Re: 3D or 4D spreadsheet

[Oliver Burnett-Hall <olly burnett-hall co uk>]

On Tue, 18 Sep 2012 19:26:44 +0200
Frederic Parrenin <parrenin gmail com> wrote:
> This is a general / long term question.
> Gnumeric, as other spreadsheet softwares, is 2D.
> While I like very much the spreadsheet concept because it is so visual
> and direct, I would like to apply it for solving complex 4D problems
> (our physical space is 4D...).
>
> Would it be possible to implement a 3D or 4D spreadsheet software?
> Apart from the GUI problems, are they fundamental computation issues
> with such a concept?

Gnumeric already supports 3D formula: =sum(Sheet1:Sheet3!A1:C3) is a
valid formula, summing the contents of a cube of cells three columns
wide, three columns high, and three worksheets deep.

Note that there isn't a point-and-click way of entering these formula,
you've got to type them in by hand (there's a feature request in
bugzilla for being able to select multiple worksheets, which is what
you'd need to this).

I've got no idea what a 4D formula would look like, or how you'd
arrange the data in a spreadsheet.  What were you thinking about for
this one?

- olly