For a while I've been lurking on the development of cell-mode [1], an Emacs mode created by David O'Toole. The blurb says:

Cell-mode is an object-oriented spreadsheet control for GNU Emacs. It provides a major mode for spreadsheet-based user interfaces; it can be further extended by defining application-specific Emacs Lisp minor modes which supply new cell and spreadsheet classes via Emacs’ included object system, EIEIO.

I decided to create this post because I am not sure how widely known this mode is, and I'd like to raise attention to it. Personally, I think it is an amazing idea - a magit or org-mode-like "killer app" for Emacs. It may sound like I'm exaggerating (and perhaps I am), but just off the top of my head I can think of a few really interesting use cases:

• integrate it with org-mode as a table editor. You could edit the table in cell-mode and then see the ascii representation.
• integrate it with modes such as SQL mode and the like, so that you could visualise the table output as a cell-mode spreadsheet.
• as just a plain old spreadsheet. Most of my use cases for excel would probably go away with it plus Emacs lisp.
• easy CSV (etc) editing.
• derived modes (see mosaic [2] by the same author).

I'm sure many more use cases would quickly emerge by integrating it with other modes. If you use cell-mode or know of similar modes in this space do let me know on the comments.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with David O'Toole or cell-mode development, just a regular Emacs user.

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https://preview.redd.it/sfq42fmt8j581.png?width=760&format=png&auto=webp&s=276ef95ea7ecccc910ebca23905ba1bfc9a178fc

[1] https://gitlab.com/dto/cell-mode

[2] https://gitlab.com/dto/mosaic-el