owl
Snit <usenet@gallopinginsanity.com>wrote:

Snit
On 4/1/17, 9:45 PM, in article abc90z8.3ahie@rooftop.invalid, "owl" <owl@rooftop.invalid>wrote:

owl
Snit <usenet@gallopinginsanity.com>wrote:

Snit
On 4/1/17, 2:23 AM, in article ab9b03.gawe@rooftop.invalid, "owl" <owl@rooftop.invalid>wrote:

...

owl
Nothing bizarre about it at all. It's not much different from your embedded tables, which are also in frames (or whatever Apple calls the containers).

https://vid.me/Al6B

Snit
A cool, weird, and somewhat bizarre work around.

owl
What is weird or bizarre about it?

Snit
Hint: show the whole process... how you embedded the windows,

owl
xterm -into ...

Snit
how you tied them together

owl
In the main sheet:

let <cell>= @ston(@ext("sc -W<range><file>2>/dev/null",0))

along with:

1-sec looping of an update script with xdotool type --window <windowid>"@"

Snit
Ok, the looping in the background is clearly kludgy.

owl
It's not a kludge. It's the way it works.

sc doesn't auto-update unless you either enter something into a cell or type "@", and you can actually prevent it from auto-updating at all with the -m switch. The files are linked regardless. I send the "@" just to keep from having to move the mouse to the window and doing it. If you don't mind having a non-interactive display of the sheet instead, then you can use something like the following and not have to loop with xdotool:

anon@lowtide:~/code/sc$ cat domain #!/bin/bash while [ 1 ];do sc -Wa0:h20 main.sc 2>/dev/null sleep 1 done anon@lowtide:~/code/sc$

That will give you the same continuous updating, but the display is just ascii output, and you can't type anything into the window. You also lose the highlight colors and cell labels that you get with the interactive version. Realistically, the automatic "@" interferes with input into the window anyway, so it's best just to have a non-continuous update; but this was just to show that you *can* get continous updating of a remote window if you need it. That can be useful for a "totals" sheet that gathers input from various other sheets that you are working on, but which doesn't really need any manual attention itself.

Snit
, etc. Hey, let us each show that with four tables, all tied together and having simple equations flow through them.

For consistency sake and to make things easy:

Table 1: numbers 1-20 Table 2: add 3 to each number Table 3: multiple the results by 3 Table 4: subtract 9 from each number

Then have a graph showing the data from table 4.

owl
https://vid.me/FU0X

Snit
You clearly have that scripted before recording. I started a new file and did everything on screen. Even shared it so you can easily play with it online... add vulgar images or whatever you wanted to do. :)

Did you bother to click my link and look at it at all?

owl
Not yet. I've been working on something.

...

Snit
Oh, Apple calls them "tables"... because they are, you know, tables. :)

owl
The table is in a container.

Snit
Of course... and they are in windows which are also containers (and they are in sheets and tabs, both of which are containers).

owl
Then why did you say "Apple calls them 'tables' because they are tables" in response to my saying that "the tables are are also in frames (or whatever Apple calls them)"?

Snit
Because Apple calls them tables.

The tables are in other containers (tabs, windows, etc.) but the tables are just tables. And the tables have rows and columns and cells.

owl
The tables are *in* resizable containers within the window. (Unless you think that rows and columns are destroyed on the periphery whenever you shrink a table frame).

...

Printed docs are static anyway, so it doesn't matter how you get to the result. Documents shared for editing can just share the whole process if necessary.

Snit
As opposed to sharing a file

owl
A tarball is a file.

Snit
Which contains a bunch of files (at least in this case) and they are not in any way treated as a single file once they are in a usable format.

owl
The files might be accessed through a single script, which might be tied to a hotkey or launcher.

Snit
I am talking about just sending a spreadsheet to someone and letting them use it. If it is multiple files in the background (say in a zipped format) that is fine -- as long as the end user can just open it and use it.

owl
Why is a zipped format (as in a docx) "fine," but a tarball is not fine?

Documents do not need to be in single files. Are not docx files themselves just compressed archives of multiple files?

Snit
I believe so. Same with the files Numbers use (you can even open the "package" contents and look at it if you care to... but most users have no such need ever).

owl
And you could have a script in the tarball that does everything with one command. For that matter, the tarball itself could be wrapped in a script.

You criticized my video by saying that I had scripted everything in advance.

The thing is, the entirety of what you see on screen is the result of one small script.

That script creates all the spreadsheets, the update script, the gnuplot script, specifies the initial window positions, and executes them. There was no manual creation of anything at all, other than the single script.

So it's all just "one file" that explodes into multiple files on execution. Well, I did manually create the launcher, but, as history has shown, even that could have been scripted. :)

Snit
or even sharing it online

owl
Ever heard of X11 forwarding? It works great.

Snit
LOL! I am speaking of just letting people easily access and even edit the stuff online.

owl
X11 forwarding lets people easily access and edit stuff remotely.

Snit
Would love to work with your shared content... just post a link like I did. In case you lost my link (looks like it was snipped) here it is:

owl
I would let you shell into my machine and do some X11 forwarding, but you know...

Snit
<https://www.icloud.com/numbers/0m6a5IKo-pJFgG8dY32KU-f-A#Owl2>

Should work on pretty much any modern browser. If you have macOS or iOS you can even open it in a local copy of Numbers. The fact you need one of the Apple OSs, though, is a pretty big weakness.

Seriously, though, play with it for a bit and see how easy it is... even if the online version offers less than the desktop version.

owl
I'll check it out later.

Snit
And keep in mind the focus of the tool is NOT on heavy duty calculations. If you want to have fun, try creating a table with a few thousand rows and columns. Not sure it will even let you (likely not) but if it does I am sure it will be slow. Even the desktop one would be. And I think the online version lacks some functions... but even it has fewer than Excel (and, I am sure, sc).

Again, NOT pushing Numbers as the be-all and end-all of spreadsheets or putting sc down... just noting it does many of the things it is designed for better (in my view). And if you disagree, so be it.

One big strength of sc is you can use it on any UNIX or Unix-like OS or even other ones.

owl
It offers cell and range locking, but not password protection. I believe that password protection of documents is typically implemented weakly anyway. Besides, I don't see the benefit in password-protecting the locking of cell ranges anyway, unless you just want to protect a particular copy of a document, which can be done with system perms.

Snit
It would have come in handy even with the spell tool that the kids I was working with posted... they only wanted people to be able to edit specific cells of specific tables (and even then only with specific values).

owl
I see how locking would help with that, but what value is password protection there?

Snit
You can do that with Excel (though you cannot have more than one table per sheet). I would have to double check but I am pretty sure you can do the same thing with LO Calc... if I remember correctly there were some limitations compared to Excel but I cannot recall what they were. Could be wrong (or it could be outdated).

owl
As for limitations, it looks like sc maxes out at about 22 million cells:

http://imgur.com/a/oJNCO

:(