Currently, if you copy a range of cells in a spreadsheet program like LibreOffice Calc, Microslop Excel, Google Sheets, etc. and then paste into a textbox in PieFed, it will upload that as an image file representing that range of data. If that is what a user intends to do, it works great for that. But I think that more often than not, what the user actually wants to do when pasting in from a spreadsheet is for that data to be a markdown-formatted table, not an image file. I would like to see this as the default behaviour for PieFed.

Here is an example of a website that exists just to provide a textbox in which you can paste from a spreadsheet and it will convert that range of data to a markdown table: https://tabletomarkdown.com/convert-spreadsheet-to-markdown/

I came across this as a library or whatever that other similar sites make use of to implement this feature: https://github.com/jonmagic/copy-excel-paste-markdown

  • Unattributed 𓂃✍︎@feddit.onlineEnglish
    42·
    17 days ago

    The problem here is that you are showing an example of a simple table with static information. Spreadsheets are often a lot more: formulas, lookup data, pivot tables, etc. This type of spreadsheet information doesn’t translate into Markdown. Additionally, tables can have a lot more information than will render nicely using Markdown.

    I’ve used the convert to image functionality on other platforms (Mastodon / GotoSocial), and it was, IMO, the best choice at the time as ti took dynamic information from a spreadsheet, and created a static image that was accurate.

    I don’t have an issue with the idea of doing a Markdown based table, I’m just thinking that it might be better / more appropriate to support both Markdown and static images.

    • MachineFab812@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      2·
      15 days ago

      Paste Special>>Values … its not that hard to get static values from the Clipboard, and if you’re copying between different spreadsheet programs or even into existing nested tables, the Values, not the formulas or linked data pointers, are already generally what you’re going to get.

      The proper response to someone showing you the solution to a problem is rarely, if ever, “yes but, without trying it, here’s why I think it shouldn’t work unless you first re-invent the wheel”.

      Walking it back at the end where you pretend OP wanted to take away the existing functionality was a nice touch. You so-obviously deserve the four up-votes your comment got for that alone.