Lightweight table editor

Question

I am looking for something like Sublime Text for tables. That is, when it encounters something with table delimited values (for example), the columns should be displayed aligned.

Excel, Calligra Sheets or LibreOffice Calc are too heavy for me, I want simpler, lighter, faster and free alternatives.

Update: The suggestions so far include spreadsheet programs that are able to do plotting and calculations. This is fine, but is also kind of overkill for me. I just need to edit the table, and aligned display. In fact, if Sublime Text (or any text editor, like Gedit, Geany) had a plugin that displayed columns aligned, that would be enough (perfect) for me.

Solution 1

I can recommend Gnumeric.
Gnumeric is an open-source spreadsheet program. Gnumeric is...

• Free: Gnumeric and its source code are available free of charge, licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or version 3.
• Fast: Gnumeric starts up quickly and handles large spreadsheets while remaining responsive.
• Accurate: A spreadsheet should calculate the right answer. Gnumeric's built-in functions and tools are accurate, as several researchers have found.

To install:

sudo apt update 
sudo apt install gnumeric

Solution 2

pyspread

^{python FTW}

Description from pyspread‘s homepage

Pyspread is a non-traditional spreadsheet application that is based on and written in the programming language Python.

The goal of pyspread is to be the most pythonic spreadsheet.

Pyspread expects Python expressions in its grid cells, which makes a spreadsheet specific language obsolete. Each cell returns a Python object that can be accessed from other cells. These objects can represent anything including lists or matrices.

Pyspread is free software. It is released under the GPL v3. You can find the sorce code at github.

Installation

sudo apt install pyspread

Solution 3

If you are a user of (or at least familiar with) emacs (or vim), there is org-mode, which contain a simple integrated editor for tables. However, it needs the tables to be in a specific format, where columns are separated by vertical bars (i.e. the pipe symbol '|').

You can also do simple calculations, and the integration into the editor allows you to use the sophisticated editing facilities of emacs/vim.

Documentation can be found on the org-mode site, and a small introduction on youtube.

Solution 4

VIM Table Mode

Description from github repo page

An awesome automatic table creator & formatter allowing one to create neat tables as you type. The plugin is also able to format existing content into a table which makes it possible to work with csv or other text files. To get an idea of its features there's a youtube demonstration video.

Installation

See github repo page.

Solution 5

MacroCALC

^{Did you say lightweight?}

Description from MacroCALC‘s homepage

MacroCALC - "mc" or "321" is a powerful Lotus compatible character based spreadsheet that supports 100000 rows, 700 columns, 40 functions, 8 display formats, file linking, macro programming and user definable functions.

It is a curses-based console-program and needs no graphical environment.

It is fully integrated with [nt]roff, units, man, awk, perl and sh. As it should be in the UNIX environment, the program can act as a filter enabling users to use pipes to perform complex transformations on data streams. It contains a C programming interface as well as Lotus WKS and dBASE file support. MacroCALC‘s own file-format is flat ASCII, easy to understand and can therefore be directly manipulated with awk, perl or other standard UNIX tools, or even with editors like vi.

Furthermore MacroCALC is able to manage units: Like a scientist the program is aware of the rules for calculating units; so for instance if a "length" is divided a "time" it will show a "speed" result, and a "length" cannot be added to a "mass".

Installation

See MacroCALC‘s homepage for installation instructions. Tested on Lubuntu 16.04.

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Comments

[dessert]

For a comparison of the four main alternatives see the table in this German article, e.g. RAM usage in the third row.

[pLumo]

This looks like 1995 and when you look at the dates of the changelog it is almost like that. Last update from 2006 and the one before from 2003... how can you say this is WIP ?

[becko]

Will it read ordinary text files (tab separated, csv, etc.)?

[dessert]

@RoVo Btw, for lightweight software what it looks like is not important whatsoever.

[dessert]

@becko Just tried successfully, you need to choose File → Import to open those, works like a charm. You can even choose the delimiter sign(s) to use like in LibreOffice.

[pLumo]

Aaah, Your answer is WIP, I thought that was related to the Software. Then it makes sense ;-)

[pLumo]

If it will not connect to the internet or open files that come from the internet it will be okay to use software that is not maintained and just working. Otherwise I would not use it.

[becko]

The required | is a deal breaker for me. I usually work with tab separated text files.

[dessert]

@becko Simply use it like so: sed 's/<TAB>/|/g' filename | emacs | sed 's/|/<TAB>/g' > filename You could even define a function emacs out of it and it will be as if | is only the way emacs represents your tab delimiters.

[becko]

@dessert If the file has | originally, this command will replace them with tabs when I close emacs.

[dessert]

@becko Well then simply let the function (or a script) check for that.

[Admin]

@becko you just have to write a good script to handle it. These kinds of limitations are easily overcome.

[becko]

@MarkYisri I have no idea how to do that.

[RonJohn]

That's a blast from the past!! :)

[RonJohn]

Interesting, but how old?

[dessert]

@RonJohn The website says “Last revised: 12. August 2013”. Why does that matter?

[RonJohn]

yes, the website. But what about macrocalc? (I ask to see whether it's bitrot-ware, too old for modern compiler versions. See the answer regarding Siag Office: "may not be installable in current Ubuntu releases".)

[dessert]

@RonJohn “Tested on Lubuntu 16.04” means I successfully installed it on my Lubuntu 16.04 system and quickly tested the functionality, so yes, I'm positive it's not too old for an up-to-date compiler. As the installation of SIAG failed on my system, I added this comment there. Did you read the answers completely?

[RonJohn]

How could I have missed that... three times? :sadcat:

[jqueralt]

I'm moving to Atom. Do you know if it exist somthing similar for Atom?

[smcs]

This does not support CSV files.

[Olimjon]

@smcs, look at this: stackoverflow.com/questions/31723185/…

[smcs]

Thanks! I count that as half-support. What I want is double click on the file -> done. The import dialoge drives you crazy after a while. "Modern CSV" seems good for that.

[Vijay Prema]

Good tool and runs ok with massive (15MB+) csv files, unlike excel and libre calc. I agree it is lacking proper double-click-to-open csv support. Its possible to double click CSV but it uses default import settings which are often wrong. I think all it needs is a settings dialog when double clicking a file or a way to change the default import settings.

[markling]

Gnumeric and Calc have pretty frumpy handling of csv and tsv files.

[Muneeb Ahmad Khurram]

It is unable to open csv format it supports its own pyspread aka. .pys format.