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SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

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Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#111

Post by School-Cotton »

AbraKdabra wrote: post #46
toenail wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you don't like something that doesn't mean whatever you like is better.

I was writing that yeah, I definitely meant that to be subjective to each own, but I can't lie to myself, I mean yeah, people surely prefer Vim to whatever alternative there's available out there that makes your life less miserable, but I'm 100% sure I take my mom or your mom or some person that doesn't have the bare minimum computer knowledge and put them in front of Vim and Nano and tell them "hey here's two text e…

My mom doesn’t read Hacker News. She’s not the target audience of this post. Why should we care whether she can use sc-im?

It’s okay for powerful tools to have a learning curve.

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#112

Post by AbraKdabra »

School-Cotton wrote: post #111
AbraKdabra wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was writing that yeah, I definitely meant that to be subjective to each own, but I can't lie to myself, I mean yeah, people surely prefer Vim to whatever alternative there's available out there that makes your life less miserable, but I'm 100% sure I take my mom or your mom or some person that doesn't have the bare minimum computer knowledge and put them in front of Vim and Nano and tell them "hey here's two text e…

My mom doesn’t read Hacker News. She’s not the target audience of this post. Why should we care whether she can use sc-im? It’s okay for powerful tools to have a learning curve.

Learning curve != unnecessary complexity.

Look me in the eyes and tell me that a text editor somehow needs a text input mode or a command to exit the application that's not a universal shortcut like Ctrl-C or Ctrl-D for GNU/Linux, the fact that the "how to exit Vim" meme is a reality is a perfect example of what I mean.

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#113

Post by Gormo »

VagabundoP wrote: post #97
khimaros wrote: post #34

tried this out a while back and ultimately settled on visidata instead https://github.com/saulpw/visidata

Just tried it and Visidata is awesome. Just loading SQLite dbs is a killer feature with the TUI.

Visidata blows everything else in this category out of the water. I can open a table on a remote Postgres DB, use a regex filter to select the records I want, then do an outer join to a local CSV, all with just a few keystrokes.

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#114

Post by wslh »

ikari_pl wrote: post #71
djha-skin wrote: post #62

Where have you been all my life. This fills such a hole in the market -- a Vim-like terminal spreadsheet tool. The terminal tools have gotten so much better in the last few years. There's a real Renaissance happening.

Microsoft Multiplan for CP/M is the tool for you and only needs 46, maybe 60kB of free memory!

There is a Multiplan for DOS either. The Multiplan [1] page has more information:

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplan

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#115

Post by knuckleheads »

kkukshtel wrote: post #108

For something similar but different, I highly recommend people check out Visidata: https://www.visidata.org/ It's saved my ass on multiple occasions for data wrangling and munging and highly recommend people use it in their own toolkit.

I've been trying to remember the name for this for weeks now, thank you for mentioning it!

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#116

Post by School-Cotton »

AbraKdabra wrote: post #112
School-Cotton wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mom doesn’t read Hacker News. She’s not the target audience of this post. Why should we care whether she can use sc-im? It’s okay for powerful tools to have a learning curve.

Learning curve != unnecessary complexity. Look me in the eyes and tell me that a text editor somehow needs a text input mode or a command to exit the application that's not a universal shortcut like Ctrl-C or Ctrl-D for GNU/Linux, the fact that the "how to exit Vim" meme is a reality is a perfect example of what I mean.

Well I don’t use vim, but I wouldn’t call it “unnecessary complexity”. Modal editing has actual benefits that some people like enough to make the tradeoff.

Assuming it exists for no reason just because you don’t know what those benefits are, and that everyone else must just be stupid, is arrogance on your part.

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#117

Post by packetlost »

kkukshtel wrote: post #108

For something similar but different, I highly recommend people check out Visidata: https://www.visidata.org/ It's saved my ass on multiple occasions for data wrangling and munging and highly recommend people use it in their own toolkit.

VisiData is the best! Saul (the creator) is also a phenomenal dev

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#118

Post by robenkleene »

executesorder66 wrote: post #80

This is really cool, but I don't think this is very useful. In my opinion: if you can use vim, you can probably code, or at least figure it out without too much trouble. If you can code, then you don't need a spreadsheet. You can just write a program to crunch the numbers, or produce a report etc. Excel is so popular, because it is a way for non-coders to crunch a bunch of numbers in a relatively easy way. And the be…

Making a spreadsheet that does a variety of calculations, displays graphs, live updates, is share-able, editable via web and mobile, can be embedded in technical documents and presentations is all free with a spreadsheet. Your comment trying to address the speed argument, replacing with a "python REPL" is difficult to take seriously. Spreadsheets are order of magnitude faster, and that speed advantage scales from the simplest of spreadsheets to the most complex (i.e., just summing a column of data will be maybe 10 times faster in a spreadsheet than a python REPL [although both are trivially fast for this use case], and doing all of the above listed features would be months to program relative to free for the spreadsheet).

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#119

Post by robenkleene »

executesorder66 wrote: post #98
tannhaeuser wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's wrong in more than one way IMO. While vi might be a code editor first and foremost, not all vi users are coders. There are copy writers, academic and literature, having a need for fast and focussed touch typing (George R. R. Martin comes to mind as prominent WordStar user). The entire point of SGML/XML/HTML markup is to be able to create rich text documents without binary formats and special editors; this is a…

I don't disagree with your first paragraph, but I don't think it is relevant to what I was saying. > Conversely, even if you are a coder, classic spreadsheets are extremely useful for any type of ad-hoc reproducible calculation Again, I still feel like code is the ideal solution to "ad-hoc reproducible calculations" > the point is that you can cross-reference cell values and copy/paste with relative cell positions to…

I'd love to hear what specifically makes you call spreadsheets "clunky"? (Personally I find spreadsheets to be quite elegant, a table adapts easily to WIMP [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIMP_(computing)]. E.g., in contrast to say the Bézier curve interface in Illustrator, which I wouldn't ask for explanation in being called clunky, because drawing curves does not adapt easily to WIMP for example.)

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#120

Post by somat »

kkukshtel wrote: post #108

For something similar but different, I highly recommend people check out Visidata: https://www.visidata.org/ It's saved my ass on multiple occasions for data wrangling and munging and highly recommend people use it in their own toolkit.

it's weird but Visidata is very nearly my idea of a perfect spreadsheet. "But!", you exclaim, "Visidata is not a spreadsheet", I know, I know, that is what makes it so weird. Let me explain.

I am not fond of the the usual spreadsheet data model. "It's a big bag of cell" does not fill me with joy. And upon a bit of reflection I think it is the rows, I really hate how easy it is for rows to get out of sync. All I really want is row security.* And this is what visidata brings to the table.

* Relational databases provide this in spades. and in truth most of my spreadsheets have been replaced by them(I maintain a local postgres server on my desktop for all the small random prototype junk you would usually do in a spreadsheet using visidata as a pager) And while the database is great for analysis, random data entry sort of sucks. There are some great tools out there for this. I don't tend to use them, mainly because psql is always there, so I just sort of grumble when I have to do random entry without trying to fix anything. Why postgres instead of sqlite? I like the types and functions better.

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