SCalc HELP
2 messages in this thread
Dale,
Thanks for the info. I really don't want to reformat the save file for
use in another spreadsheet. I believe in k.i.s.s. -). One of the reasons
I liked SCALC is that it doesn't have a million bells and whistles. Quick
to learn and easy to set up new sheets.
I was wondering if there were other Unix utilities that are used in
conjunction with SC. For instance a formatting program, since I can't find
any way to write a partial sheet to a file, or to the printer. I can't
believe that no one would want a hard copy, or that they normally print
300+ character lines.
Also I'm not sure what defining a region does, since you can still move
freely outside of the area you define, is it used for the other math
functions I haven't discovered yet ?
At any rate, after hacking with the program a little more, I've already
gotten better at using it. If necessary I guess I can try to write a
formatting program. It really is a nice, easy to use spreadsheet.
Thanks Roger.
Roger,
Boy, the only Unix utilities that I can think of are used on a saved
file. (This is all from memory, btw, so take it with a grain of salt.) SC
files are saved in several formats. One is the "put/get" format, which is
the full sheet, with commands and everything. That's what you'd use if you
wanted to convert an sc sheet to something else, or vice-versa. The other
formats simply store the output data (called "listings", I think). One
format has the cells separated by colons (":"), for use with utilities like
sed or awk. Another format has space (or tab?) separated cells. (I think
that this straight, unformatted output that you could pump into your
printer.) Later versions of sc will give you output formatted for use with
tbl and nroff or troff, for nicely formatted printouts. Unless you have
created a sheet that is 300+ lines long, I can't see how you would get one.
You can hide ("zap") rows and columns, btw, so that they don't show up in
your sheet.
You're right, regions are for use by some of the math functions, and
I think some of the string functions, too.
SC *is* a nice, easy to use spreadsheet. It's also fairly powerful,
especially in conjunction with the Unix tools that it's ment to be used
with. (In fact, the recent releases of sc have features that I wish Gold
Disk's Advantage had.) For use on the Amiga, I would think that ARexx
would be the perfect complement. Save your listing as colon-separated, and
feed it to your ARexx program. There are also Amiga ports of some of the
Unix utilities. I know that sed has been ported over (GNUsed); I'm not
sure of some of the others.
–dds