[HN Gopher] Improving Calc support for 16384 columns
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       Improving Calc support for 16384 columns
        
       Author : mariuz
       Score  : 28 points
       Date   : 2022-06-29 15:12 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (llunak.blogspot.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (llunak.blogspot.com)
        
       | rbanffy wrote:
       | LibreOffice is still my default office application for making
       | spreadsheets and other documents I don't need to share or edit in
       | collaboration. This allows it to be used on many datasets that
       | didn't fit in the previous versions and this is amazing.
        
         | trelane wrote:
         | I also use it regularly and have no shame about sharing them
         | around. Nobody seems afraid to require I get a multi-hundred
         | dollar software package when they send me docx/xslx/pptx, so
         | seems fair to ask they download a free and Free OpenDocument
         | implementation if they can't open it yet.
        
           | kzrdude wrote:
           | Shouldn't Excel open ODS? I thought standards support was a
           | box they ticked for contract reasons
        
             | rbanffy wrote:
             | There is very little incentive for Microsoft to make Excel
             | work well with ODS
        
             | trelane wrote:
             | There are a number of things that should open at least some
             | versions of OpenDocument files. If they have an issue, the
             | can still get LibreOffice for free. Much better than the
             | reverse situation, especially if they don't send ooxml
        
       | nyanpasu64 wrote:
       | I'm not a fan of the spreadsheet paradigm, and unlimited columns
       | even if you never use them, requiring lazy-initializing them on
       | first access to avoid prohibitive performance penalties. I'd much
       | rather define a set of global columns for each table (like a SQL
       | database with computed view columns and a table editor attached,
       | rather than a freeform canvas with a formula engine and automatic
       | copy-paste attached).
        
         | Dylan16807 wrote:
         | You still have to have roughly the same code to support the
         | variable number of columns per sheet. It just changes the UI
         | slightly between "doesn't exist" and "is not initialized".
        
       | zokier wrote:
       | While improvement, even 16k feels arbitrarily low limit. These
       | days I would expect either unlimited columns, or some silly high
       | limit like 2^64.
        
         | danachow wrote:
         | Has this limit (it's the same in Excel) one you have or someone
         | you know ever encountered or even come close to in practice? If
         | not then it's a BS expectation.
        
           | _uy6i wrote:
           | I've seen people hit the 1m row limit plenty of times
        
             | Dylan16807 wrote:
             | Row limit is easy to hit. But I don't think anyone is
             | importing a massive dataset sideways.
        
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       (page generated 2022-06-29 23:02 UTC)