We're planning to have our product preview program to calculate and suggest a price for the product displayed. There are a lot of variables to take into account, so it's essential the users can edit the price variables themselves.

The problem is that many of them are not the best computer users around, even by non-programmer standards. I'd like the price variable file to be in CSV format, so I don't have to go looking for a new file parser (the preview program is mostly compiled to JavaScript from C# with some D (spasm) and native JavaScript in the mix). I know I can tell the users to use spreadsheet programs to edit CSV, but they are still going to get the variable field names wrong, and I do not want that.

Another option would be for me to write an editor for them specially for this purpose. The editor would not have to be embeddable into a browser, so I could write it in D. But it'd have to use a GUI, which would likely take a relatively long time to develop, and thus costly for my employer.

Does anybody know a program/file format that could enable editing the fields while guarding against formatting/field naming errors? Even if it isn't CSV, it is going to be easier for me to write a translator than a GUI editor.

On Thursday, 24 October 2019 at 16:03:26 UTC, Dukc wrote:
> Even if it isn't CSV, it is going to be easier for me to write a translator than a GUI editor.

Assuming the file format is simple, of course

On Thursday, 24 October 2019 at 16:03:26 UTC, Dukc wrote:
> [snip]

If they are only opening it in Excel, then you can lock cells. You should be able to do that with VBA.

On Thursday, 24 October 2019 at 16:20:20 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
> On Thursday, 24 October 2019 at 16:03:26 UTC, Dukc wrote:
>> [snip]
>
> If they are only opening it in Excel, then you can lock cells. You should be able to do that with VBA.

At least I know it works with xlsx files. Not sure on csv now that I think on it.

On Thursday, 24 October 2019 at 16:20:50 UTC, jmh530 wrote:
>> If they are only opening it in Excel, then you can lock cells. You should be able to do that with VBA.
>
> At least I know it works with xlsx files. Not sure on csv now that I think on it.

Hmm, I need to check whether I can do that on LibreOffice Calc. I do not to rely on Ms Excel -in part because I don't have one myself! But if the answer is positive, it might be worth considering. I should be able to make an easy-to-use excel-to-csv translator using Atilas Excel utilites without too much effort.

On Thursday, 24 October 2019 at 16:50:17 UTC, Dukc wrote:
> Hmm, I need to check whether I can do that on LibreOffice Calc.

Unfortunately, no. If there's a way to do that, it's not obvious.


> I should be able to make an easy-to-use excel-to-csv translator using Atilas Excel utilites without too much effort.

This was wrong: Atila's Excel-d enables writing plugin functions, but not reading the spreadsheets. There are other DUB utilities for that, though.

I quess I will give my employer two options: Either the price variables are in an one-column CSV and I distribute the key column separately so they don't mess it up, or I take my time to do a GUI solution.

Unless somebody has better ideas?

On Thursday, 24 October 2019 at 17:41:21 UTC, Dukc wrote:
> 
>
> This was wrong: Atila's Excel-d enables writing plugin functions, but not reading the spreadsheets. There are other DUB utilities for that, though.
>
> I quess I will give my employer two options: Either the price variables are in an one-column CSV and I distribute the key column separately so they don't mess it up, or I take my time to do a GUI solution.
>
> Unless somebody has better ideas?

It seems to me that Excel forgets these settings for csv files. I tried locking/protecting some rows and it works fine when it is open, but then Excel forgets it when you save/close/reopen, which makes some sense when you think about it. So you'd have to give up the csv and use xlsx if your users were doing it with Excel.

Another solution might be to create another file type that like a csv+. However, you'd have to then have a way to open said csv+, which brings you back to the GUI situation.

On Thursday, 24 October 2019 at 17:41:21 UTC, Dukc wrote:
> On Thursday, 24 October 2019 at 16:50:17 UTC, Dukc wrote:
>> Hmm, I need to check whether I can do that on LibreOffice Calc.
>
> Unfortunately, no. If there's a way to do that, it's not obvious.
>
>
>> I should be able to make an easy-to-use excel-to-csv translator using Atilas Excel utilites without too much effort.
>
> This was wrong: Atila's Excel-d enables writing plugin functions, but not reading the spreadsheets. There are other DUB utilities for that, though.
>
> I quess I will give my employer two options: Either the price variables are in an one-column CSV and I distribute the key column separately so they don't mess it up, or I take my time to do a GUI solution.
>
> Unless somebody has better ideas?

Another Symmetry project allows reading Excel files and a third is wrapper and bindings around a C library to write Excel files.  We use them in production daily though there may be rough edges for features we don't use.

I should think you can use a Javascript library and call it from D.  See trading views repo by Sebastian Koppe for an example of this.  Bindings are manual currently but he will work on generating them from the Typescript bindings in time.

On 2019-10-24 16:03:26 +0000, Dukc said:

> We're planning to have our product preview program to calculate and suggest a price for the product displayed. There are a lot of variables to take into account, so it's essential the users can edit the price variables themselves.

Hi, maybe you want to take a look what we do.

We are creating price-predicting formulas for all kind of products. Our solution is used in B2B by sales, engineering and purchasing departments to predict prices for very complex parts and products mostly using 3 to 10 performance drivers.

So, it's very easy (and fast) for users to get a good idea about the target-price of a product. Our predictions have a very high precision.

Let me know if you want to get some more background information.

-- 
Robert M. Münch
http://www.saphirion.com
smarter | better | faster

On Friday, 25 October 2019 at 21:58:27 UTC, Laeeth Isharc wrote:
>
> Another Symmetry project allows reading Excel files and a third is wrapper and bindings around a C library to write Excel files.  We use them in production daily though there may be rough edges for features we don't use.
>
> I should think you can use a Javascript library and call it from D.  See trading views repo by Sebastian Koppe for an example of this.  Bindings are manual currently but he will work on generating them from the Typescript bindings in time.

Sorry for late reply. I was told that I can do this by writing the key field only as a comment (so changing it will do no harm - the real key would be dictated either by an ID number or simply row index). In the case they want me to do it without writing my own GUI, I'm going to consider the DUB solutions first but look at what you said if I still miss something. Thank you.