Subject: Summary: Column editor

From: Ricardo Grau Crespo <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 1999 15:50:16 -0500

-------- MANY THANKS !! -----------

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Original message:
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Hi CCL,
 Could you please tell if there is any editor for Linux that allows
working (inserting, deleting, moving, etc) with data columns. And, if
yes, where can I find it?

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Some Answers:
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From:  "Ned C. Haubein" <[email-masked]>
1) you could get Star Office (free) which has a spreadsheet program in
it. 
2) you could get gnumeric which is the GNU spreadsheet, although it is
still in development  (also free)
3) you can use a scripting language like awk or perl
to write a program if you are performing the same task over and over
again. 

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From: Iraj Daizadeh <[email-masked]>
For multiple alignments editors require in a most direct way your
interests...please check the following--for example...
http://www.ibcp.fr/mpsa

First transform your data into the following form:
150109492812
10328283823
39183923023043

or 

agtctgtctttct
agcttttcttctc

I am only guessing that it can perform the same column functions with
numbers as well...--doubt it in retrospect....this is not excel....

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From: Gregory Durst <[email-masked]>
What I use to modify column data is 'awk' This is a standard unix tool
on all
unix machines, including linux.  If you need help there is a good
O'Reilly &
Assoc. book on awk titled "sed & awk" by Dale Dougherty.

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From: [email-masked] 
Emacs (free from the Gnu people, FSF, under the same 
licensing agreement as linux) has maybe the easiest 
column editing tools if you need to edit your data files. 
 There might be others, but emacs can select columns and 
cut and paste them with just a few keystrokes, and I'm 
sure emacs is readily available to you.  Vi is a real 
pain for column editing.  Emacs has a steeper learning 
curve than many editors, but it is well worth the effort. 
 You might also find that the linux tools awk and sed 
might be of great use to you.  Read the man pages for 
them on your linux box for more info.

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From: Doug Henry <[email-masked]>
Nedit is a free, X-windows based editor that can cut and paste columns
of
data:
http://www-pat.fnal.gov/nirvana/nedit.html
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From: Jan Labanowski <[email-masked]>

For simple things the good old emacs has colum functions:
   M-x kill-rectangle         
   M-x yank-rectangle
You mark the rectangular region (from mark to current cursor), kill it,
(i.e., cut it out), move the cursor where you want it placed
and yank it. Of course, you can kill it, and not yank it, if you only
want to delete text.

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From: Iraj Daizadeh <[email-masked]>
Emacs...fine...
For a nicer interface try the freeware product:	nedit,
latent on sgi....to pick out columns use the control-mouse (index1 
for righthanders)...

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From: Claudio Chuaqui <[email-masked]>
 ...Of course, unless you are familiar with emacs already,
it is no snap to learn.

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From: Eric Martin <[email-masked]>
GNU Emacs has the following rectangle editing commands that can also be
used to cut and paste columns.

clear-rectangle		      C-x r c
  Command: Blank out rectangle with corners at point and mark.
copy-rectangle-to-register    C-x r r
  Command: Copy rectangular region into register REGISTER.
delete-rectangle	      C-x r d
  Command: Delete (don't save) text in rectangle with point and mark as
corners.
kill-rectangle		      C-x r k
  Command: Delete rectangle with corners at point and mark; save as last
killed one.
open-rectangle		      C-x r o
  Command: Blank out rectangle with corners at point and mark, shifting
text right.
string-rectangle	      C-x r t
  Command: Insert STRING on each line of the region-rectangle, shifting
text right.
yank-rectangle		      C-x r y
  Command: Yank the last killed rectangle with upper left corner at
point.
These, combined with the macro recording and playback functions, work
pretty well.

Emacs is in ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/
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From: "Michael K. Gilson" <[email-masked]>
 ...There are various versions of emacs, some with more
user-friendly buttons and menus, such as Xemacs.  I have used it for
years and like it a lot.  It also works on other Unix systems, and there
is even a version for Win32 systems.

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From: Peter Varnai <[email-masked]>
Vi IMproved (VIM) can do the work for you, use Ctrl-V to
select the coloumn, use x to delete, yank it to a buffer
by "ay and then paste it by "ap.
This editor should be on your linux by typing "vi" or
can get it from www.vim.org

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From: Rick Venable <[email-masked]>
There are, of course, spreadsheet type packages available such as
xspread and oleo under Linux.
Another option is an editor named ce, based on the old Apollo DomainOS
editor of the same name, which supports rectangular cut and paste.  You
can shift column alignments easily by inserting or deleting columns of
spaces almost as easily as inserting/deleting lines of text.
You can download the package (free for Linux) via

ftp ftp.std.com         [login as anonymous]
cd /ftp/vendors/ETG

Finally, some claim "emacs can do this easily", but I've always found
emacs to be too cumbersome and cryptic for my tastes (YMMV).

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From: Harry Johnson <[email-masked]>
If you just need to copy, paste and delete columns of text, look into
the kill-rectangle command within emacs.
If you want a spreadsheet, I would recommend looking into StarOffice. 
It is a full office suite, Micro$oft compatible, runs under linux (as
well as Windoze 98) and best of all is free!  Check out
http://www.stardivision.com if you are interested.

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From: Luigi Cavallo <[email-masked]>
vim (vi linux) should have what you need. It can copy paste and delete
not
only by lines but also by columns. CTRL-v is the keystroke that enters
you
into columns editing. The "man vim" should help.

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From: "Marcio Cyrillo" <[email-masked]>
If you don't mind using windows (blagh!),  you can download a piece of
code
I developed: have a look at http://www.ifi.unicamp.br/gsonm/cyrillo and
look
for coledit.

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From: Pedro A M Vazquez <[email-masked]>
The two most flexible tools to format/reformat input and
output files used in computational chemistry are awk and perl.

----------------------------------------------------------------- 
From: Andrea Bernini <[email-masked]>
In standard Linux distribution you can find joe. It is a console editor
such as vi but more user-friendly, and it has rectangular block
selection features, search man pages for "rectangular" and "define
block".

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From: Dirk Dettmering <[email-masked]>
try kwrite from the KDE project (should come with your favourite
distribution in one of the kde-rpms, otherwise try www.kde.org). This is
my own favourite lightwhight editor: small, fast and you don't have to
remember tons of key combinations! You can mark columns with your mouse!

-------------------------------------------------------------------
From: John McKelvey <[email-masked]>
Boston Buisiness Computing has a Linux version of the DEC EDT+ editor
that does column editing.  [I have been using their products for about
15 years...]

---------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Wolf-Dietrich Ihlenfeldt"
<[email-masked]>

cut, paste, join. See man pages.-- 
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**************************************************************
* Ricardo Grau Crespo <[email-masked]>                 *
* Catalysis Department, Center for Petroleum Research.       *
* Washington # 169. Cerro, Havana,  CUBA                     *
**************************************************************