🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug20.150304.10018@dpp> dpp@athena.com (David Pollak) writes:
>In article <1992Aug19.143528.9405@mic.ucla.edu> iwelch@agsm.ucla.edu (Ivo  
>Welch) writes:
>> 
>> I have been trying to  convince Athena  Design to include a Unix   
>command-line
>> file reader. That is, a utility  that reads a  Mesa spreadsheet and  
>outputs an
>> ASCII data file (i.e. a command line equivalent of "save as text"). That  
>would
>> allow me to use Mesa to keep all my databases,  and  to  have  S or  
>other Unix
>> filters operate on a  database; or to dial  in and look  at the contents  
>of my
>> spreadsheets. (Even nicer if  there was an  update  mechanism.) Note  
>that this
>> cannot be accomplished through Mesa's API.
>> 
>> Athena Design sees no demand for this  feature, although it would  
>require only
>> minimal effort to implement.   Perhaps  more  requests could  convince   
>Athena
>> Design otherwise. I very much like their spreadsheet, and would want to  
>use it
>> for real work.
>
>I'd like to reply publicly to this.
>
>First, from an engineering standpoint, this is not an easy task.  It  
>requires more than a "minimal effort."  The part of the program that loads  
>worksheets is intimately tied to the display mechanism.  This means that  
>we would have to maintain two separate versions of the code and make sure  
>that the file loading part worked on both across all versions of the file  
>format (numbering 9 at this point, and yes we are still fully compatible  
>with all files written since version 0.5 of the program.)
>

I think there is an easier way to provide this feature. Rather than the
command line tool doing the conversion itself, it should simply use the
Mesa API and send a message to Mesa to say "please save this spreadsheet
file as ascii text" and then wait for the reply.

Now surely that's fairly straightforward to implement?

Dave Griffiths