''3D-Calc'' is a 3-dimensional

spreadsheet A spreadsheet is a computer application for computation, organization, analysis and storage of data in tabular form. Spreadsheets were developed as computerized analogs of paper accounting worksheets. The program operates on data entered in c ...

program for the

Atari ST Atari ST is a line of personal computers from Atari Corporation and the successor to the company's Atari 8-bit computers, 8-bit computers. The initial model, the Atari 520ST, had limited release in April–June 1985, and was widely available i ...

computer A computer is a machine that can be Computer programming, programmed to automatically Execution (computing), carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (''computation''). Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic set ...

. The first version of the program was released in April 1989 and was distributed by ISTARI bvba,

Ghent Ghent ( ; ; historically known as ''Gaunt'' in English) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of the Provinces of Belgium, province ...

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

History

Starting in May 1991, the English version was distributed by MichTron/ Microdeal, Cornwall, UK. In January 1992, version 2.3 of the program was licensed to

Atari Atari () is a brand name that has been owned by several entities since its inception in 1972. It is currently owned by French holding company Atari SA (formerly Infogrames) and its focus is on "video games, consumer hardware, licensing and bl ...

Corp., who released Dutch and French translations. In 1994, version 3 of 3D-Calc (renamed 3D-Calc+) was licensed to the UK magazine ST Applications. Today, ''3D-Calc'' software is

Freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

Public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no Exclusive exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly Waiver, waived, or may be inapplicable. Because no one holds ...

without

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

") and can be downloaded freely.3D-Calc
''"Today, 3D-Calc is in the public domain and can be downloaded freely"''. In 1992–1993, it was ported to

MS-DOS MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few op ...

to serve as the basis of a new statistics software package

MedCalc __NOTOC__ MedCalc is a statistical software package designed for the biomedical sciences. It has an integrated spreadsheet for data input and can import files in several formats (Microsoft Excel, Excel, SPSS, Comma-separated values, CSV, ...). M ...

Features and reception

The spreadsheet contains 13 pages of 2048 rows and 256 columns. Cells of different pages could be cross-referenced. ''3D Calc'' offers a GEM based user interface with icons, menus and function keys. Users can work on three spreadsheets at the same time with up to three GEM windows for each. The application supports on-screen help via the "?" menu and can import data from Lotus 1-2-3 (with some limitations). The program includes an integrated

scripting language In computing, a script is a relatively short and simple set of instructions that typically automation, automate an otherwise manual process. The act of writing a script is called scripting. A scripting language or script language is a programming ...

, and an integrated text module with a data import feature from the spreadsheet, allowing formatted data output, mailmerge, label printing etc. Peter Crush writing for the ''ST Format'' and ''ST Applications'' magazines commended ''3D Calc'' for rich features including easy to use graph generation, but criticized no support for colours.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:3d-Calc 1989 software Spreadsheet software Atari ST software Freeware