1) magic for "sc" spreadsheet
#
38	string		Spreadsheet	sc spreadsheet file

Psc formats ascii files for use in the spreadsheet.  If you don't have
getopts, there is a public domain version by Henry Spencer hidden away in
the VMS_NOTES file.

If you'd like to rename the program to something different, just change
"name=sc" and "NAME=SC" to "name=myfavoritename" and "NAME=MYFAVORITENAME"
and try "make myfavoritename".  (Does anyone need or use this?  If so,
please let me know.  Otherwise, I may remove that capability in a future
version, since it seems to me that it reduces confusion if everyone
refers to the program by the same name.  (I've been told that there is a
program called Sunshine Commander that used the same name, but I may still
drop this, since the sc Spreadsheet Calculator is much more well known)).

Similarly, you can make the documentation with "make myfavoritename.man".
"make install" will make and install the code in EXDIR.  The installation
steps and documentation all key off of the name.  The makefile even changes
the name in the nroffable man page.  If you don't have nroff, you will
have to change sc.man yourself.

Uninstalling the program is now very easy, if you should want to do this.
Just do "make uninstall".


Finding the latest version:

You should be able to ftp the lastest version of sc from ibiblio.org
The directory where you should be able to find the latest version is
/pub/Linux/apps/financial/spreadsheet.  If you can't find it, e-mail me.
I know this is a Linux specific source, but it's the only place I know
of.  If anyone knows of a more O/S-neutral location, please let me know.


Guarantee:

Since some people are wary of using a program that has no guarantee, I've
decided to provide the following guarantee:

  It is a well-known fact that any non-trivial program has bugs.  If
  you haven't found them, you just haven't stumbled upon the proper
  combinations of actions that will cause the bugs to manifest them-
  selves.  Since sc stands for "Spreadsheet Calculator", and since a
  spreadsheet calculator is by definition a non-trivial program, sc is
  guaranteed to have bugs.


Chuck Martin
nrocinu@myrealbox.com
