Here's what's new in wikiCalc Alpha release 0.2:
There are many additions to wikiCalc in the 0.2 release. All of the basic spreadsheet functionality of the 0.1 version has been retained. This time, however, the product is being released not just as a Windows .exe for running only client-side on a Windows computer, but also in Perl source form for running on other platforms, both client-side and server-side. Main files are available for running standalone on a client machine (wikicalc.pl), as a Perl CGI server-side (wikicalccgi.pl), and as Perl running under Apache mod_perl (wikicalcmodperl.pl).

The product now ships with a few predefined templates for new pages and HTML creation. This means that a simple "copy a single Perl .exe to a directory" isn't as appropriate for Windows. The Windows version is now shipped as a traditional Windows install file which you must execute to install the program and those files.

Here is a list of the other main changes:
  • Reimplemented Cells tab to use AJAX. Navigating on the Cells tab by clicking on cells or using arrow keys no longer results in a repaint of the entire screen. Just the affected cells are changed. Operation should be somewhat similar to traditional standalone spreadsheets. See the Help on the Cells tab for more information.
  • Added wiki-like =, :, *, #, ; for more formatting -- see Help for a complete list. "wiki-like" means that some of the common wiki markups work in multi-line cells, such as lines starting with "=" for heading, "*" for list items, etc.
  • Added Manage Sites page on Page tab and sub-page to edit an existing site definition
  • Improved checking of site settings and existence on host
  • Added Manage Hosts page on Page tab and sub-page to edit an existing host definition
  • Added User Administration on Tools tab as well as login and logout. This was needed for server-side CGI-based editing by multiple people. Note: A logged in user needs admin status to access this tool when "Require Login" is in effect, and the "Registered Sites" feature this command shows is not implemented.
  • Added cookie support so it remembers current page/site and optional user login
  • Updated siteinfo.txt format
  • Cleaned up Page list to handle author names better
  • Added version information to hostinfo.txt
  • If it encounters old versions of hostinfo.txt from version 0.1 it sets the data to mean sites need to be checked for existence again which writes out new format
  • If old version 0.1 format "local_host.name" remote site directories are found by FTP, they are renamed to "name" on the remote host
  • Added HTML templates in files: system (same dir as program), shared (wkcdata/templates), and site (wkcdata/sitename/templates)
  • Added {{templatedescriptionline}}, {{line-if-editurl}}, {{editurl}}, {{author}} to HTML template variables
  • Top line of display now has page/site/login info, moved from elsewhere
  • Added Page Templates for creating new pages
  • Added Demo Setup ability with scripting when run on system with no hostinfo.txt. The product now ships with a demo script to create a first host and site and populate it with a demo file to allow quick experimentation.
  • Added creation of backup file at publish time which creates the same contents as publish but with date/time in the filename
  • Fixed bug with merged cell wider than sheet extent
  • Changed encoding for \ in save (still reads the old style)
  • Added Tools Save As Text command to create CSV and other formats to simplify getting data out of wikiCalc
  • Updated copyright dates to 2006
  • Fixed broken [link:...] feature
  • Old bugs fixed: "merge-extend", "cell-autocomplete", "too-far-delete", "blank-cell-erase", "space-is-zero". "firefox-mixup" may be better (probably not) and "browser-cursor" is improved for IE and Safari.
  • No more autocomplete when editing cell values
  • Uses 1x1.gif for better Safari color chooser
  • Removed / from COL tags
  • Explicit UTF-8 charset using meta tag
wikiCalc Beta Home Page