Re: how to document/comment a complex org table formula

[Tim Visher <tim.visher@gmail.com>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1828 bytes --]

On Mon, Jul 5, 2021 at 10:14 AM Eric S Fraga <e.fraga@ucl.ac.uk> wrote:

> Sorry; I cannot help you directly.
>
> My rule of thumb is that if formulas are getting too complex to
> understand/recall clearly, it's time to use a proper programming
> language instead.  The nice thing about org is you can have tables as
> inputs to and outputs of src blocks...
>
> My papers often have awk source blocks that process tables to generate
> statistics for some (numerical) experiments.
>
> Spreadsheets, org tables being an example of such, are brilliant tools
> for simple calculations but are pretty much "write only programming
> languages".
>

I had never heard of using an org table as input into a source block.
That's really interesting.

The OP also poses an interesting idea that I have occasionally wanted. I
have generally accomplished this by simply including the documentation
above or below the table. In other words just having human text around it
that says 'This =formula= bit is because of X'.

But the idea of a multiline TBLFM syntax seems to be already be almost
supported. I was mildly shocked to find that this mostly works

```
|---+---|
| a | 1 |
| b | 3 |
|---+---|
|   | 4 |
#+TBLFM: @2$2=@-1*3
#+TBLFM: @3$2=vsum(@I..II)
```

Note that I don't need the usual `::` separation between formulas. Where it
breaks down is that I can't seem to reevaluate the whole table's formula by
whacking `C-u C-c C-c` anymore and, obviously, there's no syntax for adding
comments. Also I doubt that I'd be able to use any of org's keys for
editing formulas. I wonder how hard it would be to extend org's
understanding of the TBLFM to allow for this kind of syntax.

Once you had it then adding a comment character to it should be very simple.

--

In Christ,

Timmy V.

https://blog.twonegatives.com
http://five.sentenc.es

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2645 bytes --]