Interesting idea. You could actually combine J and spreadsheets right now either via the COM (after registering J.dll) or by using VSTO and the PInvoke layer I wrote (and I hear others have had too but those are not publicly available): https://github.com/borota/NetJ/blob/master/J.SessionManager/JSession.cs .NET J console is an example of using j.dll inside C#: https://github.com/borota/NetJ/blob/master/J.Console/Program.cs
On Sat, May 11, 2013 at 4:03 AM, Björn Helgason <[email protected]> wrote: > What is quite obvious is that ordinary users have taken a fondness for all > kinds of spreadsheets. > > Over the years spreadsheets have been very popular. > > Spreadsheets may not be as advanced as many programming languages. > > All kinds of things may be much better handled in J than a spreadsheet. > > So why not mix J and spreadsheets? > > J and grids have been interesting. > > Some demos of sending data between a spreadsheet and J have been > interesting. > > Having a spreadsheet with all the power of J would be very interesting. > > > > > 2013/5/11 <[email protected]> > > > >I can imagine that if one were to look into how the documents are > > >generated, it would show interesting things like half the time going to > > >parsing XML or some other similarly relevant activity. > > > > > >This kind of nonsense is rampant in commercial systems. > > > > > >Anyone in this forum (maybe even working at MS) have a rationale for > > >naming an HTML file with a .xls extension? (and distributing it to the > > >world....) > > > > Imagine you want a quick-and-dirty export for medium-competent users. > > > > You do not want to do all the configuration of sorting etc. because they > > want to be able to sort it in their spreadsheet anyway. > > > > You know that a file of any widespread format and with .xls extension > > will be opened in the spreadsheet program the user uses — whether it is > > Excel or LibreOffice, Calligra or something else. > > > > Now: generating valid XLS is a pain. CSV is good, but there are problems > > with default encoding. And HTML is opened easily by Excel _and_ contains > > encoding header. Also, valid HTML is not complex to parse and it is also > > easy to write a script that will reexport HTML file to CSV using any > > spreadsheet program (maybe even lynx). So it gives optimal balance of > > inconveniences given their distribution of user skills. > > > > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > > > > -- > Björn Helgason, Verkfræðingur > Fornustekkum II > 781 Hornafirði, > t-póst: [email protected] > gsm: +3546985532 > twitter: @flugfiskur > http://groups.google.com/group/J-Programming > > > Tæknikunnátta höndlar hið flókna, sköpunargáfa er meistari einfaldleikans > > góður kennari getur stigið á tær án þess að glansinn fari af skónum > /|_ .-----------------------------------. > ,' .\ / | Með léttri lund verður | > ,--' _,' | Dagurinn í dag | > / / | Enn betri en gærdagurinn | > ( -. | `-----------------------------------' > | ) | (\_ _/) > (`-. '--.) (='.'=) ♖♘♗♕♔♙ > `. )----' (")_(") ☃☠ > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
