Spreadsheets - who cares? ========================= I do use spreadsheet applications sometimes. At work I use these things to manage some (quite simple) tables. At home I have been using for even simpler things. Anyway, some people use spreadsheet for things like structural design so I decided to try something similar, too. I still think that such things can be done in the GNU Octave/Matlab or even the BASIC easily but I understand that there are places where having computations in a simple grid can be more practical. But what spreadsheet application I should use? At home I use or the LibreOffice Calc (very rarely) or the SC spreadsheet (much more often). Why? Because the SC is enough for me in most of cases and it can run in a text terminal. So I can store spreadsheets on the S.D.F., fr example and access them from any place where the SSH client is available. By the way, did out know that even the Windows 10 have a OpenSSH client build-in? The SC runs only on UNIX systems, anyway (a DOS port exists and it can be probably compiled for the Windows). But I want to use spreadsheets on other machines: on my Z88, on the PSION Series 3 (or on the Workabout) and on my PSION MC400 and the MC600, too. It would be nice if these spreadsheets would be available on HP 200LX (or even 95LX), too. What now? Well, some PSIONs (MC400, Series 3, Workabout MX) can open Lotus 1-2-3 (*.wk1, *.wks) files to some extend. The HP LX machines can do open them, too (actually, the 95LX was designed to run a Lotus 1-2-3 compatible spreadsheet application). The Z88 can only open its very own PipeDream files. Fortunately, a DOS version of the Z88's PipeDream office app exists and is is available [1]. It can do not only its ofw format but it also has a Lotux and CSV exports. The Lotus files are directly readable on a PSION (I only have tried the Series 3a so far). And, the LibreOffice Calc can still import these Lotus files, too. The PipeDream for DOS runs perfectly in the DOSbox. Great! But I do want to use these files on my other computers. The PSION MC600 is a DOS-based laptop (unlike the MC400 which uses an early version of the PSION SIBO16 operating system of the PSION Series 3 machines) and I run the SC here. All my SGIs (and Linux machines) run the SC, too. And at the S.D.F. there is only the SC. So I definitely need to be able to use these files with the SC. There is no direct way to convert the files. However, the PipeDream can write CSV files with formulae. Such file can be converted for the SC with use of its "psc" preprocessor: ---------- cat file.pd |psc -s A1 -d , >file.sc ---------- Note the "-s A1" parameter tells the "psc" that it has to start in the cell A1. Otherwise it will start at A0 position and all references in formulae will be incorrect. Unfortunately, this is not enough. The "psc" recognises formulae as text strings. Fortunately, the SC file format is quite readable. The string line looks like: ---------- rightstring A3 = "B1*2" ---------- To change it to formulae it is enough to replace the "rightstring" with the "let" statement and to remove " symbols. So it should like this: ---------- let A2 = B1*2 ---------- Also, if there will be any functions then it would be necessary to add the "@" symbol (sin -> @sin) to make them work in SC. But then the file works. It can be also beneficial to change format of columns but it can be done interactively in the SC program. At the moment I'm doing these changes by hand but it should be possible to write a shell/sed/awk script for this type of conversion. Anyway, it seems to be possible to made simple spreadsheets with actual computations with the PipeDream and then use them on almost all of my computers (well, except the 8-bit ones and Soviet ones...). References: [1] http://www.rakewell.com/pc/pc_z.shtml