How close does Emacs already come to Soulver?

How close does Emacs already come to Soulver?

[Tim Visher]

http://www.acqualia.com/soulver/

I heard about that app on a recent Systematic episode and it grabbed
my attention. I use org and calc to do a lot of budgetary activities
and I often find myself trying to pull out calculations from my stream
of consciousness notes.

Soulver would be awesome for this but of course it's not emacs.

It strikes me as something that calc or org might already do.

Thoughts?

--

In Christ,

Timmy V.

http://blog.twonegatives.com/
http://five.sentenc.es/ -- Spend less time on mail

Re: How close does Emacs already come to Soulver?

[Bastien]

Tim Visher <tim.visher@gmail.com> writes:

> It strikes me as something that calc or org might already do.
>
> Thoughts?

Yes, Emacs and Org could do this.  You would need to let a table's
formulas be recalculated at each insertion (see post-command-hook).

That said, those demos are shiny when watching for a few seconds,
but we you really edit a buffer, you don't really want text that
is *not* under point to change at each insertion.  This is tiring.
At least this is how I feel it.

-- 
 Bastien

Re: How close does Emacs already come to Soulver?

[Luca Ferrari]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 7:35 AM, Bastien <bzg@altern.org> wrote:
> you don't really want text that
> is *not* under point to change at each insertion.  This is tiring.
> At least this is how I feel it.

I agree.
Moreover, sounds to me like you need to learn a new language to let
the buffers auto-update as you'd like, while using forumulas is a more
standard approach, at least to me.

Luca

Re: How close does Emacs already come to Soulver?

[Tim Visher]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 1:35 AM, Bastien <bzg@altern.org> wrote:
> Tim Visher <tim.visher@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> It strikes me as something that calc or org might already do.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>
> Yes, Emacs and Org could do this.  You would need to let a table's
> formulas be recalculated at each insertion (see post-command-hook).
>
> That said, those demos are shiny when watching for a few seconds,
> but we you really edit a buffer, you don't really want text that
> is *not* under point to change at each insertion.  This is tiring.
> At least this is how I feel it.

I'd actually be quite satisfied with having to call something to have
the results recalculated, how would I go about getting the actual
calculations done though?

--

In Christ,

Timmy V.

http://blog.twonegatives.com/
http://five.sentenc.es/ -- Spend less time on mail

Re: How close does Emacs already come to Soulver?

[Bastien]

Tim Visher <tim.visher@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 1:35 AM, Bastien <bzg@altern.org> wrote:
>> Tim Visher <tim.visher@gmail.com> writes:
>>
>>> It strikes me as something that calc or org might already do.
>>>
>>> Thoughts?
>>
>> Yes, Emacs and Org could do this.  You would need to let a table's
>> formulas be recalculated at each insertion (see post-command-hook).
>>
>> That said, those demos are shiny when watching for a few seconds,
>> but we you really edit a buffer, you don't really want text that
>> is *not* under point to change at each insertion.  This is tiring.
>> At least this is how I feel it.
>
> I'd actually be quite satisfied with having to call something to have
> the results recalculated, how would I go about getting the actual
> calculations done though?

You mean C-c C-c on the #+TBLFM line ?

-- 
 Bastien

Re: How close does Emacs already come to Soulver?

[Tim Visher]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 7:57 AM, Bastien <bzg@altern.org> wrote:
> Tim Visher <tim.visher@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 1:35 AM, Bastien <bzg@altern.org> wrote:
>>> Tim Visher <tim.visher@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>>> It strikes me as something that calc or org might already do.
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts?
>>>
>>> Yes, Emacs and Org could do this.  You would need to let a table's
>>> formulas be recalculated at each insertion (see post-command-hook).
>>>
>>> That said, those demos are shiny when watching for a few seconds,
>>> but we you really edit a buffer, you don't really want text that
>>> is *not* under point to change at each insertion.  This is tiring.
>>> At least this is how I feel it.
>>
>> I'd actually be quite satisfied with having to call something to have
>> the results recalculated, how would I go about getting the actual
>> calculations done though?
>
> You mean C-c C-c on the #+TBLFM line ?

Perhaps. I hadn't heard of TBLFM prior to this.

How could I use that (sounds like part of the Spreadsheet subsystem of
Org?) to do something like `2 dogs x 3 pounds of food x 7 per pound =
${recalculated field:42}`, which is what Soulver seems to do?

--

In Christ,

Timmy V.

http://blog.twonegatives.com/
http://five.sentenc.es/ -- Spend less time on mail

Re: How close does Emacs already come to Soulver?

[Bastien]

Tim Visher <tim.visher@gmail.com> writes:

> How could I use that (sounds like part of the Spreadsheet subsystem of
> Org?) to do something like `2 dogs x 3 pounds of food x 7 per pound =
> ${recalculated field:42}`, which is what Soulver seems to do?

See

  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/tables.html

for an introduction about Org tables and

  http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro.html

for an introduction about using Org tables as spreadsheets.

HTH,

-- 
 Bastien

Re: How close does Emacs already come to Soulver?

[Tim Visher]

Hi Bastien,

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 9:36 AM, Bastien <bzg@altern.org> wrote:
> Tim Visher <tim.visher@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> How could I use that (sounds like part of the Spreadsheet subsystem of
>> Org?) to do something like `2 dogs x 3 pounds of food x 7 per pound =
>> ${recalculated field:42}`, which is what Soulver seems to do?
>
> See
>
>   http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/tables.html
>
> for an introduction about Org tables and
>
>   http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro.html
>
> for an introduction about using Org tables as spreadsheets.

Unless I'm misreading the docs, I don't see how tables help me with
unstructured text. The whole point of Soulver seems to be that it
extracts the formula out of the natural language of the problem
statement. Introducing structure to that text would be beside the
point. Once I can start adding structure then I might as well not
write the natural language.

--

In Christ,

Timmy V.

http://blog.twonegatives.com/
http://five.sentenc.es/ -- Spend less time on mail

Re: How close does Emacs already come to Soulver?

[Bastien]

Tim Visher <tim.visher@gmail.com> writes:

> Unless I'm misreading the docs, I don't see how tables help me with
> unstructured text. 

Oh, it doesn't, I misread your question.

> The whole point of Soulver seems to be that it
> extracts the formula out of the natural language of the problem
> statement. Introducing structure to that text would be beside the
> point. Once I can start adding structure then I might as well not
> write the natural language.

Yes.  So no, Org-mode cannot help here.  You will need to write
another dedicated mode for that, but I'm sure it's possible.

-- 
 Bastien

Re: How close does Emacs already come to Soulver?

[Tim Visher]

On Tue, Jan 28, 2014 at 9:51 AM, Bastien <bzg@altern.org> wrote:
> Tim Visher <tim.visher@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> Unless I'm misreading the docs, I don't see how tables help me with
>> unstructured text.
>
> Oh, it doesn't, I misread your question.
>
>> The whole point of Soulver seems to be that it
>> extracts the formula out of the natural language of the problem
>> statement. Introducing structure to that text would be beside the
>> point. Once I can start adding structure then I might as well not
>> write the natural language.
>
> Yes.  So no, Org-mode cannot help here.  You will need to write
> another dedicated mode for that, but I'm sure it's possible.

Got it. :)

--

In Christ,

Timmy V.

http://blog.twonegatives.com/
http://five.sentenc.es/ -- Spend less time on mail