The Ultimate Spreadsheet Guide

This is a dynamic spreadsheet guide for journalists. It contains the everyday skills needed in a newsroom, adopted to your platform, software version and language. Live demo: https://tusg.herokuapp.com

Installation

To install:

git clone https://github.com/jplusplus/tusg.git
cd tusg
npm install

Optionally, to make the Google Sheets integration work, you will also need to add a API key and either Memcached or MemCachier.

• Get an API key (json format with line breaks, and explicit ='s) for your Google Drive service account (see this guide for step by step insctuctions on how to do this).
• Open the downloaded json file, and copy the private key to a separate text file.
• Replace \n with actual line breaks.
• Replace \u003d with =
• export GOOGLE_PRIVATE_KEY="$(cat google_private_key.txt)"
• export [email protected]
• apt-get install memcached (Ubuntu) or brew install memcached (OS X) to install Memcached.
• export MEMCACHIER_SERVERS=127.0.0.1:11211 (depending on your server setup. This is the defult for many systems) to set the Memcached server.

Developing

To get started:

gulp develop

gulp develop will set environment variables to defaults and start the app in development mode. You should now be able to access the site at localhost:3000

Each pug file in views/chapters corresponds to one chapter in the guide. Just edit the pug files, and reload the page.

In your chapter files, you can access a number of variables and helper functions, e.g.:

Variables

These are accessed like this:

    if os == "MacOS"
      p Character encoding can sometimes be an issue when importing CSV files.

or inline like this:

    p The bitwise AND function is written #{version < "Excel 2013" ? "with an ugly hack using SUBSTITUTE" : "BITAND"} in Excel.

• os: Operating system, e.g. Windows.
• software: E.g. Excel.
• version: E.g. Excel 2010
• language: Interface language for the software, e.g. Swedish
• locale: Locale settings for the workbook, e.g. sv-SE.

Functions

These are accessed like this: !{f()}, eg:

    p Use the function !{f("=MID()")} to extract a substring from a string, like this: !{f('=MID(A1, FIND("-", A1), 6)')}.

• f(): Translates a spreadsheet function, and uses the right argument delimiter (comma och semicolon). E.g. !{f("=LEFT(A1, 4)")} => =VÄNSTER(A1; 4)
• t(): Translates a localized string. E.g. !{t("TRUE")} => SANT
• menu(): Translates an option or a menu path, and formats is like nicely. E.g. !{menu("Format", "Cells")} => Formatera > Celler
• key(): Translates keyboard shortcut to the current OS. E.g. !{key("Ctrl", "A")} => ⌘-A

Filters

These are accessed like this: :image(name.png), eg:

    :image(spreadsheet.png)
      Here goes a caption to that image

• image(filename.png): Embeds an image from the /public/img folder. Use small as the second argument to inline a smaller, floating image. If the filename contains a comma you will have to enclose it in quotes.
• spreadsheet(KEY): Embeds an interactive spreadsheet, based on a Google Sheets identified by KEY, but localized.

Environment variables

• export DEBUG=tusg to enable debug messages
• export NODE_ENV=development to run in development mode, export NODE_ENV=production otherwise

To enable Google Sheets integration:

• export GOOGLE_PRIVATE_KEY="$(cat google_private_key.txt)" private API key (json format with line breaks, and explicit ='s) for your Google Drive service account (see this guide for step by step insctuctions on how to do this).
• export [email protected]
• export MEMCACHIER_SERVERS=127.0.0.1:11211

For Heroku, the corresponding commands would be:

• heroku config:add DEBUG=tusg
• heroku config:add NODE_ENV=production
• heroku config:add GOOGLE_PRIVATE_KEY="$(cat google_private_key.txt)"
• heroku config:add [email protected]
• heroku config:add MEMCACHIER_SERVERS=127.0.0.1:11211

Changelog

• 0.0.1: First version