Vikas Rawal <vikasli...@agrarianresearch.org> writes: > This is, in all likelihood, a crazy idea. Please excuse me for that. > > I often need to get a number of people enter complex survey data into > a database using some kind of forms. The forms I need are fairly > complex (with several nested grids, for example). I need radio-buttons > and drop-down menus-equivalents. > > I was thinking if it would be worth it to use Org-mode for data entry. > > The idea would be something like this. We have a template org file > that is copied for each survey respondent. The template contains > “blank” org tables and some source blocks. Responses are filled into > the org tables, and then the source blocks are evaluated to feed the > data into the database. You can version-control the whole thing so > that different people can create these records and push it to a > centralised git repository. > > Has anyone done anything like this? What has been the experience? > > There are two aspects that immediately come to my mind. > > 1. Is org adequately feature rich for such a scenario? There are two concerns > I can think of right now. > 1.1 Would feeding information from one Org table to another become too > complicated? > 1.2 Is there a way to build in tab-completion for columns in Org-table > using pre-specified categories? > > 2. In my case, people who would enter the data into org files would > not have used emacs before. So, there is a learning curve. Is it worth > it? Or should one just build a web-based graphic application for such > people to use? >
My knee-jerk reaction was: Use Django, not org - but that may be a failure of imagination on my part. -- Nick
