> [!tldr] Why is there not a spreadsheet application that works like Obsidian? [[Obsidian]] sits on a folder in your computer and treats the content of the plain text files as the source of truth. You could very easily imagine a [[Spreadsheet]] application that sits on top of a folder allow you to do spreadsheet-like things directly on the underlying source files, be they [[CSV]], [[JSON]], or [[XML]]. My original idea here was mostly for CSVs, so I'll focus on that for a minute. > [!warning] Challenges: > - CSVs have no method to describe [[Data Types]] > - The concept of "formulas" would need to be managed as part of the overlay layer, not on the files themselves > - ...unless you could bake formulas in as [[Frontmatter]]? ...Come to think of it, [[Why does CSV + Frontmatter Not Exist?]]. > [!example] Why it doesn't exist... > - spreadsheets serve this need > - [[Jupyter Notebook]]s, also > - no strong push for this in the market > - baking in features means adding constraints, which defeats the purpose So far as I know, no real product exists in this space. Building one could be fun, but also would probably take a real programmer using something like [[Rust]] to do it right. ... man between this and [[Aaron's Hypothetical Modeling Tool]] I've got two infinitely deep rabbit hole projects I could jump down. **** # More ## Source - self