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SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

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Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#121

Are there any good emacs modes for spreadsheeting?

I'm not a spreadsheet guy, so I can't say how "good" they are, but Emacs has a few. Of course org-mode can do some of it (what can't org-mode do?), but in my experience it bogs down with larger datasets. Simple Emacs Speadsheet has been around a while and comes built-in these days, but I haven't tried it.

One nice thing is that Emacs has calc-mode built in that gives you all kinds of advanced math capability you can use. The tables in org-mode support this directly, but since calc has a Lisp interface you can use it pretty much anywhere.

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#122

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.

There's also Scheme In A Grid (SIAG):

https://siag.nu/siag/

It has support for the Scheme programming language, MySQL, sending email (was jwz on this project?), and being part of a whole office suite.

SIAG Office:

http://siag.nu/index.shtml

(I'm kinda surprised. I remember when this was just that odd little program that shipped with Damn Small Linux.)

It can even load multiple file formats, including LaTeX, troff, and HTML tables:

https://siag.nu/siag/fileformats.html

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#123
post #93

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…

You forgot one thing: data entry. It is far more convenient to type tabular data in a spreadsheet app than in a REPL. I use it for simple SQL data, too. As Python coder I use visidata. Provides also fast and convenient aggregations etc. And, btw, if you search for "distraction free writing",you will find that even some non-coders use vim.

Unless you're a geneticist:

"Scientists rename human genes to stop Microsoft Excel from misreading them as dates" (2023) https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21355674/human-genes-renam...>

Or anyone else for whom Excel's automatic data-munging "features" are a concern.

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#124

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 Lightning Demo at PyCascades 2018:

https://youtu.be/N1CBDTgGtOU

Submitted it here in case people want to comment about the video:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40885556

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#125

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!

Shh! Don't remind Bill Gates of his famous last words!

https://www.google.com/search?q=640kb+ought+to+be+enough+for...

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#126

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.

It's only because you can't put Electron apps in the terminal (yet).

Don't worry. The word on the street is that a red-hot startup is shortly launching a terminal with a petabyte of memory attached to it.

(They patented an innovation called hardware attached to software, instead of the traditional software attached to hardware.)

That should easily suffice for many instances of bloatware, er, Electron apps running in tmux tabs.

Hybrid apps FTW!

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#127
post #120

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 reall…

It's all about picking the right tool for the job. I don't see easily constructing a Discounted Cash Flow model in a relational database making a ton of sense. Sure, you could have the data in one, and use a php script to handle the modeling, and output it on a webpage, but the reality is, a spreadsheet just does it a lot easier, and is what most people would want.

For handling structured data, spreadsheets can do it, but they're not always going to be the best tool for the job, as they do a lot of other things, too, which means if you're not careful, your data will lose its appropriate structure.

Re: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

#130

This article made me recall a text based GUI? I used in commercial programming tool named "Vermont Views" previously named "Windows for Data" This was around about 1990 or earlier? . It was a tool that allowed relatively easy development of text based user interfaces Old Ad for it https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine-1992-01/page/n25/m... Google the words >> +"Windows for Data" Vermont Views << for lots other li…

The "windows for Data" and Vermont views target LOTS platforms , including DOS and lots Unix variants
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