Sc-im: Spreadsheets in your terminal

(github.com)

73 points | by m-hodges 3 hours ago ago

19 comments

  • freedomben 2 hours ago

    I tried this out when it was mentioned a few weeks ago[1].

    It's pretty neat but does have a number of bugs. The packaged version also doesn't have xls support compiled in (at least on Fedora) which is unfortunate, though building is fairly easy[2].

    I love the idea of it though, so I'm really hoping these issues get ironed out! I'm happy to help contribute if maintainers are willing.

    [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47457009

    [2] https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im/wiki/Building-sc%E2%80...

  • dodomodo an hour ago

    I think spreadsheets are a greater example of something that require the subtleties of an actual GUI. This is most obvious with the various plots which are hilariously imprecise. But the advantages of GUI are also present when just using the spreadsheet itself, it's ability to convey the skeuomorphic two dimensional space is much greater.

    And it's not like the terminal can't be a greater data processing tool, but you have to use different paradigms.

    Still from an esthetical perspective I love those simple TUI interfaces. They invoke a weird sense of comfort in me that I can't fully explain.

    • akavel 35 minutes ago

      Lol, young padawan, check up those weird old programs that were called "VisiCalc" and "Lotus 1-2-3".

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VisiCalc

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lotus_1-2-3

      • nomel 11 minutes ago

        Which were before GUI of any complexity were possible. There was no alternative at the time.

        Related, see the insane success and excitement from the early GUI based operating systems.

    • freedomben an hour ago

      > I think spreadsheets are a greater example of something that require the subtleties of an actual GUI

      I've been wondering about this too. I think a great TUI could get it done though, but it remains to be seen how it could really stack up. If I didn't have so many projects already, I'd give this a shot because I would really love a "vim" for spreadsheets

    • dmarinus 33 minutes ago

      The first spreadsheets I remember were TUI (pccalc, Lotus 123)

  • w4zz 19 minutes ago

    Insane what people make these days, but its really cool!

  • chadrs an hour ago

    I love this but with all the advances of TUI frameworks, using C + ncurses feels like such a hard path.

    • talideon an hour ago

      It's a tool with a long vintage, and it wouldn't make sense to port it to a different language just to take advantage of the likes of bubbletea or textual.

      • freedomben an hour ago

        Agreed. Also for something this complex, performance isn't going to be automatically good enough I suspect.

    • dafty4 an hour ago

      Cool which newer TUI frameworks do you prefer?

      • aldanor 26 minutes ago

        Rust's ratatui is pretty good on the lower-level side of things

  • thesuitonym 2 hours ago

    I'd love if this had support for saving as xlsx. Being able to open them is nice, but it would be great if I could collaborate with MS Office users without them ever knowing.

  • nickandbro an hour ago

    Love vim stye editing

  • vrighter 35 minutes ago

    lots of bugs and crashes last time I tried it. Should see if it improved

  • drumhead 2 hours ago

    So Lotus 1-2-3

    • talideon an hour ago

      But originating on Unix in '81, and thus predating Lotus 1-2-3 by ~2 years.