Re: keystroke ^[ for Gnumeric?

[Ross Johnson <ross homemail org>]

Jody,

I do a lot of spreadsheet modeling/computation at work.  I originally 
discovered this keystroke in Excel because I found it useful in Quicken 
and just tried it in Excel.  I'm not sure it's documented for Excel and 
I don't have the resources to provide a complete reverse-engineered 
specification (nor am I experienced enough to say that Microsoft got it 
right).  I don't have Excel in front of me at home, so this is all from 
memory ...

- If the selected cell has no reference, the keystroke is ignored (maybe 
there's a beep) and the selection remains.
- I do not have experience with this keystroke on calculated 
ranges/cells.  However, if the cell references several cells, the first 
referenced cell becomes the new primary selection (don't remember if 
other cells are also selected).
- 90% certain that the selection is reset, not added.

In the case of multiple references (or depends) per cell, I find Excel's 
auditing mechanism to be more useful.  An audit button draws blue arrows 
to all cells that are referenced (or that depend on this one) on the 
same sheet.  There also is a visual handle that one can click to bring 
up a dialog box showing references/depends on other sheets (and other 
files) - clicking one takes you to that cell (and file).  There are also 
buttons to erase the audits for a particular cell as well as another 
button to erase all audits on the sheet.

It seems to me that converse keystroke cntl-right-square-bracket ^] 
should take you the other way (like edit-select-depends), but Excel 
doesn't provide this (at least not with this keystroke).  Of course, the 
definition of this keystroke for multiple depends is problematic, but 
just picking any dependent cell seems better than nothing.  Each 
keystroke (^[ and ^]) would be most useful when there is at most one 
reference or at most one depends respectively - otherwise, auditing has 
been more effective for me when I use Excel at work.

Ross

Jody Goldberg wrote:

> On Sun, Apr 06, 2003 at 07:52:49AM -0500, Ross Johnson wrote:
>  
>
> > I'm new to Gnumeric.  On Excel, one can use the cntl-left-square-bracket 
> > ^[ to jump to the cell that the selected cell references.  Does Gnumeric 
> > have a similar feature?  If not, can it be added?
> >    
>
> I did not know that feature.  It would be trivial to add.
>
> We already have the converse
>    Edit -> Selection -> Depends
>
> the logic for this would not be difficult.  The only trick would be
> seeing exactly how XL handles things.  It just selects the
> ranges/cells explicitly referenced by an expression ?
>
> - What if there are no references ?  Does it leave the current
>  selection in place ?
>
> - How does it deal with calculated ranges/cells ?
>    eg =A1:offset(foo)
>
> - Does it reset the selection and select the references or just add
>  them to the current selection ?
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