And then there was one

I’m going to close out this little three-day foray into the maelstrom of console-based software with one I really like, and have been using quite a bit since I installed it: sc.

Now it’s true that I am a teapot fan — I like teapot for being unconventional and at the same time easy to figure out. sc, however, is like a comfortable old jacket … it just feels nice as soon as you put it on.

It’s about the size of a pin, as easy to run as a pencil and paper and has a history way, way back in days of *nix past. It does exactly what you expect, when you expect it, how you expect it.

And yes, vi fans, it has some similar keystrokes. 🙄

That shallow learning curve, coupled with the onboard help, will probably have you up and calculating in no time. Which is good. If that’s not enough, check out this recent rundown from Linux Journal.

Downsides are that it’s not Excel or Gnumeric or whatever spreadsheet Apple users get, which means about 99 percent of the planet is going to be hesitant.

And it is a little naive when it comes to file formats, although you can export to asc or something like tab-delimited too. I am sure a savvy computer user like you can get your data converted somehow.

And that’s really all I’m going to say about it. I know there is a successor, slsc, but I don’t see it in the Debian repos and so I might need to build it myself. I am not afraid. 😈

But for now, sc does almost everything I need in a spreadsheet. Life is good. 🙂