Right. I must have been misunderstanding something, since I was thinking about macros, similar to Excel. However, if the entire discussion boils down to running gawk on a saved Gnumeric file, then processing the output, it really isn't that different from just opening a terminal, isn't it? Or am I missing something again?
Yours, Uri David On 1/16/07, Andreas J. Guelzow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Tue, 2007-16-01 at 21:50 +0200, Uri David Akavia wrote: > > On 1/16/07, Leonard Mada <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > gawk has many advantages and I may point another two: > > > - it is easy and simple, and very very fast (both to write and execute - > > > even on huge datasets) > > > - the code is structured and visible, so it is easy to understand what > > > it does (this is NOT always the case when you write complex formulas in > > > the spreadsheet) > > > > > > I hope these are enough reasons to implement a simple menu-entry in > > > gnumeric that runs awk/gawk scripts. > > > > I hope they aren't. > > While these are good reasons, they don't seem good enough. Currently, I > > haven't > > heard of a proposed method that would actually have some security > > limitations. > > > > In order to keep security, you would need to write a gawk plugin for > > Gnumeric, that can run a limited version of gawk. Otherwise, you're > > running arbitrary scripts, without any limitations. While this might > > be convenient for you, I don't see an argument that it would be good > > in general. > > > > I hope that the developers implement this the RIGHT way, if they > > implement something like this at all. > > I am not sure about your computer but on mine I can open a terminal > window and run lots of different programs, most of them able to demolish > my home directory and other things. I like it that way. > > As a user I am entitled to be able to demolish my stuff. > > Now if we were talking about macros that can run automatically, or > function that can be recalculated automatically, I would worry about > security implications. > > But a plugin that allows us to feed some portion of a sheet to an > external command and insert the output somewhere else would be under > control of the user. So if the user chooses to use dangerous scripts, > s/he is entitled to do that. We don't prohibit overwriting of files from > within Gnumeric since the user has to approve those actions. Similarly > we should let them run anything they like as long as they have to invoke > it manually. > > Andreas > > > > -- > Andreas J. Guelzow, Professor > Dept. of Mathematical & Computing Sciences > Concordia University College of Alberta > > _______________________________________________ > gnumeric-list mailing list > [email protected] > http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnumeric-list > _______________________________________________ gnumeric-list mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gnumeric-list
