>> It still irritates me how many people utter the works "Excel database".
>> People, IT'S NOT A DATABASE! 
> 
> Sure it is.

Unfortunately, people (especially our IT department) keep trying to use 
Excel when they should be using a database.

Stuff like records that multiple people need to access, which will grow 
larger and larger over time, which might need to be sorted in various 
ways and even searched. That kind of thing. Stuff that even Access can 
do very easily, but which Excel really isn't geared towards.

Still, what can you do?

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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On Thu, 13 May 2010 13:08:31 -0700, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> On Thu, 13 May 2010 12:07:50 -0700, Darren New wrote:
>> 
>>> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>>> I'd say that it's pretty much got feature parity (
>>> Maybe for the features *you* use. I don't remember seeing how to get
>>> it to talk COM to a SQL database so you can automate importing a chart
>>> from Calc into Word based on a database query.
>> 
>> True, that's not something I've ever needed to use, but then again, I
>> probably wouldn't look to use a specific technology (COM) to accomplish
>> the task, largely because I wouldn't know where to start with COM.
> 
> That, and other cool stuff, like the fact that you can put it on a
> shared drive and have multiple people working on the same file without
> conflict. All kinds of "power" stuff that people who don't use it for a
> living do use.

Docs and spreadsheets in such a way?  I don't have a use case for 
something like that, but I can see where someone might.

> Kind of like showing the boss a unit test framework integrated into the
> IDE and him going "Yeah, so? I have an editor and a compiler."  It's
> stuff you might not ever use unless your job is making and sharing these
> complex presentations with other people.

True.  I do share stuff with other people, but co-creation of documents 
tends to be done using remote viewing software (for example).

Jim

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Docs and spreadsheets in such a way?  I don't have a use case for 
> something like that, but I can see where someone might.

Yes. It also handles the locking and conflict resolution and stuff. It's 
handy when you have multiple people working concurrently but not 
simultaneously to have version control built in that you don't have to 
understand how to work. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Last time I checked, if you want an office suite, you can buy MS Office
> or...
> 
> ...uh, yeah, exactly. It's not that MS Office is good enough that nobody
> will pay to switch. It's that there's nothing to switch *to*. Like I
> say, MS carefully arranges it so that users have no alternatives. That
> way they don't have to waste money on, say, making a product that people
> want to use.

I was reading the Wikipedia article on real-time multi-user text editors, 
and it was a bit disturbing.

"a product called Writely saw explosive user growth and was bought by Google 
in March 2006 (now called Google Docs & Spreadsheets). It provides 
simultaneous edits on the entirety of a document, though changes from other 
users are only reflected after the client program polling the server."

"Another early web-based solution was JotSpotLive, in which line-by-line 
simultaneous editing was available in near-realtime. However, after Google's 
purchase of parent company JotSpot in November 2006, the site was closed."

"EtherPad was the first web editor to provide a smooth, character-by-
character real-time performance, something that previously was only 
available in desktop editors. [...] EtherPad was subsequently acquired by 
Google, which allocated the EtherPad team to work within the Wave project."

What's next? Hiring the entire 0x539.de dev group so they stop working on 
Gobby? (*open source* realtime editor)

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Fredrik Eriksson wrote:
>> On Thu, 13 May 2010 21:44:36 +0200, Orchid XP v8 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>>>>> It still makes me slightly nervous that I have an illegal copy of
>>>>> Borland TurboPascal 5.5 for DOS. I mean, as if Borland is going to
>>>>> *care* any more...
>>>>  Especially since they released it for free more than eight years
>>>>  ago...
>>>
>>> ...really??
>>>
>>> Neat! I own one fewer pieces of illegal software... :-D
>> 
>> No, your copy is still illegal...
> 
> Awww! :-(

But now you can throw it away and *then* download their free version.

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Darren New wrote:
> Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> Things like when you press enter, it doesn't move down to the next line.
>> The version I use does that.
> 
> Funny enough, when I was using oocalc at work, the UI drove me bonkers
> with
> exactly this sort of thing.  I ranted here, and about two days later,
> suddenly everything started working just fine and intuitive. I don't know
> what I was expecting that wasn't working the way I thought it was, but
> somehow the constant "Oh crap now I have to go use the mouse to put the
> cursor where it should have gone" just stopped happening to me. I must
> have unconsciously switched over to the right mental model or something,
> because it seemed perfectly obvious it should behave as it did.

Being a Mercurial fan and Git hater, I was recently forced (once again) to 
use git, and I don't know *how*, my brain suddenly finished forming a 
complete mental model mirroring how git works. And it's like I suddenly know 
how to use it. I guess I already managed to learn most of it over time, what 
happened recently was that the puzzle pieces got put together.

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Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
> 
>> Interestingly enough, Microsoft beat 1-2-3 by noticing that *most*
>> people didn't use the spreadsheet for calculations. They used it as a
>> list editor. MS added a whole bunch of list-manipulation operations,
>> while 1-2-3 added a whole bunch of sophisticated math stuff, and Excel
>> won.
> 
> It still irritates me how many people utter the works "Excel database".
> 
> People, IT'S NOT A DATABASE! >_< If you need a database, for the love of
> God, USE A DATABASE! GRR!!
> 
> Sorry, rant over...

I once searched in Google for "excel database", trying to find a funny rant 
I had read about the stupid term. Instead, I found tons of tutorials on how 
to make excel databases. AUGH ><

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Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> largely because I wouldn't know where to start with COM.
> 
> With the help pages! :-) COM is the substrate that connects things
> together.
> 
> (I think I posted a link recently of someone showing how to use VBScript
> to talk to a DB and put it into Excel, make a chart, and use the clipboard
> to paste it into a word doc.)
> 
> Does OpenOffice actually have any sort of scripting built in, or
> interfaces that you can drive externally?

There is a module called "uno" that lets you talk to OpenOffice from Python.

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Python

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> There is a module called "uno" that lets you talk to OpenOffice from Python.

I see. Looks like they're basically reinventing COM and CORBA without 
following any actual standards, like COM or CORBA.  It's a start, I guess. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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"Kenneth" <kdw### [at] earthlinknet> wrote in message
news:web.4beaea3a4c27b058ae92d9930@news.povray.org...
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>
> > OK, so how many of you are thinking "hmm, that sounds like me" right
> > now? ;-)
>
> **me too**
>
> It's unfortunate, though, that large corporations in the modern world
don't have
> MORE Babbage types working for them (with the freedom to keep pushing for
> changes and improvements); it sure would eliminate lots of bad products

as well as good products

> from
> entering the marketplace--cars, software, etc.  Taking the time to
actually get
> it 'right' in the first place seems to be a lost philosophy, among many
> companies...whether due to economic constraints or whatever. Something
Babbage
> apparently didn't have to worry about.

Big part of "right" is "time" and "compromise". Any half assed product today
is worth infinitely more to me than a perfect product in 50 years, when I'll
most likely be worm fodder. Like it or not, we owe our current way of life
to quick development and turnaround times due to tight competition to
marketplace. Imagine if drugs were not made available until they were
improved to the point of having no side effects at all.

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