You have to be Tufte-esque OCD personality to do it that way.
LOL I came here just to say thanks, I loved reading this. @tht ; All of your comments are on point imo, (I almost forgot OmniGraffle exists).
Hehe, I heard from Tufte himself say that MS Excel is good tool for making presentations or visualizing data. He seemed enamored with sparklines at the time. I have also seen people use Excel make Ghant style charts, like use a highly dense Excel grid and use each cell as if it was a pixel grid they were coloring, use tabs as a place to put images, etc. Excel as basically a file cabinet + calculator. You can use Numbers like this, but it just isn't built to deal with large sets of numbers.
Anyways, if you take Tufte to heart, your are creating charts ex nihilo out of whatever tool you are using. Templates rarely communicate what the data means.
iWork apps all use the core page layout, table and text code. Like, you can insert a table into a Keynote page, and you can do spreadsheet things in the table, like math and stuff
I was basically aware of this but hadn't used all of iWork enough to make this as relatable & retainable for myself. Thanks.
Anyone notice the new iWork updates flattened the window chrome more? I feel the design is walking closer towards MS Office without getting too close. Annoying there is no formula bar in Numbers, can't edit text in the "Text" status bar thing at the bottom. This makes working with larger amounts of cell text very difficult.
Yeah a lot of the more modern macOS apps are a little flatter just like macOS is getting a little flatter.
Numbers is not designed to be an Excel replacement imo. It's basically a page layout tool with spreadsheet tables as its primary interface. It's fine for small sets of data. Loading a 100,000 row set of data? Not it's thing. Processing of data with lots of equations and stuff, not its thing. Making charts, not really its thing beyond the simplistic stuff. Maybe recent versions can handle larger data sets now though, I have not tried. Plotting with it is a bit of chore.
Keynote is a straight up good if not a better replacement for Powerpoint. Pages? Don't use it enough to form an opinion.
How do I use any of these programs to draw a family tree instead of using commercial genealogy program?
I would recommend Keynote. Insert a text box for each person, and connect that with angled connection lines. Export to pdf or jpeg or whatever you prefer.
Keynote is basically a page layout program. All of the iWork apps are good at page layout.
Can Numbers do it?
Yes! It's as capable as Pages or Keynote.
You can connect cells with lines? Can you bend the lines?
How do I use any of these programs to draw a family tree instead of using commercial genealogy program?
I would recommend Keynote. Insert a text box for each person, and connect that with angled connection lines. Export to pdf or jpeg or whatever you prefer.
Keynote is basically a page layout program. All of the iWork apps are good at page layout.
Can Numbers do it?
Yes! It's as capable as Pages or Keynote.
You can connect cells with lines? Can you bend the lines?
Ah, sorry. I missed the detailed example of what you wanted to do — the quote was collapsed.
I’m not sure that particular task is possible in Numbers. To be fair, I’ve never tried to do it in Pages, either.
Comments
Anyways, if you take Tufte to heart, your are creating charts ex nihilo out of whatever tool you are using. Templates rarely communicate what the data means.
Yeah a lot of the more modern macOS apps are a little flatter just like macOS is getting a little flatter.
Numbers is not designed to be an Excel replacement imo. It's basically a page layout tool with spreadsheet tables as its primary interface. It's fine for small sets of data. Loading a 100,000 row set of data? Not it's thing. Processing of data with lots of equations and stuff, not its thing. Making charts, not really its thing beyond the simplistic stuff. Maybe recent versions can handle larger data sets now though, I have not tried. Plotting with it is a bit of chore.
Keynote is a straight up good if not a better replacement for Powerpoint. Pages? Don't use it enough to form an opinion.