I have dreamed of a similar thing for a long time...
When I worked in a (science research) lab, we had a few Excel files we passed around for performing various calculations. These were great in that my non-computer-fluent boss could use them (and even contribute). There were a few input boxes to fill out which were run through some calculations, and the answer spit out.
Pros:
* Single file
* Everyone has Excel installed on desktop
* Accessible. Even if you're not an Excel wizard, you can see and edit the basic formulas.
Cons:
* Rigid grid (Any documentation, notes, etc. must fit into the grid)
* Formulas are hidden, when you might want to highlight the most critical ones
* If you want to calculate intermediate results (which you do, to prevent very long formulas that are hard to read), you've got to plop them in some cells
* No meaningful variable names, A10:A55 what?
Excel is so entrenched, it'd probably be difficult for a slight improvement to gain any traction, but it would have made my life a heck of a lot easier.
And I'm by no means an Excel wizard, so there's a good chance that some of the Cons above can already be avoided... But I still want some kind of hybrid of LabVIEW and Excel.
Have you seen or tried slate[1] btw, and does it mitigate any of the cons you mention? I've only seen the demos for it and not tried it, so I don't know if it would be useful in practice.
When I worked in a (science research) lab, we had a few Excel files we passed around for performing various calculations. These were great in that my non-computer-fluent boss could use them (and even contribute). There were a few input boxes to fill out which were run through some calculations, and the answer spit out.
Pros:
* Single file
* Everyone has Excel installed on desktop
* Accessible. Even if you're not an Excel wizard, you can see and edit the basic formulas.
Cons:
* Rigid grid (Any documentation, notes, etc. must fit into the grid)
* Formulas are hidden, when you might want to highlight the most critical ones
* If you want to calculate intermediate results (which you do, to prevent very long formulas that are hard to read), you've got to plop them in some cells
* No meaningful variable names, A10:A55 what?
Excel is so entrenched, it'd probably be difficult for a slight improvement to gain any traction, but it would have made my life a heck of a lot easier.
And I'm by no means an Excel wizard, so there's a good chance that some of the Cons above can already be avoided... But I still want some kind of hybrid of LabVIEW and Excel.