Re: Gnumeric as a text mode table editor? Is it even a useful idea?

[Richard BUMBY <bumby hallsray rutgers edu>]

On Thu, 1 Apr 2004, Alan E Davis wrote (excerpted here):

|- Having just read a scathing review of spreadsheets in general
|- (though I don't recall where) got me to thinking that much of what
|- I do with Gnumeric at this point is not based on numbers, but as a
|- text formatting device.  ...
|- 
|-                                                ... And I can format
|- for LaTeX output, which works quite well, even though it's not as
|- straightforward on the wysiwyg side, and requires a bit of kludging
|- to get to a neatly printable form.
|- 
|- I would gladly hear of others's solutions to this problem---do
|- spreadsheets even do this at all?  A text based mode for a
|- spreadsheet seems so useful, I wonder whether I'm missing
|- something.
|- 
|- Thanks for any comments.  
|- ...

I sent something about this to the list earlier, so I will stay close
to your point this time.

It is difficult to build something in a spreadsheet that can adapt to
everyone's desired output, but it is *easy* to teach your spreadsheet
to collect the contents of several cells into TeX instructions.  These
instructions provide the low-level instructions for arranging content
in a table.  Typically, they can be built in a single column of the
spreadsheet.  You paste this block into an external file containing all
the document-level settings (size of table, choice of font,
definitions of abbreviations, etc).

You can save the formula constructing the table in a corner of the
worksheet and copy it quickly into the block you want to construct.
There is no fussing with making sure that you have the right font or
settings for headers.  All of this is taken care of by a separate file
that you select from all formats that you have prepared.

-- 
    R. T. Bumby       ||Amer. Math. Monthly Problems Editor 1992--1996
bumby math rutgers edu||  Math. Dept. Computer Coordinator 1998--NOW
Telephone: [USA] 732-445-0277                       FAX:  732-445-5530