On: SCIM: Ncurses based, Vim-like spreadsheet

[lkdfjlkdfjlg]

I think it looks gorgeous, but I'm skeptical that it's actually more efficient than just using excel.

[constantcrying → lkdfjlkdfjlg]

>but I'm skeptical that it's actually more efficient than just using excel.

It is more keyboard driven than Excel and felt a bit more "productive", far less focus on designing the spreadsheet.

You use Excel because you have to, as part of your job. But I used this for some smaller things and it worked reasonably well.

[SoftTalker → constantcrying]

Lotus 1-2-3 was originally a screen-based, keyboard driven application.

[FerretFred → lkdfjlkdfjlg]

I used it on my Raspberry Pi Zero "TravelPi" project which was TUI-based. No way could I get Excel on there :)

[opengears → lkdfjlkdfjlg]

show me how you start excel in your terminal

[fragmede → opengears]

'

    open /Applications/Microsoft Excel.app/

[Someone → fragmede]

More robust:

  open -b com.Microsoft.Excel

That will open it even if it has a different name or is in a different directory.

Disadvantage: autocomplete doesn’t work on that in the terminal.

[lsllc → fragmede]

Hmmm:

    The files /Applications/Microsoft and /Users/lsllc/Excel.app do not exist.

Missing a backslash! [0] ... how quaintly Microsoft!

/s

[0] To escape the space, or you could quote the entire argument to `open`

[smaudet → opengears]

For me spreadsheets are most useful when shared. My biggest objection - can I share with e.g. google sheets or office 365?

I think it's neat for terminal usage, though.

Other problem: I can vim but I prefer the emacs keybindings.

[constantcrying → smaudet]

You can share with git. But obviously this is no real replacement for cloud based multi user spread sheet software.

To be honest I also think that if you are making heavy use of cloud based spread sheet software you have a 100% chance of being a drain on your organization and society as a whole, so I can't really count those missing features as a big downside.

[smaudet → constantcrying]

> To be honest I also think that if you are making heavy use of cloud based spread sheet software you have a 100% chance of being a drain on your organization and society as a whole

How about for just personal (family/friends) usage?

I would tend to agree spreadsheets are a crutch in larger orgs, however they're best deployed as a prototype tool IMO.

There's plenty of room for > 1 and < 5 (write-access) person operations where cloud based xlsx sharing just makes far more sense than some expensive/excessive enterprise tools.

[p_l → smaudet]

It appears to support XLSX, so for certain level of sharing it should work.

[SoftTalker → smaudet]

I suppose you could share using tmux or screen.

[smaudet → SoftTalker]

And my next question would be can this software handle concurrent writes?

If it could, that'd be an excellent solution.

[lkdfjlkdfjlg → opengears]

That's.... my point. I'm skeptical that you'd be more efficient by doing spreadsheet operations on your terminal vs just using excel on your non-terminal.

[teleforce → lkdfjlkdfjlg]

Imagine having the ability doing your budgetting spreadsheet over SSH, okay never mind ...

[lkdfjlkdfjlg → teleforce]

Why would I choose to do such a basic task over SSH? I do all "office-type" tasks locally. Adding a network here is just over complicating.