[YLUG] Spreadsheets in Python?

[Simon Ward]

> Probably I'm missing the point here but what is the spreadsheet part of 
> this for?  If you want to input and modify data and perform some 
> advanced calculations on it is this not a case of mysql and associated 
> glue?  (E.g. if you need python then mysql interfaces with python and 
> probably php for the various forms assuming a web interface is OK).  Or 
> is that fundamentally wrong and somehow you need something that a 
> spreadsheet does easily that would be hard to code yourself?
   You've missed the point by a long, long way.
   For reasons that are far too complicated to go into, we need 
something that offers basic spreadsheet-like functionality but doesn't 
slow down to a crippling halt for large datasets - our existing solution 
uses a whole load of EntryField widgets to handle parameter input, but 
this makes certain operations extremely difficult and is very, very 
slow. The interim solution is to spawn an instance of $SPREADSHEET but 
I'd prefer a more elegant solution, if only because I'd rather chew off 
my own feet than build Gnumeric and friends from source.

   I don't have an objection to running something like Gnumeric to 
handle this aspect of things but I'd prefer a more lightweight solution, 
and preferably one which integrates with our existing codebase. We could 
write our own solution, but that's not an option at this time. A text 
editor would be a reasonable solution (IMO) but marketing have decreed 
that our potential customers are too precious to be forced to use such a 
thing.

   Whilst it would be possible to use a database for this stuff, it 
would be wholly inappropriate under the current circumstances.

Simon