alt Hacker NewsShow HN: A terminal spreadsheet editor with Vim keybindings
While speccing out this spreadsheet tool, I realized that I never had to think about the keybindings. It all just came naturally from Vim. Normal/insert/visual modes, hjkl navigation, dd/yy/p, :w, :q. The usual muscle memory works.
It supports CSV/TSV import and export, and a native .cell format that preserves formulas. The formula engine handles SUM, AVERAGE, COUNT, MIN, MAX, and IF with range references.
The codebase is a Cargo workspace: a pure cell-sheet-core library (no TUI dependency) and a cell-sheet-tui crate on top of ratatui. Early days, but it's usable.
To try it out: cargo install cell-sheet-tui
Feedback of any kind is greatly appreciated!
Comments
This is great. I often want a low-latency, minimal-feeling option for this sort of thing. (And I get to use my Vim muscle memory less and less often these days!)
Really, thanks for making and sharing this; so far, I feel calm and happy when I'm using it.
Pretty cool project! Congrats.
QQ: does it support programmatic cell access/modifications?
Eg `cell file.cell --write A2 "42"` or `cell file.cell --read "=SUM(A1:A10)"`? Couldn't surmise that from the glimpse I gave the README, but it would be pretty cool for scripting stuff.
Was initially hopeful that this would rather than have A..B..C... and 1..2..3... for columns and rows would instead have one creating categories à la Javelin/Lotus Improv/Quantrix/Flexisheet --- give me that, and have a dynamic system for displaying a pane of formulae and one would have a _very_ nice tool.
Looks very nice at first glance.
I have been looking for something like this for a long time. Maybe this has some potential to become somewhat popular.
Cool project!
The Vim modal model feels almsot native for spreadsheets, and splitting the formula engine into a TUI-free core was prolly a great architectural choice.
How are you thinking about recalculation, dependency tracking, and undo/redo as the sheet grows, especially once multi-cell edits and larger CSVs start stressing the core?
Nice. I've been using https://github.com/andmarti1424/sc-im for a while now. It would be great with a comparison.