ses: emacs strikes again

I’ve mentioned a couple of console-driven spreadsheet applications in the past — I’m thinking of sc and oleo there — but somehow ses, the integrated spreadsheet function in emacs, managed to elude me.

There’s no trick to getting it started, you just open a file with the .ses extension and emacs leaps into action.

Navigation is via arrow keys; hit enter to change the contents. As your spreadsheet grows, you’ll need to open rows with CTRL+O but columns can be added just by moving right and entering data.

ses is functional, but would probably take me a while to learn. I glanced through the documentation and it seems most of the fundamentals are in place, with the necessary changes in syntax or structure.

I’m not so averse to emacs that I wouldn’t consider using it for some simple spreadsheets or to fiddle with numbers for fun.

And I admit it is interesting to see how emacs handles the idea of a spreadsheet. What’s next, an onboard mp3 player? (I joke, but it’s probably been done.)

Of course, if you’re already an emacs fan then ses is probably no surprise. I eagerly await the distro that comes armed only with emacs as an entire software suite. 😛

I think I will stick with sc for a while longer though. I have some long, rather complex spreadsheets that are tangled up with calculations, and I’m not quite ready to shift. 😉