On May 4, 2011, at 3:26 AM, Andrew Parsloe wrote: > > > On 4/05/2011 9:59 p.m., Liviu Andronic wrote: >> On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 11:46 AM, Andrew Parsloe<apars...@clear.net.nz> >> wrote: >>> Yes, but it would be nice to be able to sum a table in LyX without having to >>> fire up Gnumeric or Excel or whatever. >>> >> It sure would. >> >> >>> (To take matters to extremes, you >>> could even fire up an external wordprocessor and create a pdf or latex >>> document and import into LyX, but we don't. LyX is so much better and more >>> fun to work in.) >>> >> I understand your concern, but adding true spreadsheet capabilities to >> LyX would be a massive undertaking, and something to which some >> developers would object. LyX is by design a very flexible beast that >> allows you to interact with a huge (and growing) number of external >> tools: LaTeX, DocBook, BibTeX, R, Maxima, etc., etc. >> >> As far as I'm concerned, LyX does provide spreadsheet capabilities via >> the Gnumeric external material. It allows you to create and maintain >> your tables in a mature spreadsheet tool (something that LyX would >> never provide natively), and _dynamically_ import the results into >> your LyX documents. Personally I couldn't ask for more. (Think of it >> as graphics creation: you do not create them in LyX; you use some >> external tool to either create a final PDF and import into LyX, or to >> dynamically manage via external material). >> >> Cheers >> Liviu >> > Actually I do create graphics in LyX (using PSTricks in a LyX document that > consists entirely of one sometimes big ERT inset). But I take your point. For > a computer with limited memory (1 GB seemed big when I bought it), where > there's a lot of disk activity with multiple programs running, being able to > work in LyX alone would be helpful. > > Regards, > Andrew
The fact that 1 GB seems small nowadays is a sad reminder of how bloated some programs have become. Precisely for that reason I would not be in favor of an added spreadsheet tool in LyX. See also this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_creep Jens
