Creating Excel files on Linux

[Alex Martelli]

Roman Suzi wrote:
        ...
> mercilessly.) So, if MIcrosoft monopoly will last, my non-conformistic
> views will make me non-conformic with the whole society, because I will

...unless said monopoly switches to using open formats for its documents, 
and, as it happens, this is indeed going on (you can write .RTF, which is 
an open and documented format equivalent to .DOC from Word's viewpoint, 
with many systems; Office XP uses XML as its native format, I think, and 
the future Office .NET surely will; etc, etc).

> not be able to interface with state using free systems. For example, if I
> had a firm, I *MUST* pay for at least MSDOS under which works the program
> to prepare tax-reports! While such programs are probably just several
> screens of Python code + database of classificators, etc.

The recently-released version 1.0.2 of DOSEMU, with FreeDos on top, can 
probably let you run that program on a good Linux i386 machine.

> The only hope is to convince gov's to use free software as happens in the
> West.

I'm not too sure about "the West" -- there's a lot of non-free software in 
governmental use around here (and now that, as a part of the recent 
government, we had the guy who headed Microsoft Italia until joining said 
government, my personal hopes that this will change have gone down:-).

Rather, it seems to me that China is pursuing a strong policy of free-sw 
use (in their case the point being definitely the free-as-in-beer part), 
and France may be heading in the same direction (in _their_ case, the 
desire of resisting American cultural hegemony is probably uppermost).


Alex