Haaaaaaaate.
Jan. 15th, 2009 03:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sureiAlright, I realize that I'm spoiled, but come on, people! Text rotation and text direction. I want them. I do databases. And cross-referencing. That means that sometimes I want my text to be sideways, as in at a 90° angle. So I can list 17 stories and 70 characters and neatly record who is alive, appearing, the main character, or important-but-dead in each. So I can see that Way of Life, Ally, Dallas, Davin, Felecia, Jake, Johnathan, Kali, Kyle, Misty, Nature, Pie, Terry, Tirrike, TR, Ula, Urien, and VR all show up, and Carnelian, Cid, Cuddles, Liebe, Lucy, Sara, Ting, and Viviane are alive but not there," and also, from the same source, see that Ula is first alive in Camoflage, where she's a main character, and then doesn't appear again until Way of Life, Déjà Vu, and Chosen Few, and also makes appearances in the omake. Like this.
Now, I'm used to having to use spreadsheet software to make my databases, and I'm also used to being limited in this case by the fact that I'm a mac-user. Also, I can't stand File Maker. (Dad is listening to their promo-demo-thing right now, and my god, they are so condescending it enrages me.) So I'm basically limited to Excel (and its imitators: Open Office, NeoOffice, I'm looking at you) and Apple's iWork Numbers.
Neither of them allows non-Roman text direction. Admittedly, the chances that I'd want to write Japanese in its natural direction (top-bottom, right-left) in a table are practically nil, so I'm willing to let that go. Reluctantly, as it's a backup option.
Excel does not permit unicode characters. Which I do use. And it has a tendency to try and assume that any numbers I do put in are either currency or dates, but I know how to get around that. Mainly, I dislike Excel because of the no-unicode rule, because I dislike Microsoft, and because it has recently become bloody expensive, and the chances of documents being backwards-compatible? Not so great.
Numbers takes some getting used to, but it's pretty neat and superior to Excel in many ways. The tables exist separately from the sheet, so when you change the dimensions of a cell, you're changing it in the table, and not in the graph paper. [See? This is the kind of table I might make.] Which means that you don't have to do funky things with merging if the second table has columns of a different width from the first. And there's a lot more color variability, which can be handy. And unicode is perfectly welcome. But.
- No text rotation. No text direction options. RAR.
- You don't un-merge cells, you split them. And you can only split them in half. So if I merge an odd number cells, do a lot of work, and discover that I don't want them merged after all...? Tough luck. I can undo to the point before the cells were merged, losing all my hard work in the process, or I can suck it up. Or start over.
I repeat: HATE. Haaaaaaaaaaaate.
Now, I'm used to having to use spreadsheet software to make my databases, and I'm also used to being limited in this case by the fact that I'm a mac-user. Also, I can't stand File Maker. (Dad is listening to their promo-demo-thing right now, and my god, they are so condescending it enrages me.) So I'm basically limited to Excel (and its imitators: Open Office, NeoOffice, I'm looking at you) and Apple's iWork Numbers.
Neither of them allows non-Roman text direction. Admittedly, the chances that I'd want to write Japanese in its natural direction (top-bottom, right-left) in a table are practically nil, so I'm willing to let that go. Reluctantly, as it's a backup option.
Excel does not permit unicode characters. Which I do use. And it has a tendency to try and assume that any numbers I do put in are either currency or dates, but I know how to get around that. Mainly, I dislike Excel because of the no-unicode rule, because I dislike Microsoft, and because it has recently become bloody expensive, and the chances of documents being backwards-compatible? Not so great.
Numbers takes some getting used to, but it's pretty neat and superior to Excel in many ways. The tables exist separately from the sheet, so when you change the dimensions of a cell, you're changing it in the table, and not in the graph paper. [See? This is the kind of table I might make.] Which means that you don't have to do funky things with merging if the second table has columns of a different width from the first. And there's a lot more color variability, which can be handy. And unicode is perfectly welcome. But.
- No text rotation. No text direction options. RAR.
- You don't un-merge cells, you split them. And you can only split them in half. So if I merge an odd number cells, do a lot of work, and discover that I don't want them merged after all...? Tough luck. I can undo to the point before the cells were merged, losing all my hard work in the process, or I can suck it up. Or start over.
I repeat: HATE. Haaaaaaaaaaaate.