Lotus 1-2-3 for Linux

This is a native port of Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3 to Linux. This is possible because Lotus 1-2-3 for UNIX SystemV used a trick called partial linking to workaround a technical limitation in early UNIX systems. Surprisingly, that can be used to modify it to support new platforms.

There's an article documenting how this is possible here.

Building

Dependencies

First, you need a version of binutils that is compiled with coff-i386 target support. You can check like this:

$ objdump --info | grep coff-i386

Note: Most distributions do not enable this for some reason.

Run the included binutils.sh to download and compile a version of binutils known to work for this.

Secondly, you need a copy of Lotus 1-2-3 for UNIX, you can download it here. Just place the raw disk images in the build directory and run extract.sh.

Finally, just run make.

Packages

The following packages are required

Binutils

Unfortunately, most distributions do not enable coff-i386 support in binutils.

It's very easy to enable it yourself, download binutils and configure it with --enable-targets=all.

Note: binutils-2.38 is known to work, some earlier versions have been found to not work.

There's no need to install it, just build it with make.

When that's complete, copy objcopy and objdump from the binutils directory, and ld-new from the ld directory to 123elf directory.

Important: Remember to rename ld-new to ld.

The Makefile should automatically use the new binaries, and continue to build.

Running

Copy the file l123set.cf to ~/.l123set, and run ./123.

Getting Started

• There is a man page in ./root/lotus/man/man1/123.1, and a full manual available online here.

Lotus 1-2-3 has context sensitive online help, you can press F1 at most times to see some hints.

Note: You use use the / key to open the 123 menu!

If you've used any spreadsheet before, you should be able to get started quickly. Functions use @ instead of =, but the common functions like @SUM, @AVG, @INDEX, and even @HLOOKUP all work as you would expect.

FAQ

• Q. When I start 123, it says "Error reading file", is this a bug?

If you press F1 when you see that error, Lotus explains that you must specify a file. By default, it will try to open ~/auto123.wk3 or whatever file you specified on the commandline with -w.

If you want to get rid of the error, just save a blank spreadsheet there. You can also change where it looks for the autorun files, use /Worksheet Global Default Dir and then Update to save your settings.

If you just want to try Lotus out, you can try one of the sample files, e.g.

$ ./123 -w -w "$PWD/root/lotus/123.v10/smpfiles/income.wk3"

• Q. How do I quit 123?

If the status indicator in the top right says READY, try /Quit Yes.

If it doesn't say READY (it might say ERROR, HELP POINT, MENU or something else), try hitting Esc until it goes back to READY.

Bugs

• The keyboard map seems to be incomplete This seems to be working in xterm, please test other terminals!
• Graphs don't work yet (I'm working on it!).
• Printing doesn't work yet.
• File an issue if you notice something, there are probably lots of minor issues that can be fixed!