Support for user scripts (Javascript)

[Paul_Danyliuk]

Here’s a new perspective on this:

Volatile input columns — or — Variables in formulas

I’ve just discovered that Airtable has scripting (like, real JS). If Coda supported something similar, that would solve all the issues in the world (of Coda). Everyone would have tools for their expertise level: Basic users would set up filters and buttons via the dropdown UIs. Mid-level users would write formulas and actions. And power users who need more would have access to fully featured scripting. Creating named functions (like MyFunction(arg1, arg2, arg3)) and actions (like AddAllComb…

No DOM access. Instead expose a fluent API to work with the data in the doc (get rows, get cells, enumerate columns etc), directly with the data in the doc and not through remote API calls. And that would solve all the problems in the world.

Well, it won’t solve the UI extendability, but in this last year that turned out to be not as important as the ability to quickly calculate and transform large data sets, for which I had to invent many workarounds like this. On the other hand, if this JS can use Canvas to create images and SVG to create interactive pieces, and we could insert the result of that function in a canvas or a cell — that would solve the UI extendability need as well.