Ask HN: What features do you want in a modern spreadsheet app?

#1

Post by codingfounder » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 4:27 PM UTC

Hi HN, I want to build a new spreadsheet app which works on all devices. Excel is great for what it does but it doesn't understand the internet and collaboration. Google docs is great for collaboration, but is still a bit clunky and lacks a lot of useful functionality. The Google drive mobile spreadsheet apps have terrible UX.

So I want to build a new spreadsheet app that works great on desktop browsers and also on phones and tablets.

These are some features I have in mind:

1. Hook into all the rich web APIs around us and pull in data from places like Evernote, Twitter, Fitbit, Basecamp, etc straight into a spreadsheet to play with. I can't believe we don't already have this!

2. Reliable format conversion between CSV, JSON, TSV, Excel, Gdocs, etc (as suggested by couple of people in the comments).

3. Shortcuts for common data manipulation functions like basic arithmetic, concatenating strings, converting delimited data to columns etc. I'm imagining simple big buttons for these to make them easy and fast to do on a touch device.

Now I want to find out what things HN would find useful to help me prioritise some features for v1.

Any ideas and comments welcome. Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What features do you want in a modern spreadsheet app?

#2

Post by karolisd » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 4:41 PM UTC

Just today I had a couple issues with Excel if I wanted to save something as JSON or if I wanted to save something as an UTF-8 encoded CSV (Excel converts it to ASCII).

Re: Ask HN: What features do you want in a modern spreadsheet app?

#3

Post by codingfounder » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 4:43 PM UTC

karolisd wrote: post #2

Just today I had a couple issues with Excel if I wanted to save something as JSON or if I wanted to save something as an UTF-8 encoded CSV (Excel converts it to ASCII).

I've come across several data format conversion issues, in my personal use cases and of others. Would a reliable format conversion app be of value on its own?

Re: Ask HN: What features do you want in a modern spreadsheet app?

#4

Post by Jongseong » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 5:11 PM UTC

codingfounder wrote: post #3

karolisd wrote: post #2

Just today I had a couple issues with Excel if I wanted to save something as JSON or if I wanted to save something as an UTF-8 encoded CSV (Excel converts it to ASCII).

I've come across several data format conversion issues, in my personal use cases and of others. Would a reliable format conversion app be of value on its own?

My company uses the French version of MS Office and after upgrading, I can't quite get it to generate CSV files in the right encoding needed to work with the company's proprietary software. So I need to go through the hassle of manually generating the CSV files in the correct format. An easy way to work with different encodings and formats will be especially useful for collaboration.

One thing that would be simple and useful is the ability to generate or convert between different CSV file formats. For example, French CSV files use semicolons instead of commas to separate values, and use commas as decimal points.

Re: Ask HN: What features do you want in a modern spreadsheet app?

#5

Post by codingfounder » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 5:22 PM UTC

Jongseong wrote: post #4

codingfounder wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come across several data format conversion issues, in my personal use cases and of others. Would a reliable format conversion app be of value on its own?

My company uses the French version of MS Office and after upgrading, I can't quite get it to generate CSV files in the right encoding needed to work with the company's proprietary software. So I need to go through the hassle of manually generating the CSV files in the correct format. An easy way to work with different encodings and formats will be especially useful for collaboration. One thing that would be simple an…

Thanks for your comment, Jongseong. I'd like to learn a bit more about your file conversion issues. Can I email you somewhere?

Re: Ask HN: What features do you want in a modern spreadsheet app?

#6

Post by o_s_m » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 6:49 PM UTC

Wolfram Alpha and MatLab integration.

Re: Ask HN: What features do you want in a modern spreadsheet app?

#7

Post by codingfounder » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 7:11 PM UTC

o_s_m wrote: post #6

Wolfram Alpha and MatLab integration.

Thanks for the suggestion. Can you tell me how you would use such an integration?

Re: Ask HN: What features do you want in a modern spreadsheet app?

#8

Post by karolisd » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 7:35 PM UTC

codingfounder wrote: post #3

karolisd wrote: post #2

Just today I had a couple issues with Excel if I wanted to save something as JSON or if I wanted to save something as an UTF-8 encoded CSV (Excel converts it to ASCII).

I've come across several data format conversion issues, in my personal use cases and of others. Would a reliable format conversion app be of value on its own?

Yeah, probably. A closely related problem is cleaning up data. Something that can detect unclosed quotes and/or unclosed HTML tags. Something that can figure out when a word should be capitalized or lowercase.

Here's another problem: how do you make a field in a CSV that when you convert the document into JSON, the field becomes an array?

Re: Ask HN: What features do you want in a modern spreadsheet app?

#9

Post by wikwocket » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 7:55 PM UTC

Best of luck to you! I suspect you don't know how large this particular iceberg is under the surface[1], but I wish you the best. :)

1: There's a reason that POI-HSSF, the Apache Java-to-Excel library, stands for Poor Obfuscation Implementation-Horrible SpreadSheet Format!

Re: Ask HN: What features do you want in a modern spreadsheet app?

#10

Post by PeterWhittaker » Mon, Sep 16, 2013, 8:04 PM UTC

tl;dr: Use spreadsheet for simple small business accounting, directly, with ability to export to accounting package (and to gen timesheets and invoices), out of the box, without me having to grow my own macros, etc.

This may be a very limited use-case, but....

I'm a one-man shop. Every month, using my (relatively quick and lightweight) spreadsheet software, I enter time worked for various clients, prepare timesheets and invoices for them... and then re-enter said data into my (slower, less friendly) accounting package.

The regular monthly stuff is almost always the same, very cookie cutter.

Having an accounting package is almost overkill, but it supports "accountant interoperability"[1] - and using the latter to do the former is definitely overkill. And I've never been able to figure out the automation/recurring capabilities, they seemed geared for more complex enterprises.

I hate the fact I enter data multiple times, I hate that I have to use the accounting package to manage expenses, etc., etc. - but integration and automation are complex, definitely overkill for my needs.

What I'd really like is the ability to use a spreadsheet for basic double entry bookkeeping (there are only a handful of accounts I use regularly; I can use the accounting package for the infrequent ones) and for entering my time, and have dirt-simple spreadsheet functions for generating client timesheets (sometimes based on the client's format, since my clients are often middlemen), for generating invoices (based on my format), and for generating a file that can be imported into my accounting package periodically.

+1 if the spreadsheet knows about regular monthly things and reminds/walks me through them.

Lightweight, fast, cross-platform. All the things my accounting package (Windows-only, so runs under a VM) is not.

[1] Accountants are like lawyers, IMHO: If you're unsure whether you need one, you probably do; my annual taxes cost me more than doing them myself, but I have greater assurance of minimizing my tax bill while staying off Revenue's radar - audits are expensive.