Background: I used OOo a lot and same with LO, but not for a while, since I’ve been involved in a lot of activities that don’t happen at the computer. In the past I wrote a number of macros and even an application that used OOo’s API so my clients in that business could run a program that would use OOo to automatically generate printed material they needed. However, when I’m doing work in LO, like writing or making up a spreadsheet, I prefer to do as little programming as possible. So if this can be solved with spreadsheet functions, for instance, instead of writing code, that’d be great.
What I need to do: I have a number of pottery glaze recipes and want to store them. So far that would work in Base. BUT - I need to do calculations. For instance, if I have a simple recipe like this:
Clear glaze
Custer Feldspar: 20%
Silica: 20%
Wollastonite: 20%
Kaolin: 20%
Frit 3134: 20%
This one is simple and all the numbers add up to 100%, which is important for reasons I won’t go into here. But during testing, often the ingredient percentages get changed so I might end up with something like this:
Clear glaze
Custer Feldspar: 22%
Silica: 23%
Wollastonite: 18%
Kaolin: 20%
Frit 3134: 15%
Now it doesn’t add up to 100%. In a spreadsheet, it’s easy to add a function to refactor it and provide adjusted percentages in the next column over that use the same proportions and add up to 100%. So I need to do calculations like in Calc. Live updates are helpful so if, after a few years, I want to make a change, the refactoring will be done as I make the change.
Also, for different glazes I need to add different proportions of water. For some glazes, I might need 70 grams of water for every 100 grams of powders, and for others, maybe 80 grams of water. I want to be able to type into a field how much glaze I need for a batch and then have it (Calc, Base, whatever I’m using) figure out how many grams of each powder I need and how much water to add to get the size I want.
While I am starting with a fair number of recipes, I’ll be adding more continually.
Issues and Points of Consideration:
- If I use Calc, I have to copy and paste a template table every time I add a new glaze it’s harder to find each glaze I enter than it would be in a DB program like Base. So adding glazes to Calc is harder and more distracting from the work I’m doing.
- If I use Base, I need to be able to do the calculations without having to spend time working out whether to do it as a macro, write it in LO Basic (if that’s still the language used?), use the API, or something else. (I’d be using the LO default DB system - don’t want to take a long time learning and installing something else at this point.)
- Base would make it easy to add extra fields for notes
- It’s been a long time since I’ve used a DB program or coded for a DB, so I’ve forgotten a lot, but I think, in a DB, I’d have to come up with a maximum number of fields for ingredients, so I have room to include a lot in complex glazes. In Calc, I just add more rows to a table. If I allot a lot of fields, many will stay blank in some records and I don’t know how the system would handle those when doing calculations.
I’ve seen a few things on the web, including here, when I search for info on doing calculations in Base, but they’re old and I don’t know how outdated they are.