l123: A Lotus 1-2-3-Style Terminal Spreadsheet with Modern Excel Compatibility
By
duane1024
Slow-proofed and worth the wait. Worth its weight in flour.
Summary
l123 is an open-source terminal spreadsheet application that recreates the classic Lotus 1-2-3 DOS-era experience (slash menus, three-line control panel, keyboard-first workflows) while adding modern Excel (.xlsx) compatibility. Built with Rust and IronCalc, it targets the interaction model of Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3.4a for DOS (1993) and is actively developed on GitHub.
Key quotes
· 3 pulledl123 recreates the classic DOS-era spreadsheet experience — slash menus, three-line control panel, keyboard-first workflows, WYSIWYG icon panel, and all — on top of a modern formula engine with native .xlsx round-trip.
Its interaction model targets Lotus 1-2-3 Release 3.4a for DOS (1993). Its compute and I/O layers are Rust, IronCalc, and UTF-8.
Actively developed. Tracking the milestone plan in docs/PLAN.md
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