Maybe you’d be better off to use Numbers in this case? The sheets in DT are actually quite limited, and I don’t see a point in improving them until they can do what a spreadsheet does.
Sheets are used for automation — as catalogs / data directories.
They store sku-s, stock quantities, purchase and sale prices, links to files with HTML descriptions, links to registers, links to files with images in Base64, etc.
Using Shortcuts on i*OS we (small family business) do
quotations with graphics
invoices with graphics
purchase orders
more and more
Every transaction is written to corresponding register automatically.
Currently I build working system on macOS with JXA.
Sheets look very attractive for registers — I mean journals of sales and so on. Now we use Markdown for registers, with automation of cause.
If “Item Link” columns are working on i*OS like in macOS, I could replace Markdown registers with Sheets registers.
There are many use cases for Sheets as catalogs in households and small businesses. For instance, as library catalog or stock book, especially with “Item Link” columns
While I get that, I wouldn’t hold my breath that DEVONtechnologies (for whom I can’t speak, of course) will realise your suggestions any time soon. That’s why I suggest using Numbers files for what you’re doing – and you can also use JXA with those.
Since in another thread you mentioned thumbnails for files: There’s currently no way to add them to sheets in DT (afaict), but it should be feasible in Numbers. Furthermore, Numbers documents on i*OS are supposed to work exactly as they do on macOS.
Trying to bend DT’s sheets to what can be better handled by a real spreadsheet application might be possible, but it will be a long and thorny road.
Its been hard to find a reason to use these sheets when so many good spreadsheet apps are virtually free. Perhaps Devon tech could buy a 3’rd party spreadsheet engine and integrate it with DT3. That would be nice.
Well, some reasons coming to my mind are cross-linking, rich text support, form view, conversion to other file formats or document search using operators & wildcards. Or the sheets which DEVONthink can easily create for you (e.g. import of contacts or metadata overview or highlights summary).
And simple calculations are actually planned for future releases.
