Excel.vim

#1

Post by johannh » Fri, Oct 10, 2014, 12:51 PM UTC

Re: Excel.vim

#2

Post by ygra » Fri, Oct 10, 2014, 1:18 PM UTC

»Works best on excel files that contain English characters only.«

That's a quite sad statement to make nowadays. I guess the old binary format might be worse regarding character sets, but at least the newer ones should use Unicode exclusively which makes this a very odd restriction.

Re: Excel.vim

#3

Post by hk__2 » Fri, Oct 10, 2014, 1:18 PM UTC

Why make a Vim plugin instead of a standalone program since it’s read-only?

Re: Excel.vim

#4

Post by cowsandmilk » Fri, Oct 10, 2014, 1:26 PM UTC

hk__2 wrote: post #3

Why make a Vim plugin instead of a standalone program since it’s read-only?

As a Vim plugin, you get a lot of features of Vim for free (e.g. search, familiar bindings). And the code is only 56 lines. A stand-alone program would likely have less features and be much longer.

Re: Excel.vim

#5

Post by daGrevis » Fri, Oct 10, 2014, 1:55 PM UTC

hk__2 wrote: post #3

Why make a Vim plugin instead of a standalone program since it’s read-only?

Not everything has to be useful or even sane. Especially on _Hacker_ News.

Edit: To clarify, I think this shows what hacking is all about. Playful cleverness and curiosity.

Re: Excel.vim

#6

Post by DougBTX » Fri, Oct 10, 2014, 2:00 PM UTC

hk__2 wrote: post #3

Why make a Vim plugin instead of a standalone program since it’s read-only?

Most of the functionality is in the xlrd library, think of this as just a frontend.

Re: Excel.vim

#7

Post by fiatjaf » Fri, Oct 10, 2014, 2:01 PM UTC

I think this could be greatly useful, as also sc could have been.

Re: Excel.vim

#8

Post by deadweight3 » Fri, Oct 10, 2014, 2:05 PM UTC

ygra wrote: post #2

»Works best on excel files that contain English characters only.« That's a quite sad statement to make nowadays. I guess the old binary format might be worse regarding character sets, but at least the newer ones should use Unicode exclusively which makes this a very odd restriction.

I hate this sentiment. I speak English and French and have limited amount of time to hack on software I'm giving away for free. My day job consists entirely in English. I have neither the experience, nor the inclination for internationalization of software. Don't like, don't use it. Or fork it, and add it yourself, because obviously you have more free time than I have.

Re: Excel.vim

#9

Post by deadweight3 » Fri, Oct 10, 2014, 2:09 PM UTC

Working in a corporate world where an excel can often be how you receive bug reports, this will actually fit very well into my workflow.

Re: Excel.vim

#10

Post by rtpg » Fri, Oct 10, 2014, 2:12 PM UTC

deadweight3 wrote: post #8

ygra wrote: post #2

»Works best on excel files that contain English characters only.« That's a quite sad statement to make nowadays. I guess the old binary format might be worse regarding character sets, but at least the newer ones should use Unicode exclusively which makes this a very odd restriction.

I hate this sentiment. I speak English and French and have limited amount of time to hack on software I'm giving away for free. My day job consists entirely in English. I have neither the experience, nor the inclination for internationalization of software. Don't like, don't use it. Or fork it, and add it yourself, because obviously you have more free time than I have.

the thing is if you build for unicode support from the start these conversations don't need to be had. The problem is not enough people treat text as a black box from the start (I can understand unwillingness to support bigger things like RTL)