
Permanent 2 - kylehickinson
http://getpermanent.com/index
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jredwards
'Permanent 2' sounds like kind of a contradiction.

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Robadob
Yeah, I was wondering what it was, and it bears no obvious relation to
spreadsheets. I'd love to know where the name came from?

(It can't really be criticised for its name though, I can't find anything to
link 'excel' to spreadsheets either)

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kcl
We chose Permanent because it means long-lasting or durable, but it has a
hidden geeky meaning we liked: computing the permanent of a matrix is a
#P-complete problem.

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canthonytucci
I hate being this guy...but the first definition on Miriam Webster, and the
one that I'm familiar with is:

'continuing or enduring without fundamental or marked change'

google gives a similar

'lasting or intended to last or remain unchanged indefinitely.'

Both sites list a bunch of synonyms that are closer to long-lasting and
durable, but english is subtle. One can't usually swap in a 'synonym' without
changing meaning.

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sheetjs
This was submitted a year ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5293960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5293960)

Numbers is now free on iOS 7 and can read/write XLS and XLSX out of the box.
The iOS7 version is definitely a step-up from previous versions. Why would
someone make the $10 purchase for the IAP (required for export) rather than
use Numbers?

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kcl
The old link referenced pointed to a different page, the release page for the
previous version.

Perhaps the biggest difference between Permanent and Numbers is the interface.
It's easy to suggest that tablet spreadsheets might all work the same, but if
you try a few you'll find they are widely different experiences.

Permanent has cloud support for Box and Dropbox. Numbers supports only iCloud.

Permanent is free, and most people do fine with the free version, so a pro
upgrade is generally not required to use the app.

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sheetjs
> Numbers supports only iCloud.

FYI Numbers supports both box and dropbox (via "open in another app"). For
example, to upload to box:

    
    
        - hit the share button (the box with the up arrow)
        - "Open in Another App"
        - Choose format (e.g. Excel or CSV)
        - Hit "Choose App"
        - Hit "Open in Box"
        [now the box app opens]
        - Hit "Upload"

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bananas
Whilst I like the concept of this and Numbers (which incidentally appears to
be remarkably similar bar infinite scroll), I really couldn't work on a tablet
with a spreadsheet. I need a real filesystem and keyboard to be productive.
The latter is partially solved with the iPad with a keyboard but why bother.

I tried many times to do it on a Windows Phone with Excel and an iPad with
Numbers and it's terribly error prone which is something you don't want to
hang yourself with on a spreadsheet of critical data.

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vittore
Have you tried Google Drive on android? On a tablet or phone with decent
screen it is pretty nice

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bananas
Not yet. I'm not a particular fan of Google's ecosystem for various reasons
(or any cloud platform as a matter of fact).

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nmcfarl
One of the reviews of v1 mentions that it could be scripted in Lua which would
be an awesome feature, however there seems to be no mention of it on this
page.

Additionally the review was unrelentingly negative about things that /seem/ to
be fixed in permanent 2. On the whole, it looks interesting but I'll wait for
the next round of reviews.

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kcl
Lua scripting was cool. It was in v1 but hasn't made it into v2 yet. Before
you get to the group of users that want scripting/macros on their tablet,
there is an enormous group of users that want things like resizing columns and
changing colors to work effortlessly. This second group absolutely dwarfs the
first. On a tablet this is fairly cutting-edge stuff. So most of our attention
has been there.

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huhtenberg
If devs are here, check your site's appearance on Windows. Effra doesn't
render well in small sizes -
[http://i.imgur.com/vUv8wqY.png](http://i.imgur.com/vUv8wqY.png)

