Re: project of the week question

[Olaf Grüttner <o gruettner tu-bs de>]

> > Here it goes. I would like to have a small program to help me write
> > data to /append to a file. When it starts it will ask for the amount
> > of columns, then for the heading of the columns. Finally one can chose
> > an ascii character for column separation.
> > 
> > It generates some kind of formular where you can insert your data.
> > This formular will help in inserting data in the right position.
> > 
> > If you call the program with a datafilename as an argument, it will
> > generate the formula by itself and append data as entered.
> > 
> > too complicated?
> 
> Hmm.. I think Gnumeric might be able to import such a file with it's
> text importer. Try it.

I did try it according to your suggestion, but at the moment gnumeric is still not flexible enough. (gnumeric 0.41)
I had a ";" separated list and gnumeric does only comma separation. I changed my file from semicolons to commas ; => , but that didn't solve all my problems.

I discovered the tool I wanted in Excel. It's called "mask". You have a better overvue of what you enter. 

> > idea behind: my addresses are stored in an ascii file, each item
> > separated from the other by ";" . From time to time I mix up what has
> > to follow... a tool could simplify that enormously.
> 
> What mailer stores them in a format like that? And doesn't it have a
> command for adding new addresses.. at least mutt does.

No mailer does. I do. It was just an example. So lets take another example. 

In databases you need to enter data, in formulas you do, as well as in production systems, financial systems, management systems and any kind of professional application where manufacturing data is entered. This data is then written to a file or otherwise processed by some database or server... . 

For each application you need to create a different program for entering data.

I believe a nice gnome-frontend for these tasks (e.g. a mask with 5 items) is easily created with the glade program, but how about creating this at runtime. I mean how about writing a widget which asks for the amount of different values and what they mean. 

Then it automatically creates a mask for entering the data. 

Olaf