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Comment by adamrezich | Hacker News Reader

I've never used it, Lotus Improv seems like it was awesome https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgGmKD87U3M (plus the 80s–90s vibes of this video are simply incredible)

I think there's still a ton of room for spreadsheet tech to evolve, but nobody seems to really be trying anymore, because Excel is the Gold Standard that everyone seems comfortable with.

for example: why do neither of the mainstream spreadsheet apps (Excel, Google Sheets) have first-class support for row and column headers? seems like an absolute no-brainer to me, and everyone who has worked in spreadsheets for more than thirty minutes.

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Improv was interesting — and then there was Wingz (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informix_Wingz), another very forward-thinking SS from the early days. I'd love to see a history & comparison of early SS/WP/DB applications in order to see what ideas were tried & left behind because they were too outside the norm for the day or required too many resources which could be reclaimed & worked into today's software.

Numbers has some good incremental improvements. It does have first-class support for headers, and even uses them for references which makes things absurdly clear in comparison to the plain A1 format. Multiple tables per sheet is also particularly great IMO.

The web version was mostly replete last I used it half a decade ago, including realtime collaboration with mac and iOS.

> first-class support for row and column headers

Excel provides Tables for that. Outside tables, you can define named row or column ranges, and reference them by name, including their intersections. The names are just not displayed in the headers (use Tables if you want that).

emphasis on "first-class"

Tables have first-class row and column headers, I would say.

I'm arguing tables being contained within sheets effectively make column/row referencing "second-class".

Couldn't agree more. It's absolutely a no brainer. I'm actually building an app to try to bring first-class support for row and column headers (and much more)

An improv video, thanks for the link. I only have the contemporary magazines with analysis of it.

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