[llvm-dev] Would a spreadsheet be a good project using LLVM?

[Jason Glazer via llvm-dev]

I am thinking about writing a new open source spreadsheet 
application since I think the spreadsheet applications out 
there (Microsoft Excel, LibreOffice Calc, etc.) do not have 
some features that I would really like to use. I would like 
the spreadsheet to recalculate very fast and wondered if it 
would make sense to use LLVM to calculate the cell values 
quickly. Each cell of a spreadsheet contains an expression, 
much like an expression in any programming language. The big 
difference is that the ordering of the expression 
evaluations is governed by the dependencies of each cell on 
other cells and end up being turned into a directed acyclic 
graph (DAG). It would be good if the actual conversion of 
cell expressions from strings that the user enters into a 
cell, would be converted into a representation that can be 
recalculated very quickly. I was thinking that LLVM machine 
code might be a good target.

Overall, is this a good project to use LLVM?

Is there existing open source code for compiling expressions 
using LLVM that you would recommend for this project?

Any suggestions or concerns about this approach?

Is anyone interested in helping out?

Thanks

Jason

-- 
Jason Glazer, P.E., GARD Analytics, 90.1 ECB chair
Admin for onebuilding.org building performance mailing lists