Gnumeric as a text mode table editor? Is it even a useful idea?

[Alan E Davis <aedavis eccomm com>]

Having just read a scathing review of spreadsheets in general (though I don't recall where) got me to 
thinking that much of what I do with Gnumeric at this point is not based on numbers, but as a text formatting 
device.  So looking around, as a keen emacs user, I found table.el, a table editing package for emacs.  It is 
somewhat more useful for my needs---I have to write weekly lesson plans in a blocked out format, with five 
columns of cells of various heights.

The table.el package allows me to work with fewer reformats.  With Gnumeric I have built up a block format 
that is quite nice, but I, at least, have found cutting and pasting to require a lot of fixing of border 
lines, etc.  I spend a lot of time in the "format cell" area, patching things up after making changes, 
cutting and pasting, etc.  With table.el, one can edit cells in a more direct manner, and alter horizontal 
cell sizes as cells fill up.  And I can format for LaTeX output, which works quite well, even though it's not 
as straightforward on the wysiwyg side, and requires a bit of kludging to get to a neatly printable form.

I would gladly hear of others's solutions to this problem---do spreadsheets even do this at all?  A text 
based mode for a spreadsheet seems so useful, I wonder whether I'm missing something.

Thanks for any comments.  

Alan Davis

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