ECN No Name Newsletter: January, 1992

The ECN No Name Newsletter is no longer being published. This is an archived issue.

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The New WINGZ Software

William Spear

Those of you that are familiar with Macintosh computers may have heard of the WINGZ program. This is the second most popular spreadsheeting software for the Mac, and it is now available for the Sun workstations at the ECN. This program's main use is the sorting, computation, and graphing of numerical data. It will also draw simple shapes and can be used for the presentation of numerical data as well. The program has a menu-driven interface and runs as an X-windows or OpenWindows application.

The application may be started by using either the Wingz.openwin or Wingz.motif command depending on the windowing environment that you are using. The OpenWindows version runs under the Sun OpenWindows protocol and the Motif version will run from X11R4 with any window manager.

The command will cause the following screen to appear: 

                   (screen section shown here)

The WINGZ program uses the three mouse buttons on the standard Sun mouse. These buttons from left to right are called: SELECT, ADJUST, and MENU. The SELECT and MENU buttons are the most commonly used. Pressing the MENU button on any one of the items in the main menu will display another menu for that option. This submenu will stay up either until a choice is made or the another MENU button (those lines with "..." following and have a pop-up window come up for entering more information. The remainder of the lines in the submenu are commands and can be executed by pressing the SELECT button on the command.

The program will place a box around the first row in column A, indicating the placement of the first element of the spreadsheet. The type of format for the data entered can be selected by pressing the MENU button first on the Format button and then on the Number menu. This menu, shown below, shows the many formats available for the input data. Selecting the format will enable the user to enter data in that format until another format is chosen. After the data has been entered, the format can be changed by selecting the "cells" to be changed. The cells may be selected by pressing the SELECT button on the beginning cell and dragging the pointer to the ending cell. The entire column may be selected by pressing SELECT on the column letter. After the data cells have been selected, go to the Format menu and choose the desired data format. 

                   (screen section shown here)

The data can be edited simply by selecting the cells to edit and entering the new value. Also selecting the column and pressing the delete key will delete the entire column.

Once the data is entered into the cells there are many operations that can be performed on the data. The data can be sorted alphabetically or numerically, or you may define an equation for the columns so that one column is the result of one, two or more of the other columns. This can be accomplished from the main screen by selecting the desired column and pressing the SELECT on the "=" button and entering the formula using numbers and numeric operators. Pressing the key will complete the formula. This can also be done for entering text formulas which are most commonly used for database type operations such as keeping addresses and names in the cells.

By pressing the MENU button on the Window icon in the main menu bar you will find a command for the help window. This window has a large mass of information but is mainly directed toward explanation of the Menus and Commands rather than being useful for "How to" information. There are manuals available for the software in the MSEE terminal room, including a manual for the programming language included with the software.

If you are not the type to sit at the terminal and figure out an application then you may be interested in the short course being offered by the ECN with the Beginning Course offered on February 5th and the Intermediate Course offered on February 19th.

The following list will give some idea as to the use of each of the pull-down windows available from the main menu bar. Some experimenting may be required to get the hang of the full program usage. The program will also draw simple shapes and make presentation charts. The short course will demonstrate the program by giving an example of keeping and manipulating student grades for a semester course.