Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[David Wright]

On Wed 14 Mar 2018 at 18:46:46 (+1100), Erik Christiansen wrote:
> On 13.03.18 10:48, David Wright wrote:
> > On Tue 13 Mar 2018 at 21:31:00 (+1100), Erik Christiansen wrote:
> > > Too true. After a couple of hours of failing to get any GUI drawing
> > > package, not least LibreOffice, to do anything useful, I used Vim to
> > > textually produce the 8 drawings for my house; plan, elevations &
> > > sections, and site plan. It took about 800 lines of Postscript, and I
> > > didn't have to crack the inscrutable secrets of an obstructive GUI
> > > interface.
> > 
> > OTOH the results of your work were highly scrutable?
> 
> Adjectives describe nouns, in the quoted text that is "interface secrets".
> The quoted text did not refer to output/results.
> The quote of my function to draw a door in a floorplan shows my text
> input, not output/results.

That's just playing with words. As far as we on this list are
concerned, your contribution to the thread was a process: editing
PostScript source text with vim. The work that you put into this
process/interface/call it what you will, was a lengthy session
of learning the PostScript language. That has to be costed in,
just as learning about snap-to-grid has to be.

> The result of conversion of the postscript to pdf is a suite of drawings
> when displayed with e.g. xpdf. (Scrutable even to local government
> officials, at considerable cost saving compared to using an architect.)

The marks on the paper were not under discussion, neither as a
technical drawing nor as an architectural design, but only the
operations to produce them.

> But there is perhaps an unstated point - that the postscript language
> (the interface) is not equally scrutable for all.

That's why I quoted it, so people could judge for themselves. It's
the one part of your process that can be clearly put in a posting.
This source code has to be mastered.

> I found it infinitely
> easier to learn a fully discoverable textual language than how to crank
> a mouse engine in mysterious ways.

One would expect that of someone who sees using a mouse as fighting it.

But here we have no way of knowing how the OP views using a mouse
(which for most spreadsheet operations plays a minor role):
whether it makes things easier or speedier, or is best avoided.
For most people, there's a balance; they use both mouse and keyboard
as they feel is appropriate for each action.

All that said, the thrust of my post was: everyone should have some
sort of acquaintance with spreadsheets by the time they leave school.
Vim key bindings—perhaps not. PostScript—probably not.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[David Wright]

On Tue 13 Mar 2018 at 22:00:00 (-0700), Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> On 13/03/18 02:49 PM, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:
> 
> >I also long avoided the complexity of LibreOffice Calc, but a modest
> >investment of time has left me satisfied with the results. Things I like:
> >
> >- Flexible CSV import/export. I like to manipulate CSV files with grep,
> >perl, and geany, and then import into Calc. Nothing is quicker than
> >Ctrl-D in a text editor for deleting unwanted rows. I also use a regex
> >to convert all dates to (for example) ISO 8601 here as fixing date
> >values in Calc can be painful (but formatting is easy with Ctrl-1). Then
> >CSV import to slurp it into Calc, delete unwanted columns, and copy and
> >paste into the target sheet.
> 
> The nice thing for me is that when you import a CSV file,
> LibreOffice Calc sizes each column according to the width of the
> data.  Unlike Excel, you don't have to manually invoke the
> hilariously-titled "auto-format" feature to set the column widths to
> something reasonable.

I was unaware that in Excel you couldn't use the usual method which
I gave (for heights rather than widths, but it's the same) in
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2018/01/msg00264.html
and is used by both gnumeric and calc.

> Speaking of ISO 8601, I'm currently in the process of converting all
> our systems to use it in place of other date formats such as
> /mm/dd. Excel is quite adamant about converting anything that
> looks remotely like a date into mm/dd/ format, but ISO 8601 is
> apparently beyond what its feeble mind can handle, and Excel leaves
> it alone.

But used as an entry format for dates and times, doesn't that mean
you're entering strings, which then can't be used in calculations?

For me, the problem with ISO 8601 as a display format is losing the
month names, so I use formats like -mmm-dd hh:mm for displaying
columns containing timestamps. With CSV export, gnumeric turns such
dates into /mm/dd which can be reimported elsewhere.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Erik Christiansen]

On 13.03.18 10:48, David Wright wrote:
> On Tue 13 Mar 2018 at 21:31:00 (+1100), Erik Christiansen wrote:
> > Too true. After a couple of hours of failing to get any GUI drawing
> > package, not least LibreOffice, to do anything useful, I used Vim to
> > textually produce the 8 drawings for my house; plan, elevations &
> > sections, and site plan. It took about 800 lines of Postscript, and I
> > didn't have to crack the inscrutable secrets of an obstructive GUI
> > interface.
> 
> OTOH the results of your work were highly scrutable?

Adjectives describe nouns, in the quoted text that is "interface secrets".
The quoted text did not refer to output/results.
The quote of my function to draw a door in a floorplan shows my text
input, not output/results.
The result of conversion of the postscript to pdf is a suite of drawings
when displayed with e.g. xpdf. (Scrutable even to local government
officials, at considerable cost saving compared to using an architect.)

But there is perhaps an unstated point - that the postscript language
(the interface) is not equally scrutable for all. I found it infinitely
easier to learn a fully discoverable textual language than how to crank
a mouse engine in mysterious ways. Eric Raymond perhaps said it best.
(See sig)

Cheers,
Erik

-- 
The meta-problem here is that the configuration wizard does all the approved   
rituals (GUI with standardized clicky buttons, help popping up in a browser,
etc. etc.) but doesn't have the central attribute these are supposed to achieve:
discoverability. That is, the quality that every point in the interface has
prompts and actions attached to it from which you can learn what to do next.
   - Eric Raymond, in "The Luxury of Ignorance."

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Charlie Gibbs]

On 13/03/18 02:49 PM, Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:


I also long avoided the complexity of LibreOffice Calc, but a modest
investment of time has left me satisfied with the results. Things I like:

- Flexible CSV import/export. I like to manipulate CSV files with grep,
perl, and geany, and then import into Calc. Nothing is quicker than
Ctrl-D in a text editor for deleting unwanted rows. I also use a regex
to convert all dates to (for example) ISO 8601 here as fixing date
values in Calc can be painful (but formatting is easy with Ctrl-1). Then
CSV import to slurp it into Calc, delete unwanted columns, and copy and
paste into the target sheet.


The nice thing for me is that when you import a CSV file, LibreOffice 
Calc sizes each column according to the width of the data.  Unlike 
Excel, you don't have to manually invoke the hilariously-titled 
"auto-format" feature to set the column widths to something reasonable.


Speaking of ISO 8601, I'm currently in the process of converting all our 
systems to use it in place of other date formats such as /mm/dd. 
Excel is quite adamant about converting anything that looks remotely 
like a date into mm/dd/ format, but ISO 8601 is apparently beyond 
what its feeble mind can handle, and Excel leaves it alone.


A lot of my programming effort goes toward "Excel-proofing" my data.

--
cgi...@surfnaked.ca (Charlie Gibbs)

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[deloptes]

Ben Caradoc-Davies wrote:

> I also long avoided the complexity of LibreOffice Calc, but a modest
> investment of time has left me satisfied with the results.

+1

I use Apache OO, and there is very good documentation such that in 1-2
minutes I could find answer to any of my question and complete the task.

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Ben Caradoc-Davies]

On 13/03/18 16:13, terryc wrote:

What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
Stretch. I need to do some work quickly
hint, if your answer is LibreOffice or similar read the question again.
I'm frustrated that the last few time I wanted to do a simple
spreadsheet layout, it was easier and faster to craft a LaTex document
then try and unfathom LibreOffice methods.


Is your goal calculation or the preparation of tables for documents?

I also long avoided the complexity of LibreOffice Calc, but a modest 
investment of time has left me satisfied with the results. Things I like:


- Flexible CSV import/export. I like to manipulate CSV files with grep, 
perl, and geany, and then import into Calc. Nothing is quicker than 
Ctrl-D in a text editor for deleting unwanted rows. I also use a regex 
to convert all dates to (for example) ISO 8601 here as fixing date 
values in Calc can be painful (but formatting is easy with Ctrl-1). Then 
CSV import to slurp it into Calc, delete unwanted columns, and copy and 
paste into the target sheet.


- Copy a rectangular subset in Calc then Paste Special / HTML in Writer 
is an easy way to get calculated tables into a PDF document.


- Interoperability with Windows users via DOCX gives them something they 
can alter.


LibreOffice can be daunting at first but I found that a little 
persistence went a long way. Even from my perspective as a TeX/LaTeX 
user and programmer with much experience in data ingestion and 
reporting, LibreOffice lets me get small things done more quickly. I 
recommend it.


You can use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, producing delicious nut 
butter, if you do not mind the crunchy bits of shell.  :-)


Kind regards,

--
Ben Caradoc-Davies 
Director
Transient Software Limited 
New Zealand

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Curt]

On 2018-03-13, Joe  wrote:
>> 
>> Yes, on a new stretch (print/SSH/standard utilities) with the
>> following installed already:
>> 
>> etckeeper cryptsetup dosfstools keyutils gdisk zip apt-show-versions
>> aptitude boot-info-script bootlogd dkms exim4 firmware-linux flac
>> fluid-soundfont-gm fluid-soundfont-gs fluidsynth* gpm lame lynx-cur mc
>> mlocate normalize-audio mutt ntp p7zip-full paps pdftk
>> printer-driver-cups-pdf putty putty-doc python-doc python3.5-doc
>> python-reportlab realpath scrot setcd smartmontools sox strace
>> texlive-luatex* timidity tnef unifont uudeview wicd-curses xournal
>> xpdf xzgv xzoom youtube-dl* apt-listbugs emacs emacs24-common-non-dfsg
>> hwdata hwinfo info inxi jpeginfo firmware-ipw2x00
>> ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 linux-source alsa-utils arandr aumix-gtk
>> audacious-plugins audacity evince font-manager fvwm get-flash-videos*
>> 
>> (where * marks the relatively hungry ones), gnumeric will add:
>> 
>> hunspell-en-us enchant libaa1 libdv4 libshout3
>> gstreamer1.0-plugins-good lp-solve yelp libyelp0 pxlib1 fonts-dejavu
>> libhyphen0 libsuitesparseconfig4 libgsf-1-114 gnumeric-doc
>> libgoffice-0.10-10 gnumeric-common gnome-user-guide libaspell15
>> yelp-xsl libtag1v5 libgsf-1-common libcolamd2 libenchant1c2a
>> fonts-dejavu-extra gstreamer1.0-x libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 aspell
>> libgoffice-0.10-10-common libhunspell-1.4-0 libtag1v5-vanilla gnumeric
>> libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18 libxslt1.1 aspell-en
>> 
>
> I think you may be collecting 'recommendeds' there. I've had gnumeric
> installed for many years, and don't have, for example, enchant.
>

I'm disenchanted too.

curty@einstein:~$ apt depends gnumeric
gnumeric
  PreDepends: debconf
  Depends: gnumeric-common (= 1.12.32-1)
 |Depends: debconf (>= 0.5)
  Depends: 
cdebconf
debconf
  Depends: libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.12.4)
  Depends: libc6 (>= 2.23)
  Depends: libcairo2 (>= 1.10.0)
  Depends: libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.25.2)
  Depends: libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.37.3)
  Depends: libgoffice-0.10-10 (>= 0.10.28)
  Depends: libgsf-1-114 (>= 1.14.24)
  Depends: libgtk-3-0 (>= 3.19.12)
  Depends: libpango-1.0-0 (>= 1.22.0)
  Depends: libpangocairo-1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0)
  Depends: libxml2 (>= 2.7.4)
  Depends: pxlib1 (>= 0.5.0)
  Depends: zlib1g (>= 1:1.1.4)
  Depends: gsfonts
  Depends: procps
procps:i386
  Breaks: gnumeric-common (<< 1.12.2)
  Breaks: gnumeric-doc (<< 1.12.32)
  Recommends: gnumeric-doc (>= 1.12.32)
 |Recommends: evince
  Recommends: evince-gtk
  Recommends: lp-solve
  Suggests: gnumeric-plugins-extra
 |Suggests: fonts-liberation
  Suggests: ttf-mscorefonts-installer
  Replaces: gnumeric-common (<< 1.12.2)

-- 
Bah, the latest news, the latest news is not the last.
Samuel Beckett

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Joe]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 10:22:23 -0500
David Wright  wrote:

> On Tue 13 Mar 2018 at 08:59:00 (+), Joe wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:13:33 +1100
> > terryc  wrote:
> >   
> > > What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> > > Stretch. I need to do some work quickly
> > > 
> > > hint, if your answer is LibreOffice or similar read the question
> > > again. I'm frustrated that the last few time I wanted to do a
> > > simple spreadsheet layout, it was easier and faster to craft a
> > > LaTex document then try and unfathom LibreOffice methods.
> > >   
> > 
> > 'The' alternative spreadsheet is gnumeric, but it's some years
> > since I used it last. I recall it as being a bit less Excel-like
> > than LibreOffice (OpenOffice then) but that might be different now.
> > If you don't have any other Gnome stuff, gnumeric is likely to pull
> > in quite a lot of dependencies.  
> 
> Yes, on a new stretch (print/SSH/standard utilities) with the
> following installed already:
> 
> etckeeper cryptsetup dosfstools keyutils gdisk zip apt-show-versions
> aptitude boot-info-script bootlogd dkms exim4 firmware-linux flac
> fluid-soundfont-gm fluid-soundfont-gs fluidsynth* gpm lame lynx-cur mc
> mlocate normalize-audio mutt ntp p7zip-full paps pdftk
> printer-driver-cups-pdf putty putty-doc python-doc python3.5-doc
> python-reportlab realpath scrot setcd smartmontools sox strace
> texlive-luatex* timidity tnef unifont uudeview wicd-curses xournal
> xpdf xzgv xzoom youtube-dl* apt-listbugs emacs emacs24-common-non-dfsg
> hwdata hwinfo info inxi jpeginfo firmware-ipw2x00
> ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 linux-source alsa-utils arandr aumix-gtk
> audacious-plugins audacity evince font-manager fvwm get-flash-videos*
> 
> (where * marks the relatively hungry ones), gnumeric will add:
> 
> hunspell-en-us enchant libaa1 libdv4 libshout3
> gstreamer1.0-plugins-good lp-solve yelp libyelp0 pxlib1 fonts-dejavu
> libhyphen0 libsuitesparseconfig4 libgsf-1-114 gnumeric-doc
> libgoffice-0.10-10 gnumeric-common gnome-user-guide libaspell15
> yelp-xsl libtag1v5 libgsf-1-common libcolamd2 libenchant1c2a
> fonts-dejavu-extra gstreamer1.0-x libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 aspell
> libgoffice-0.10-10-common libhunspell-1.4-0 libtag1v5-vanilla gnumeric
> libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18 libxslt1.1 aspell-en
> 

I think you may be collecting 'recommendeds' there. I've had gnumeric
installed for many years, and don't have, for example, enchant.

-- 
Joe

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[David Wright]

On Tue 13 Mar 2018 at 21:31:00 (+1100), Erik Christiansen wrote:
> On 13.03.18 09:59, Joe wrote:
> > On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 20:42:08 +1100
> > Erik Christiansen  wrote:
> > > An sc description: "Its keybindings are familiar to users of 'vi', and
> > > it has most features that a pure spreadsheet would, but lacks things
> > > like graphing and saving in foreign formats. It's very stable and
> > > quite easy to use once you've put a little effort into learning it."
> > > makes it look as simple as it gets.
> > > 
> > > Erik
> > > (Who just uses a line of awk when needing to sum a column or two in a
> > > table.)
> > > 
> > 
> > It's the 'little effort' that stood out for me. Someone familiar with
> > the operation of a piece of software always grossly underestimates how
> > much they know about it, and how much someone else coming to it cold
> > needs to know.
> 
> Too true. After a couple of hours of failing to get any GUI drawing
> package, not least LibreOffice, to do anything useful, I used Vim to
> textually produce the 8 drawings for my house; plan, elevations &
> sections, and site plan. It took about 800 lines of Postscript, and I
> didn't have to crack the inscrutable secrets of an obstructive GUI
> interface.

OTOH the results of your work were highly scrutable?

/door% S: length (door width)
{ dup
/wall_length exch wall_length add 60 add def % Keep global variable outside 
dict scope.
  1 dict begin  % 60 = 2*30 jambs.
  /length exch def  % Take length off the stack.
  30 100 box
  currentpoint translate 
  0 length lineto length length length 0 length arct 30 100 box gstroke
  gsave 200 300 moveto length buf cvs show   % Size 
text.
  grestore
  end  % End of local var scope.  
} def

> But I persevered with the Eagle GUI schematic capture & PCB layout app,
> putting in the weeks to tame it.
> 
> It probably comes down to whether you think you'll ever use it again.

In the case of spreadsheets, I think anyone leaving school should be
able to use one to do simple finance/budgeting calculations, just as
using a calculator was necessary for pupils in the past. That didn't
mean the latter had to be familiar with an RPN interface (like the
original HP models), but just the basic infix interface that most
calculators had.

In the case of the OP, "I need to do some work quickly" indicates that
the interface is more important than the underlying complexity that the
computer deals with. That said, I have no idea what the OP was
trying to do. If LaTeX was a good fit last time, it sounds as if they
wanted to print a table of non-calculated information in a neat and
tidy format, for which I might gravitate to a text file with tabs.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Jude DaShiell]

Oleo is now no longer supported and support for that spreadsheet ended 
in 2001.  However there is good news.  A program called neoleo can be 
found and built and neoleo is the successor to oleo and is under active 
support.  The neoleo program can work in text or graphics now.  I doubt 
debian has neoleo 6.0 available though which is why I didn't mention it 
in my response.  I run archlinux here and if I can ever get stretch to 
properly boot after an install I may put that on one of my hard drives 
and use it too.


On Tue, 13 Mar 2018, Toma? ?olc wrote:


Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2018 05:49:28
From: Toma? ?olc <tomaz.s...@tablix.org>
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Re: Simple spreadsheet program.
Resent-Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2018 09:49:51 + (UTC)
Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org

Years ago I used to work with GNU Oleo in a text terminal.

https://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/oleo.html

I see it's been removed from Debian in 2009 though.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=526212

Best regards
Toma?




--

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[David Wright]

On Tue 13 Mar 2018 at 08:59:00 (+), Joe wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:13:33 +1100
> terryc  wrote:
> 
> > What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> > Stretch. I need to do some work quickly
> > 
> > hint, if your answer is LibreOffice or similar read the question
> > again. I'm frustrated that the last few time I wanted to do a simple
> > spreadsheet layout, it was easier and faster to craft a LaTex document
> > then try and unfathom LibreOffice methods.
> > 
> 
> 'The' alternative spreadsheet is gnumeric, but it's some years since I
> used it last. I recall it as being a bit less Excel-like than
> LibreOffice (OpenOffice then) but that might be different now. If you
> don't have any other Gnome stuff, gnumeric is likely to pull in quite a
> lot of dependencies.

Yes, on a new stretch (print/SSH/standard utilities) with the
following installed already:

etckeeper cryptsetup dosfstools keyutils gdisk zip apt-show-versions
aptitude boot-info-script bootlogd dkms exim4 firmware-linux flac
fluid-soundfont-gm fluid-soundfont-gs fluidsynth* gpm lame lynx-cur mc
mlocate normalize-audio mutt ntp p7zip-full paps pdftk
printer-driver-cups-pdf putty putty-doc python-doc python3.5-doc
python-reportlab realpath scrot setcd smartmontools sox strace
texlive-luatex* timidity tnef unifont uudeview wicd-curses xournal
xpdf xzgv xzoom youtube-dl* apt-listbugs emacs emacs24-common-non-dfsg
hwdata hwinfo info inxi jpeginfo firmware-ipw2x00
ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 linux-source alsa-utils arandr aumix-gtk
audacious-plugins audacity evince font-manager fvwm get-flash-videos*

(where * marks the relatively hungry ones), gnumeric will add:

hunspell-en-us enchant libaa1 libdv4 libshout3
gstreamer1.0-plugins-good lp-solve yelp libyelp0 pxlib1 fonts-dejavu
libhyphen0 libsuitesparseconfig4 libgsf-1-114 gnumeric-doc
libgoffice-0.10-10 gnumeric-common gnome-user-guide libaspell15
yelp-xsl libtag1v5 libgsf-1-common libcolamd2 libenchant1c2a
fonts-dejavu-extra gstreamer1.0-x libwebkit2gtk-4.0-37 aspell
libgoffice-0.10-10-common libhunspell-1.4-0 libtag1v5-vanilla gnumeric
libjavascriptcoregtk-4.0-18 libxslt1.1 aspell-en

> I'm not aware of a 'simple' spreadsheet, as it is the kind of
> application that begs for feature-creep. Synaptic turns up sc, which I
> know nothing about, but the description doesn't look compatible with
> 'simple', unless the user interface is similar to something you already
> know.

Cheers,
David.

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Stefan Monnier]

> An alternative is org mode in Emacs if you have Emacs already
> installed.  Simple spreadsheet capabilities in tables.

There's also SES, also part of Emacs (i.e. C-x C-f .ses RET should
get you started).  And Emacs being what it is, there's also the Dismal
package, which you can install from GNU ELPA.


Stefan

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[John Hasler]

terryc wrote:
> What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> Stretch. I need to do some work quickly

Package: sc
Source: sc (7.16-4)
Version: 7.16-4+b2
Installed-Size: 440
Maintainer: Adam Majer 
Architecture: amd64
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.14), libncurses5 (>= 6), libtinfo5 (>= 6)
Description-en: Text-based spreadsheet with VI-like keybindings
 "Spreadsheet Calculator" is a much modified version of the public-
 domain spread sheet sc, which was posted to Usenet several years ago
 by Mark Weiser as vc, originally by James Gosling. It is based on
 rectangular table much like a financial spreadsheet.
 .
 Its keybindings are familiar to users of 'vi', and it has most
 features that a pure spreadsheet would, but lacks things like
 graphing and saving in foreign formats.  It's very stable and quite
 easy to use once you've put a little effort into learning it.
Description-md5: 0925a794779dba23662eeb41fb663c7e
Tag: office::spreadsheet, role::program, scope::application,
 uitoolkit::ncurses, use::editing, works-with::spreadsheet
Section: math
Priority: optional
Filename: pool/main/s/sc/sc_7.16-4+b2_amd64.deb
Size: 211774
MD5sum: 94c7293bbb4ed7858f861d0e1bc3dfe5
SHA256: 1a676b93a1e376f18f8efc30e574c1b65b84be12157289d4105850810f2804e5

-- 
John Hasler 
jhas...@newsguy.com
Elmwood, WI USA

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Eric S Fraga]

On Tuesday, 13 Mar 2018 at 14:13, terryc wrote:
> What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> Stretch. I need to do some work quickly

I already mentioned sc.

An alternative is org mode in Emacs if you have Emacs already
installed.  Simple spreadsheet capabilities in tables.

Maybe define what you mean by simple.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.6 on Debian buster/sid


signature.asc
Description: PGP signature

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Erik Christiansen]

On 13.03.18 09:59, Joe wrote:
> On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 20:42:08 +1100
> Erik Christiansen  wrote:
> > An sc description: "Its keybindings are familiar to users of 'vi', and
> > it has most features that a pure spreadsheet would, but lacks things
> > like graphing and saving in foreign formats. It's very stable and
> > quite easy to use once you've put a little effort into learning it."
> > makes it look as simple as it gets.
> > 
> > Erik
> > (Who just uses a line of awk when needing to sum a column or two in a
> > table.)
> > 
> 
> It's the 'little effort' that stood out for me. Someone familiar with
> the operation of a piece of software always grossly underestimates how
> much they know about it, and how much someone else coming to it cold
> needs to know.

Too true. After a couple of hours of failing to get any GUI drawing
package, not least LibreOffice, to do anything useful, I used Vim to
textually produce the 8 drawings for my house; plan, elevations &
sections, and site plan. It took about 800 lines of Postscript, and I
didn't have to crack the inscrutable secrets of an obstructive GUI
interface.

But I persevered with the Eagle GUI schematic capture & PCB layout app,
putting in the weeks to tame it.

It probably comes down to whether you think you'll ever use it again.

Erik

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Joe]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 20:42:08 +1100
Erik Christiansen  wrote:

> On 13.03.18 08:59, Joe wrote:
> > I'm not aware of a 'simple' spreadsheet, as it is the kind of
> > application that begs for feature-creep. Synaptic turns up sc,
> > which I know nothing about, but the description doesn't look
> > compatible with 'simple', unless the user interface is similar to
> > something you already know.  
> 
> An sc description: "Its keybindings are familiar to users of 'vi', and
> it has most features that a pure spreadsheet would, but lacks things
> like graphing and saving in foreign formats. It's very stable and
> quite easy to use once you've put a little effort into learning it."
> makes it look as simple as it gets.
> 
> Erik
> (Who just uses a line of awk when needing to sum a column or two in a
> table.)
> 

It's the 'little effort' that stood out for me. Someone familiar with
the operation of a piece of software always grossly underestimates how
much they know about it, and how much someone else coming to it cold
needs to know.

-- 
Joe

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Tomaž Šolc]

Years ago I used to work with GNU Oleo in a text terminal.

https://www.gnu.org/software/oleo/oleo.html

I see it's been removed from Debian in 2009 though.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=526212

Best regards
Tomaž

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Erik Christiansen]

On 13.03.18 08:59, Joe wrote:
> I'm not aware of a 'simple' spreadsheet, as it is the kind of
> application that begs for feature-creep. Synaptic turns up sc, which I
> know nothing about, but the description doesn't look compatible with
> 'simple', unless the user interface is similar to something you already
> know.

An sc description: "Its keybindings are familiar to users of 'vi', and
it has most features that a pure spreadsheet would, but lacks things
like graphing and saving in foreign formats. It's very stable and quite
easy to use once you've put a little effort into learning it." makes it
look as simple as it gets.

Erik
(Who just uses a line of awk when needing to sum a column or two in a table.)

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Joe]

On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 14:13:33 +1100
terryc  wrote:

> What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> Stretch. I need to do some work quickly
> 
> hint, if your answer is LibreOffice or similar read the question
> again. I'm frustrated that the last few time I wanted to do a simple
> spreadsheet layout, it was easier and faster to craft a LaTex document
> then try and unfathom LibreOffice methods.
> 

'The' alternative spreadsheet is gnumeric, but it's some years since I
used it last. I recall it as being a bit less Excel-like than
LibreOffice (OpenOffice then) but that might be different now. If you
don't have any other Gnome stuff, gnumeric is likely to pull in quite a
lot of dependencies.

I'm not aware of a 'simple' spreadsheet, as it is the kind of
application that begs for feature-creep. Synaptic turns up sc, which I
know nothing about, but the description doesn't look compatible with
'simple', unless the user interface is similar to something you already
know.

-- 
Joe

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Eric S Fraga]

On Tuesday, 13 Mar 2018 at 14:13, terryc wrote:
> What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> Stretch. I need to do some work quickly

sc works well and is indeed simple.  not graphical.

-- 
Eric S Fraga via Emacs 27.0.50 & org 9.1.6 on Debian buster/sid


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Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[deloptes]

terryc wrote:

> hint, if your answer is LibreOffice or similar read the question again.
> I'm frustrated that the last few time I wanted to do a simple
> spreadsheet layout, it was easier and faster to craft a LaTex document
> then try and unfathom LibreOffice methods.

Windows + MS Office :D

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Joel Roth]

On Tue, Mar 13, 2018 at 02:13:33PM +1100, terryc wrote:
> What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> Stretch. I need to do some work quickly

Here's Instacalc, a free-to-use DOS program that I 
once used heavily.

http://www.bttr-software.de/freesoft/dbase.htm#instacalc
 
Note that you'll need to run this under some type of 
DOS emulator. 

> hint, if your answer is LibreOffice or similar read the question again.
> I'm frustrated that the last few time I wanted to do a simple
> spreadsheet layout, it was easier and faster to craft a LaTex document
> then try and unfathom LibreOffice methods.

I'm a dinosaur, too, but the bar to using LibreOffice calc
seems pretty low, basically one 5 minute youtube tutorial.

cheers
 

-- 
Joel Roth
  

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[Jude DaShiell]

scim probably ought to answer.
On Tue, 13 Mar 2018, terryc wrote:


Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2018 23:13:33
From: terryc 
To: debian-user@lists.debian.org
Subject: Simple spreadsheet program.
Resent-Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2018 03:14:03 + (UTC)
Resent-From: debian-user@lists.debian.org

What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
Stretch. I need to do some work quickly

hint, if your answer is LibreOffice or similar read the question again.
I'm frustrated that the last few time I wanted to do a simple
spreadsheet layout, it was easier and faster to craft a LaTex document
then try and unfathom LibreOffice methods.




--

Re: Simple spreadsheet program.

[David Wright]

On Tue 13 Mar 2018 at 14:13:33 (+1100), terryc wrote:
> What is a simple spreadsheet program that can be installed under
> Stretch. I need to do some work quickly

I use gnumeric myself. As its description says, if you know
Excel, then you'll know how to use it.

(I use a Window Manager, not a Desk Environment.)

Cheers,
David.