MicroPro International founder Seymour Rubinstein – he formed the company to market WordStar, is back again with a new company, but this time the product is spreadsheets. Rubinstein’s new company, Surpass Software Systems, based in Novato, California, has a spreadsheet called Surpass and Microbytes Daily reports that while the $495 package is similar to Lotus 1-2-3, it has features still not available in the market leader. It adds the the ability to record macros, an undo capability, and graphics with a three-dimensional look. It can put up several windows on the screen at a time, each looking at a different spreadsheet, and all these spreadsheets can be dynamically linked, so that users who have the mentality to master three-dimensional chess can create 3-D spreadsheets. Rubinstein claims the feature will provide a relational spreadsheetcapability. Surpass is claimed to be compatible with all the commands, functions, macros and data files of 1-2-3 version 2.1 but also has two features from 1-2-3 competitor MultiPlan to speed up recalculation – it recalculates only those cells that require it, and does it in background, so that users can work on their spreadsheets while the calculations are being done. Surpass was written in an enhanced dialect of the M2SDS version of Modula 2 system, which comes from Interface Technologies of Houston.
