Dismal-mode

Release 1.3 or later

Frank E. Ritter and Alexander B. Wood

• Introduction to Dismal
• Obtaining and Installing the Package
• Files
• Documentation
• Mailing lists/Newsgroups
• Report a bug
• Maintainer

INTRODUCTION TO DISMAL

This is an introduction for dismal (Dis' Mode Ain't Lotus), a major mode in GNU-emacs that implements a spreadsheet (!), including how to load, run, and use dismal and dismal spreadsheets. Dismal provides the basic spreadsheet functions. Because it is based on GNU-Emacs it offers several relatively novel features for a spreadsheet

• It includes tools for manipulating and aligning sequential behavioral data, like macshapa
• It is extensible, so that users can write their own commands and functions, for example, to allow a function cell to write to several nearby cells. Or for example, a ruler can be put up that reflects the semantics of column names past the ones automatically provided as letters.
• It includes extensions to record users behaviors and timestamp the keyboard and mouse movements.
• It is integrated with emacs and it is designed to be keystroke driven rather than mouse/menu driven (although it can be menu driven).

It has some useful functions that implement the keystroke level model of Card, Moran, and Newell, (1983) These were reported at CHI:

Nichols, S., & Ritter, F. E. (1994). A theoretically motivated tool
for automatically generating command aliases. Proceedings of
CHI '95. 393-400.
(http://ritter.ist.psu.edu/dismal/Chi95.html).

For further information, please see the dismal-manual (may be out of date or ill-formated), files accompanying the release, or http://ritter.ist.psu.edu/dismal/dismal-paper.html

If you would like to contribute, there remain numerous problems with dismal (noted in the todo list in dismal.el), but I use it at least weekly and now know of at 20 users outside of Nottingham and Penn State.

OBTAINING AND INSTALLING THE PACKAGE

Dismal-mode is available through the web at http://ritter.ist.psu.edu/dismal

Copies are updated less frequently from the Elisp archives at The OSU and centro.soar.cs.cmu.edu:/afs/cs/project/soar/public/Soar6/.

There is a mirror site at ftp://cs.nyu.edu/pub/local/fox/dismal that may be updated nightly.

There is a mirror site at ftp://ftp.nottingham.ac.uk/pub/lpzfr/ which is located at the University of Nottingham

The file is named "/dismal-VERSION.tar.gz" (so use binary mode by issuing the "binary" command), where version gives you the version of dismal that you are getting.

If you would like help with using anonymous ftp, feel free to send me a message and I will explain the procedure.

To install the system:

1. Find a directory where you wish to install the package. (At the University of Nottingham we currently put it in ~soar/emacs/utils/dismal.) Transfer dismal.tar.gz to your desired directory, cd to that directory, and do
   gunzip dismal-VERSION.tar.gz | tar xvf -
   
   

   This can also be uncompressed in Emacs' Dired Mode by using the Z (shift-z) command. However you must return back to the C shell to untar the file by typing
   tar xvf dismal-VERSION.tar
   
   

2. Execute "make" in the new dismal directory just created. This will compile the .el files. If GNU emacs at your site is not called "emacs", but something else (e.g., some places use "gmacs"), then compile the .el files using the alternative command "make EMACS=xxxx" where "xxxx" is the name of your emacs program. There are a lot of compiler warnings generated in 19.28. You may also have to change the compiler name in the makefile.
   
   
3. Please read the dismal.info files. They are the manual.
   
   

4. At ist@psu, where dismal is installed in /.../dce.psu.edu/fs/ist/ritter/home/emacs/site-lisp/, users can set up their Emacs to use dismal by adding the following to their ~/.emacs files:
   (load "/.../dce.psu.edu/fs/ist/ritter/home/emacs/site-lisp/")
   
   

   To use dismal at your site, change the pathname to correspond to the location of the dismal files at your site. More information about installing and using dismal are contained in the online help, available within dismal as C-h m, or in the info files themselves (dismal-manual.tex and dismal-manual.txt)

FILES

The last group of files marked with "*" are not part of dismal proper, but dismal depends on them. It should be possible for later releases of dismal to replace them with smarter and faster code. Some of these files are, in fact, gone already.

There is an online manual available though the Info-mode help system.

C-c C-m will pop up a menu. Selecting 'Help' will bring up an extensive, mode-based help. This help is also available under a menu under X.

C-c C-m will pop up a menu. Selecting 'Doc.' will provide access to an extensive info-mode based manual.

Dismal has a mailing list, L-DISMAL-USERS mailing list (Dismal Users) maintained by Alexander Wood and Frank Ritter . Email either of them to be added.

This list is used as the main discussion list and is used to discuss all aspects of dismal, including development and porting. It has about 10 messages / year.

Announcements about FOO and most other GNU Software are made on .

To subscribe to the dismal mailing list, please send an email to Alex Wood.

Currently, there is no newsgroup dedicated to dismal.

Some features which are not fully implemented yet, but will eventually be, are:

• use of Emacs 19's features (defsubs)
  
• the use of sparse matrices to represent the spreadsheet
  
• graphing capabilities provided by dismal-graphing.el
  

There are too many bugs or missing features to list them here. Interested users should consult the dismal.el file.

If you would like to hear about updates and other such things or to help maintain it, please let me (ritter@ist.psu.edu) know and I'll put you on the dismal users mailing list.

REPORT A BUG