architectural wisdom in plumbing with Gnumeric

[Jim Tarvid <tarvid ls net>]

I am working on modeling fertility scenarios in the context of economic
development. The Futures Institute - http://futuresinstitute.org/ - has
developed and maintained a corpus of  demographic and family planning
software which provides a basis on which to build economic
speculations. Chief among their products is Spectrum -
http://futuresinstitute.org/pages/spectrum.aspx. Those speculations
will undergo constant revision and the people I am supporting are
comfortable with spreadsheets.

Spectrum produces output files which can be parsed with awk and sed and
imported into Gnumeric. I am currently importing this data manually.
These output files are subject to frequent modification as well.

To this chain we add changing urges in presentation. Gnu charts will
serve in the interim but ultimately the data will wind up on the web.
Google charts are almost irresistible.

Thus the key to efficiency and responsiveness lies in the architecture
of the plumbing. I am not unhappy about the prospects of an evolving
architecture but if anyone has wisdom to share it would be gratefully
appreciated.

-- 
Rev. Jim Tarvid, PCA
Galax, Virginia
http://ls.net
http://drupal.ls.net