I am not sure what kind of interfaces were available in the old days. I have never really used spreadsheets, but for me there would be a strict increase in utility in being able to edit and display data in a spreadsheet as opposed to keeping track of various variables and manually figuring out which variables must be recomputed and recalculating their contents when a dependency changes. This also has increased utility compared to maintaining a GUI which probably needs to be programmed with text and recompiled/rerun every time the user wants to change the interface or move things around.
It would be nice if there were a good shell interface for LibreOffice, where you are, for a start, piping TSVs between J and regions in a spreadsheet. It doesn't seem that such a thing exists, and I am not sure how much work it would take. I wish I had the time to look into this. On Wed, 6 Jan 2021 at 13:14, Scott Locklin <locklin.sc...@gmail.com> wrote: > > Two alternatives: there's R methods for dealing with OpenOffice, and a J > package for calling R methods. Probably not the experience you're looking > for. There's also a couple of QT demos which have a spreadsheet like > interface if you just want the experience of seeing the data laid out in > graphical format. I've used bits of these before and they're handy and easy > to use. > > Weren't APLs used in the old days in places people commonly use > spreadsheets now? I don't think I've really ever used a spreadsheet except > as an ad-hoc database to share with others TBH. > > > On Wed, Jan 6, 2021 at 12:40 AM bill lam <bbill....@gmail.com> wrote: > > > Interfacing excel or openoffice can be done using com interface, but the > > technology is windows specific. > > > > openoffice also supports interface to python, but can't be called from J > > directly. > > > > Another approach is to parse an excel workbook directly from J and then > > write back changes to the file. But this involves lots of work. > > > > On Tue, Jan 5, 2021, 11:40 PM Justin Paston-Cooper < > > paston.coo...@gmail.com> > > wrote: > > > > > Hello, > > > > > > I don't know much Excel, and I know some J. The dataflow aspect of > > > Excel excites me, and I am averse to GUI programming. > > > https://code.jsoftware.com/wiki/Articles/JExcel details how to > > > integrate J with Excel. I don't know how up-to-date this is. > > > > > > Because I run Linux, it would be difficult for me to run Excel. Are > > > there any interesting alternatives that would enable me to quickly > > > build interfaces involving dataflow? I couldn't find anything on using > > > Libreoffice Calc. > > > > > > Thanks in advance, > > > > > > Justin > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
