TedRoden.com

I'm constantly finding myself in situations where I need to do something on my computer, but I can't do in Emacs. Like, filling out text boxes on the web. Or posting to my blog. Or just using a shell.

Of course, time after time, I find out that I can use Emacs for these problems. For example, with It's all text, I can edit form fields with Emacs. Muse mode and a couple of scripts allows me to edit and post to my blog. And eshell has changed my life as far as using the command line goes.

The latest problem I faced was that I needed to use a spreadsheet. I'm not a spreadsheet power-user, I just needed something to help me visualize a few simple calculations. I wanted to tweak a number here, a percent there and see all the numbers change. Perfect job for a spreadsheet. But how the heck do you do it in Emacs? Simple, ses-mode. It does everything I need for a basic spreadsheet, and it's in Emacs. Either you know why this is a good thing, or you totally don't. There is very little middle-ground.

With ses-mode, you can deal with ranges of cells, do all kinds of calculations and if you install the right modes, you can even graph it with pretty charts. I haven't tried that, but it sounds awesome.

Anyways, here's a screen shot of an example spreadsheet inside Emacs. You can even see the cell's formula in the mini-buffer, in lisp. So cool!

"I'm a business man, I need a spreadsheet"