Quattro Pro

Last updated
Original author(s) Borland
Developer(s) Alludo
Initial release1988;36 years ago (1988)
Stable release
2020 / 2020;4 years ago (2020)
Operating system Microsoft Windows
Type Spreadsheet
License Proprietary
Website www.alludo.com

Quattro Pro is a spreadsheet program developed by Borland and now sold by Alludo, most often as part of Alludo's WordPerfect Office suite.

Contents

Characteristics

Historically, Quattro Pro used keyboard commands close to those of Lotus 1-2-3. While it is commonly said to have been the first program to use tabbed sheets, Boeing Calc actually utilized tabbed sheets earlier. [1] [2] It currently runs under the Windows operating system. For years Quattro Pro had a competitive advantage, in regard to maximum row and column limits (allowing a maximum worksheet size of one million rows by 18,276 columns). This avoided the 65,536 row by 256 column spreadsheet limitations inherent to Microsoft Excel (prior to Excel 2007). Even with the maximum row advantage, Quattro Pro has been a distant second to Excel, in terms of sales numbers, since approximately 1996 to the present.[ citation needed ]

When version 1.0 was in development, it was codenamed "Buddha" since it was meant to "assume the Lotus position", #1 in the market.[ citation needed ] When the product was launched in 1988, its original name, suggested to Mr. Kahn by Senior VP, Spencer Leyton at a Vietnamese restaurant in Santa Cruz, was Quattro (the Italian word for "four", a play on being one step ahead of "1-2-3").[ citation needed ] Borland changed the name to Quattro Pro for its 1990 release.

The common file extension of Quattro Pro spreadsheet file is .qpw, which it has used since version 9. Quattro Pro versions 7 and 8 used .wb3, version 6 used .wb2, version 5 used .wb1, and DOS versions used .wq2 and .wq1. [3]

Origins

The original Borland Quattro electronic spreadsheet was a DOS program, the initial development of which was done by three Eastern Europeans, one of whom, the Hungarian Lajos Frank, was later hired by Microsoft. An article appeared in PC Week in 1985, quoting a maker of spreadsheet templates saying that he was in close contact with Borland, and that Borland was developing a spreadsheet. At the time, there was absolutely no such development being undertaken by Borland. After they both read the article, Philippe Kahn and Spencer Leyton had a casual conversation where they joked, half seriously, about perhaps developing a spreadsheet to compete with Lotus Development's 1-2-3. That led to Mr. Kahn setting an appointment with an agent for some Eastern European software developers, Robert Stein of Andromeda Software, which was also involved with the game Tetris . That led to an agreement negotiated by Mr. Leyton and Mr. Stein, providing for the development of the original Quattro.

Quattro was written in assembly language and Turbo C, principally by Adam Bosworth, Lajos Frank, and Chuck Batterman. It was praised mainly for superior graphics on DOS. Borland acquired a replacement product called "Surpass", written in Modula-2. The main designers and programmers of Surpass were also hired by Borland to turn Surpass into Quattro Pro: Bob Warfield, Dave Anderson, Weikuo Liaw, Bob Richardson and Tod Landis. They joined other Borland programmers including Chuck Batterman, Lajos Frank, Tanj Bennett, Rich Reppert and Roger Schlafly. Bob Warfield later became Vice President of R&D at Borland. All eventually left Borland.

Quattro Pro shipped in the final quarter of 1989. The Borland main office was near the epicenter of the Loma Prieta earthquake and the building was severely damaged when large and heavy air conditioners on the roof of Borland's main building were thrown upward by the quake, and came crashing down upon the glulam beams running across the top of the building. The beams were damaged to the point where they required injections of epoxy in order to make them sturdy enough to support the building again. In addition, the sprinkler system was triggered. The building was closed for months. All the computers were removed, placed on the tennis courts, washed down (acoustic ceilings rained gray mush onto everything when the sprinklers ran) and dried with hair dryers. Those that booted up were put to work. Quattro Pro finished final quality assurance testing and was sent to manufacturing from those computers running on the tennis courts in the (fortunately) sunny and dry autumn weather.

Lawsuit

Some have claimed that Quattro Pro was the first to use the tabbed notebook metaphor, but another spreadsheet, Boeing Calc, used tabs to multiple sheets, and allowed three-dimensional references before Quattro Pro was on the market. (Boeing Calc was so slow that its multiple sheet capabilities were barely usable.) [1] [2]

Quattro Pro was the subject of a major lawsuit by Lotus against Borland. Lotus argued that Quattro could not copy Lotus 1-2-3's menus. Borland supplied the 1-2-3 menus as an alternative because keystroke compatibility was needed in order to run macros in 1-2-3 worksheets. Borland argued that most cars operate the same, but they are not necessarily made the same. So, Lotus could not rationally "own" the way its program behaved. The district court ruled in favor of Lotus, but the appellate court ruled that the 1-2-3 menus were functional and not copyrightable. The case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court which split 4 to 4 (Justice Stevens recused himself). This left the lower court ruling intact, which was a victory for Borland. However, the broader issue of whether a company can own and protect the way its program behaves remained unresolved.

By the time the case was resolved, Borland no longer owned Quattro Pro. Borland sold the spreadsheet to Novell six months before the final decision was handed down.

Quattro Pro for Windows

Portion of a Quattro Pro for Windows spreadsheet QP screen image portion.jpg
Portion of a Quattro Pro for Windows spreadsheet

Quattro Pro began as a DOS program (like Lotus 1-2-3) but with the growing popularity of Windows from Microsoft, a Windows version of Quattro needed to be written. There was almost nothing from the DOS code that could be moved to the Windows project, so the Quattro Pro for Windows (QPW) was written from scratch.

Both the QPW and Paradox for Windows codebases (the latter being another Borland database application) were based on Borland's internal pilot project with object oriented UI code for Windows. This project ran simultaneously with the Borland language group investigating the desirability of a C++ compiler, and the company decided to make a bet on C++. However, the C++ compiler was not ready at first, and OO code for both projects was started in C with OO emulation through macros. As the Borland Turbo C++ compiler became available internally the projects converted to using C++.

Charlie Anderson was put in charge of the project and he soon had Istvan Cseri, Weikuo Liaw, Murray Low, Steven Boye, Barry Spencer, Alan Bush, Dave Orton, Bernie Vachon, Anson Lee, Tod Landis, Gordon Ko and Chuck Batterman working on the project. Other engineers joined later. Eventually the team numbered nearly 20. The object model was inspired by the NeXT object model, modified by Mr. Cseri. Mr. Liaw and Mr. Spencer were in charge of the spreadsheet engine (written in assembly language) while Mr. Low wrote a large chunk of the UI.

The product was internally codenamed "Thor" for the Norse god of Thunder. QPW featured two major innovations. First, it was the first Windows spreadsheet with multiple pages with cells that could be linked together seamlessly, a feature from Quattro Pro which QPW extended. Second, it was the first released Windows program to have an attribute menu (or property pane) available by right-clicking on the object. Although this idea was first seen on the Xerox Alto, the idea had not been implemented on a major Windows program. Paradox for Windows shared this feature, and it was shown off by Phillipe Kahn at a Paradox user conference over a year before QPW was released. Both these ideas became widespread in the software industry.

QPW was one of the first big applications written in C++ on Windows, and it pushed the Borland C++ compiler to the limit. One reason why the Borland C++ Compiler was so good was that it had to compile and link the massive QPW code base successfully.

The technical risk of the QPW project was immense. The object model was untried and might not have worked for a spreadsheet. The user interface (UI) was new (for Windows programs at least). No one knew if the C++ compiler could generate fast enough code. As it turned out, the program worked. It was fast, it was close in feature set to Lotus 123 and Excel, and the "right-click for properties" user design was reasonably understandable.

At one point, it was hoped that QPW and Paradox for Windows would be able to share a common object model. That proved impossible despite serious thought and design efforts.

QPW was finally released in September 1992. The Quattro Pro marketing team had chosen to bundle both Quattro Pro for DOS and Quattro Pro for Windows in the same box labeled "WIN-DOS" at a price of $495. Customers and reviewers expecting a pure Windows application responded with confusion and outrage, believing the product was merely a DOS application with windowing capabilities. Shortly thereafter QPW was re-packaged by itself and priced $129, receiving accolades for Borland's long-delayed pure Windows spreadsheet and its popular price.

Eventually it sold well (after the price was slashed to just $49 a copy). Work was started immediately on a new version with a brand new team of engineers led by Joe Ammirato; including Bret Gillis and Peter Weyzen. Borland purchased DataPivot from Brio Technology to add a new feature to the program. Colin Glassey came from Brio to help with the integration of that technology.

After a year and the merging of the old team and the new team, QPW 5 was released (the reason for the jump in version number had to do with keeping up with the DOS version as well as it looked good). QPW 5 sold well also, though the Microsoft Excel + Word combination was gaining steam.

Quattro Pro 6 User's Guide, from the Novell era Novell WordPerfect and Quattro Pro users guides.jpg
Quattro Pro 6 User's Guide, from the Novell era

Work then started on version 6 (now with Steven Boye as project lead). Midway through the development of version 6 a strategic decision to work closely with the WordPerfect word processor was made. It was a direct attempt to push back at the Microsoft Office one-two punch of Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel. The other big issue with Version 6 was the advent of Windows 95. This was a significant modification to the Windows operating system with a major change to user interface guidelines.

In an odd set of events, Novell purchased both WordPerfect Corporation and the Quattro Pro code base and team of engineers from Borland. Novell was going to try to be a real competitor to Microsoft. Although Version 6 was released and some effort was made to unify the user interface between WordPerfect and QPW, the effort was far from complete.

In another lawsuit, Novell claims that Microsoft had "deliberately targeted and destroyed" its WordPerfect and QuattroPro programs to protect its Windows operating system monopoly. The US Supreme Court refused to halt the antitrust lawsuit in March 2008. [4]

Novell's exit

The release of Windows 95 in August 1995 was the beginning of the end for Novell and its plans to compete with Microsoft. Not only did Microsoft release a new operating system, but Microsoft also released new versions of Word and Excel to accompany it. Sales of Novell PerfectOffice (and Lotus applications as well) sank to almost nothing while sales of the Microsoft products were huge.[ citation needed ] Within three months, Novell announced they were going to sell their applications to someone (eventually that proved to be Corel). By mid-1996, Microsoft had 95% of the market for business applications. As of 2005, Microsoft still dominates the market for Windows business application software,[ citation needed ] although Quattro Pro and WordPerfect, which pre-dated the MS Office 4.2 suite, are still both updated and sold.

File formats

Quattro Pro file formats use various filename extensions, including WB1, WB2, WB3, wq1 and wq2; some of these (WB2, wq1, and wq2) may open in the desktop applications of Collabora Online, LibreOffice or Apache OpenOffice and then be saved into the OpenDocument format or other file formats, Microsoft dropped support for Quattro Pro file formats after Office 2007. [5] [6]

Version history

Corel WordPerfect Office X5 installation CD, containing Quattro Pro X5 Corel WordPerfect Office X5 Standard CD.jpg
Corel WordPerfect Office X5 installation CD, containing Quattro Pro X5

See also

Related Research Articles

Borland Software Corporation was a computer technology company founded in 1983 by Niels Jensen, Ole Henriksen, Mogens Glad, and Philippe Kahn. Its main business was the development and sale of software development and software deployment products. Borland was first headquartered in Scotts Valley, California, then in Cupertino, California, and then in Austin, Texas. In 2009, the company became a full subsidiary of the British firm Micro Focus International plc. In 2023, Micro Focus was acquired by Canadian firm OpenText, which later absorbed Borland portfolio into its application delivery management division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lotus 1-2-3</span> Spreadsheet software

Lotus 1-2-3 is a discontinued spreadsheet program from Lotus Software. It was the first killer application of the IBM PC, was hugely popular in the 1980s, and significantly contributed to the success of IBM PC-compatibles in the business market.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">WordPerfect</span> Word processing application

WordPerfect (WP) is a word processing application, now owned by Alludo, with a long history on multiple personal computer platforms. At the height of its popularity in the 1980s and early 1990s, it was the dominant player in the word processor market, displacing the prior market leader WordStar.

Lotus Symphony was an integrated software package for creating and editing text, spreadsheets, charts and other documents on the MS-DOS operating systems. It was released by Lotus Development as a follow-on to its popular spreadsheet program, Lotus 1-2-3, and was produced from 1984 to 1992. Lotus Jazz on the Apple Macintosh was a sibling product.

Lotus Software was an American software company based in Massachusetts; it was "offloaded" to India's HCL Technologies in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alludo</span> Software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario

Cascade Parent Limited, doing business as Alludo, is a Canadian software company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, specializing in graphics processing. Formerly called the Corel Corporation, the company is known for producing software titles such as CorelDRAW, and for acquiring AfterShot Pro, PaintShop Pro, Painter, Video Studio and WordPerfect.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Novell</span> 1980–2014 American multinational software and services company

Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare.

dBase was one of the first database management systems for microcomputers and the most successful in its day. The dBase system included the core database engine, a query system, a forms engine, and a programming language that tied all of these components together.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows Script Host</span> Automation technology for Windows

The Microsoft Windows Script Host (WSH) is an automation technology for Microsoft Windows operating systems that provides scripting abilities comparable to batch files, but with a wider range of supported features. This tool was first provided on Windows 95 after Build 950a on the installation discs as an optional installation configurable and installable by means of the Control Panel, and then a standard component of Windows 98 and subsequent and Windows NT 4.0 Build 1381 and by means of Service Pack 4. The WSH is also a means of automation for Internet Explorer via the installed WSH engines from IE Version 3.0 onwards; at this time VBScript became means of automation for Microsoft Outlook 97. The WSH is also an optional install provided with a VBScript and JScript engine for Windows CE 3.0 and following and some third-party engines including Rexx and other forms of Basic are also available.

Ashton-Tate Corporation was a US-based software company best known for developing the popular dBASE database application and later acquiring Framework from the Forefront Corporation and MultiMate from Multimate International. It grew from a small garage-based company to become a multinational corporation. Once one of the "Big Three" software companies, which included Microsoft and Lotus, the company stumbled in the late 1980s and was sold to Borland in September 1991.

Framework, launched in 1984, was an office suite to run on the (x86) IBM PC and compatibles with the MS-DOS operating system.

Seymour Ivan Rubinstein is an American businessman and software developer. With the founding of MicroPro International in 1978, he became a pioneer of personal computer software, publishing under it the extremely popular word processing package, WordStar. He grew up in Brooklyn, New York, and after a six-year stint in New Hampshire, later moved to California. Programs developed partially or entirely under his direction include WordStar, HelpDesk, Quattro Pro, and WebSleuth, among others. WordStar was the first truly successful program for the personal computer in a commercial sense and gave reasonably priced access to word processing for the general population for the first time.

Paradox is a relational database management system currently published by Corel Corporation.

Corel Presentations, often referred to simply as Presentations, is a presentation program akin to Microsoft PowerPoint and LibreOffice Impress. The current release, version 2021, is available only as part of Corel's WordPerfect Office productivity suite.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Quick View</span> Windows file viewer software

Quick View is a file viewer in Windows 95, Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 operating systems. The viewer can be used to view practically any file.

As-Easy-As for DOS and As-Easy-As for Windows was a shareware 32-bit spreadsheet program developed in 1986 for MS-DOS and later for Microsoft Windows. The name is a play on the phrase "as easy as 1-2-3", a reference to the dominant MS-DOS spreadsheet at that time, Lotus 1-2-3 with which it competed for a fraction of the contender's price. The program was developed and sold by TRIUS, Inc.. The company eventually branched out developing CAD and GIS/Mapping software and SDKs, not focusing on As-Easy-As.

Ability Office is an office suite developed by Ability Plus Software and distributed and marketed by Ability Software International and which consists of a word processor, spreadsheet, database, modules for presentation and photo or image editing, plus a photo/image organiser and vector line drawing application. The current version (V6) offers a level of compatibility with Microsoft Office, allowing users to create, load from and save both to Microsoft Office 2010 and earlier file formats. In the same way, the photo and image editing application will create, load from and save to Adobe Photoshop (*.psd) file formats, together with other mainstream graphical file types.

Productivity software is application software used for producing information. Its names arose from it increasing productivity, especially of individual office workers, from typists to knowledge workers, although its scope is now wider than that. Office suites, which brought word processing, spreadsheet, and relational database programs to the desktop in the 1980s, are the core example of productivity software. They revolutionized the office with the magnitude of the productivity increase they brought as compared with the pre-1980s office environments of typewriters, paper filing, and handwritten lists and ledgers. In the United States, some 78% of "middle-skill" occupations now require the use of productivity software. In the 2010s, productivity software has become even more consumerized than it already was, as computing becomes ever more integrated into daily personal life.

References

  1. 1 2 "Boeing Calc dot com". Archived from the original on February 19, 2006.
  2. 1 2 "Attached > Computer history &gt "Spreadsheets"". Aresluna.org. 2004-09-22. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  3. "Corel WordPerfect Office Reviewer's Guide - Appendix A: Supported File Formats" (PDF). Corel.com. p. 29. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  4. "Court Hands Setback to Microsoft" . The New York Times . Associated Press. 18 March 2008. Retrieved 2015-10-15.
  5. Decker, Fred. "How to Open Files Created in Quattro Pro". Chron. Retrieved 2021-09-20.
  6. Burnside, Ken. "How to Open Files Created in Quattro Pro". azcentral. Retrieved 2021-09-20.