I was wondering if this means you're stepping away from development of Auspex.

I was in the other thread where the last comment is about a year old. There's a fairly minor bug that I was hoping to get on the radar to be fixed in an upcoming release.

I just discovered Auspex and I've really been enjoying it! Seems like I'm always late to these parties. :-P Will there be a next release? Any idea when?

Recommendation #1 - Don't try to re-write Excel from the ground up!  ;D

Most of what Excel gives you falls into two categories: calculation engine (using formulas to calculate the value of cells based on the values of other cells) and data presentation (sorting data, filtering it, color coding certain values, etc.)

Do you need both of these feature sets? It's not common for a database app to need the calculation engine features, since you can usually do those kinds of things in the app's code.

First of all, can you just use Excel itself? With it's data access features, programmability via VBA, and its presence on many Windows computers, maybe you can just base your app directly in Excel.

You don't say what language you will be developing in. That makes a big difference. If you are using a .NET language such as C#, VB.NET or ASP.NET, there are some very full-featured components you can use. Check out http://www.infragistics.com/dotnet/netadvantage/winforms/wingrid.aspx

That gives you a lot of data presentation ability, but if all you really need the full range of Excel functionality, you'll need something like http://www.infragistics.com/dotnet/netadvantage/aspnet/infragisticsexcel.aspx.

There are probably similar components for other languages, depending on how well supported they are. These may not be free, though. (The Infragisitcs one sure aren't.)

Maybe if you gave us some more background on what you are trying to do we could offer more options.

And you've been trying for six months! :-)

Try this one: http://www.winmatrix.com/forums/index.php?/topic/19910-xp-tablet-pc-powertoys-ported-to-normal-xp-pro-home-mce/page__p__184329__hl__tabletpc__fromsearch__1#entry184329

I don't know if it's the same thread, but it's related. Maybe they deleted the old one?  :o I used the site's search to find this one. You can try Google too, adding "site:winmatrix.com" to your search. Good luck!