R help - Aug 2014 - Best cross-platform OSS GUI CSV management application?

Good evening,

Suppose that /the business/ want to store tabular data inside of a
file. They want manage that file using a GUI program that runs on OSX,
Linux, and Windows.  Additionally, it needs to be OSS and *not* MS Word.

Two options that immediately come to mind are [LibreOffice] and
[OpenOffice.]

The desire is that they could manage it in a format exportable to CSV so
that `R' could use it.

Specifically, they are looking for a tool that would export the data to
a CSV format that `R' was happy with /right out of the box/.

Have you found any good solutions that are similar or identical to this
and what are they?

Kind regards,


[LibreOffice] https://www.libreoffice.org/

[OpenOffice.] https://www.openoffice.org/

Grant Rettke | ACM, ASA, FSF
gcr at wisdomandwonder.com | http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/
?Wisdom begins in wonder.? --Socrates
((? (x) (x x)) (? (x) (x x)))
?Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop
taking it seriously.? --Thompson

	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]

Please stop posting on this plain text list using HTML. You are not a freshman
any more.

Is anyone really considering the use of a word processor (equivalent to MS Word)
for managing this tabular data?

The usual quick-and-dirty solution typically involves a spreadsheet program, but
they are so lax that any significant amount of manual "management"
often corrupts the file with text data in numeric fields and the like. You also
end up with versionitis problems if you store the data in the native format for
that program.

A better solution is to create a SQL database, which R can read almost as easily
as a CSV file but can be configured to restrict data types per column. The
drawback is that such solutions are not quick and dirty... someone needs to
stick around who understands it. The real question is which flavor of SQL to
use. A file-based option that LibreOffice can interact with is sqlite, but I
have to admit I don't have much experience using it with that front end. A
server-based solution that LibreOffice can talk to like MySQL would be more
scalable for multiple users, but one computer would have to act as a server for
everyone and the admin skillset takes another step up.

None of these tools are on topic here, but that may get you going toward trying
some things out.
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On August 27, 2014 4:01:59 PM PDT, Grant Rettke <gcr at
wisdomandwonder.com> wrote:
>Good evening,
>
>Suppose that /the business/ want to store tabular data inside of a
>file. They want manage that file using a GUI program that runs on OSX,
>Linux, and Windows.  Additionally, it needs to be OSS and *not* MS
>Word.
>
>Two options that immediately come to mind are [LibreOffice] and
>[OpenOffice.]
>
>The desire is that they could manage it in a format exportable to CSV
>so
>that `R' could use it.
>
>Specifically, they are looking for a tool that would export the data to
>a CSV format that `R' was happy with /right out of the box/.
>
>Have you found any good solutions that are similar or identical to this
>and what are they?
>
>Kind regards,
>
>
>[LibreOffice] https://www.libreoffice.org/
>
>[OpenOffice.] https://www.openoffice.org/
>
>Grant Rettke | ACM, ASA, FSF
>gcr at wisdomandwonder.com | http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/
>?Wisdom begins in wonder.? --Socrates
>((? (x) (x x)) (? (x) (x x)))
>?Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop
>taking it seriously.? --Thompson
>
>	[[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
>______________________________________________
>R-help at r-project.org mailing list
>https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
>PLEASE do read the posting guide
>http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
>and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

Not an R question, so off topic here. But I think this is what they
invented wikipedia for: see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_spreadsheet_software

Best,
Ista

On Wed, Aug 27, 2014 at 7:01 PM, Grant Rettke <gcr at wisdomandwonder.com>
wrote:
> Good evening,
>
> Suppose that /the business/ want to store tabular data inside of a
> file. They want manage that file using a GUI program that runs on OSX,
> Linux, and Windows.  Additionally, it needs to be OSS and *not* MS Word.
>
> Two options that immediately come to mind are [LibreOffice] and
> [OpenOffice.]
>
> The desire is that they could manage it in a format exportable to CSV so
> that `R' could use it.
>
> Specifically, they are looking for a tool that would export the data to
> a CSV format that `R' was happy with /right out of the box/.
>
> Have you found any good solutions that are similar or identical to this
> and what are they?
>
> Kind regards,
>
>
> [LibreOffice] https://www.libreoffice.org/
>
> [OpenOffice.] https://www.openoffice.org/
>
> Grant Rettke | ACM, ASA, FSF
> gcr at wisdomandwonder.com | http://www.wisdomandwonder.com/
> ?Wisdom begins in wonder.? --Socrates
> ((? (x) (x x)) (? (x) (x x)))
> ?Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop
> taking it seriously.? --Thompson
>
>         [[alternative HTML version deleted]]
>
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at r-project.org mailing list
> https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
> PLEASE do read the posting guide
http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html
> and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.

Put it into a SQL database, MySQL or PostgreSQL.

el

on 2014-08-28, 00:01 Grant Rettke said the following:
> Good evening,
> 
> Suppose that /the business/ want to store tabular data inside of a
> file. They want manage that file using a GUI program that runs on OSX,
> Linux, and Windows.  Additionally, it needs to be OSS and *not* MS Word.
> 
> Two options that immediately come to mind are [LibreOffice] and
> [OpenOffice.]
> 
> The desire is that they could manage it in a format exportable to CSV so
> that `R' could use it.
> 
> Specifically, they are looking for a tool that would export the data to
> a CSV format that `R' was happy with /right out of the box/.
> 
> Have you found any good solutions that are similar or identical to this
> and what are they?
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> 
> [LibreOffice] https://www.libreoffice.org/
> 
> [OpenOffice.] https://www.openoffice.org/
> 
> Grant Rettke | ACM, ASA, FSF
[...]