Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.icon,comp.apps.spreadsheets
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!noc.netcom.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!NewsWatcher!user
From: hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker)
Subject: Re: Spreadsheets and Lisp {was: Letter From Ted Nelson}
Message-ID: <hbaker-1006951122070001@192.0.2.1>
Sender: hbaker@netcom16.netcom.com
Organization: nil
References: <3r29km$m7p@crl11.crl.com> <D9t2v3.Fty@world.std.com> <3r4kpr$q9q@crl4.crl.com> <hbaker-0706951720170001@192.0.2.1> <3r7jqd$ihb@crl7.crl.com> <rpk-1006950123280001@192.0.2.1>
Distribution: inet
Date: Sat, 10 Jun 1995 19:22:07 GMT
Lines: 33
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.lisp:18091 comp.lang.icon:3156 comp.apps.spreadsheets:9452

In article <rpk-1006950123280001@192.0.2.1>, rpk@world.std.com (Robert P.
Krajewski) wrote:

> [Most groups removed, comp.apps.spreadsheets added.]
> 
> dbennett@crl.com (Andrea Chen) wrote:
> >hbaker@netcom.com (Henry Baker) writes:
> >
> >>In article <3r4kpr$q9q@crl4.crl.com>, dbennett@crl.com (Andrea Chen) wrote:
> >
> >>> A historical example is the spreadsheet
> >>> (a product which helped launch the PC revolution).  Two features
> >>> which distinguished it were its matrix frontend and "automatic
> >>> recalculation" in the backend.  This second feature is natural to
> >>> Lisp dialects which could have served as an engine.  They would
> >>> also have provided call by name (not just cell number) and 
> >>> "multidimensional" structures.  It took spreadsheet engines over
> >>> ten years to evolve these features on their own.
> Improv did advance the model of a spreadsheet, but the real
> leap that nobody's really made yet is to allow arbitrary datatypes
> to participate in what a spreadsheet is good at -- taking a set
> of rules and values, and keeping them consistent.

If you haven't seen the 'spreadsheet' that Xerox Info. Sys. did in
Smalltalk for the CIA in the early 1980's, you're missing something.
It had arbitrary datatypes in its cells, including pictures, etc., and
may have even had (recursive!) little spreadsheets in some of the cells.
I seem to recall it being called "The Analyst", or something nebbish like
that.

-- 
www/ftp directory:
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/hb/hbaker/home.html
