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Sc-im: Spreadsheets in your terminal github.com

freedomben2 hours ago

I tried this out when it was mentioned a few weeks ago[1].

It's pretty neat but does have a number of bugs. The packaged version also doesn't have xls support compiled in (at least on Fedora) which is unfortunate, though building is fairly easy[2].

I love the idea of it though, so I'm really hoping these issues get ironed out! I'm happy to help contribute if maintainers are willing.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47457009

[2] https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im/wiki/Building-sc%E2%80...

dodomodo2 hours ago

I think spreadsheets are a greater example of something that require the subtleties of an actual GUI. This is most obvious with the various plots which are hilariously imprecise. But the advantages of GUI are also present when just using the spreadsheet itself, it's ability to convey the skeuomorphic two dimensional space is much greater.

And it's not like the terminal can't be a greater data processing tool, but you have to use different paradigms.

Still from an esthetical perspective I love those simple TUI interfaces. They invoke a weird sense of comfort in me that I can't fully explain.

akavelan hour ago

Lol, young padawan, check up those weird old programs that were called "VisiCalc" and "Lotus 1-2-3".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_1-2-3

nomel22 minutes ago

Which were before GUI of any complexity were possible. There was no alternative at the time.

Related, see the insane success and excitement from the early GUI based operating systems.

freedombenan hour ago

> I think spreadsheets are a greater example of something that require the subtleties of an actual GUI

I've been wondering about this too. I think a great TUI could get it done though, but it remains to be seen how it could really stack up. If I didn't have so many projects already, I'd give this a shot because I would really love a "vim" for spreadsheets

dmarinus44 minutes ago

The first spreadsheets I remember were TUI (pccalc, Lotus 123)

chadrsan hour ago

I love this but with all the advances of TUI frameworks, using C + ncurses feels like such a hard path.

talideonan hour ago

It's a tool with a long vintage, and it wouldn't make sense to port it to a different language just to take advantage of the likes of bubbletea or textual.

freedombenan hour ago

Agreed. Also for something this complex, performance isn't going to be automatically good enough I suspect.

dafty4an hour ago

Cool which newer TUI frameworks do you prefer?

aldanor38 minutes ago

Rust's ratatui is pretty good on the lower-level side of things

thesuitonym2 hours ago

I'd love if this had support for saving as xlsx. Being able to open them is nice, but it would be great if I could collaborate with MS Office users without them ever knowing.

freedombenan hour ago

It does. It's not compiled in to the package repos though, so you might have to build it yourself[1]. It's also a bit buggy currently.

[1]: https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im/wiki/Building-sc%E2%80...

w4zz31 minutes ago

Insane what people make these days, but its really cool!

nomel27 minutes ago

These days? There was a time before graphical user interfaces existed/were possible.

1979: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc

nickandbroan hour ago

Love vim stye editing

vrighteran hour ago

lots of bugs and crashes last time I tried it. Should see if it improved

drumhead2 hours ago

So Lotus 1-2-3

talideonan hour ago

But originating on Unix in '81, and thus predating Lotus 1-2-3 by ~2 years.

ConanRus42 minutes ago

[dead]

baldr3332 hours ago

[flagged]

freedomben2 hours ago

> Very shitty software.

To be even remotely constructive, you're going to need to be a little more specific.

[deleted]2 hours agocollapsed

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