From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Carsten Dominik Subject: Re: Feature request: ability to refer to other tables Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 07:59:35 +0200 Message-ID: <8f6c2f9468846a1e4b24bb3c8e9128a0@science.uva.nl> References: <87k5tft3no.fsf@Sullivan.bcc.cuny.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v624) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: Received: from mailman by lists.gnu.org with tmda-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1I89Y5-00019Z-6j for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:50:13 -0400 Received: from exim by lists.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.43) id 1I89Y3-00018x-Qd for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:50:12 -0400 Received: from [199.232.76.173] (helo=monty-python.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.43) id 1I89Y3-00018s-Ln for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:50:11 -0400 Received: from korteweg.uva.nl ([146.50.98.70]) by monty-python.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1I89Y2-0007ko-U9 for emacs-orgmode@gnu.org; Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:50:11 -0400 In-Reply-To: <87k5tft3no.fsf@Sullivan.bcc.cuny.edu> List-Id: "General discussions about Org-mode." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Errors-To: emacs-orgmode-bounces+geo-emacs-orgmode=m.gmane.org@gnu.org To: Nikos Apostolakis Cc: emacs-orgmode@gnu.org On Jul 5, 2007, at 14:51, Nikos Apostolakis wrote: > First of all thanks for org mode, it's a great piece of software. I > am not organized enough to take full advantage of its abilities but > I plan to get more organized Any Day Really Soon Now. But I do > regularly use the table feature and especially the spreadsheet > abilities. I use org-mode for all my spreadsheet needs. > > I think that the ability to refer to the contents of a table cell > from outside of the table and in particular from another table would > be very useful. Tables could have labels associated with them and > then one could refer to their cells in a fomat like "label@3$2" or > even "/path/to/filename/label@3$2". I am hesitant to do this, because these simple ASCII tables are so easily modified. For example, just insert a line and the reference is incorrect. While Org-mode modifies the local formulas if you use the correct commands to insert and delete lines, there is no simple way to make formulas in other tables, let alone in other files, realise that a change has occurred. There is also a technical reason: The whole engine that parses a table and finds out which reference points where is designed for a single active table at a time - would be a lot of work to change this. Right now, this does not seem worth the effort, unfortunately. - Carsten