Spreadsheet tool for manipulation of structured data

This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections.Thesis: M. Eng., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2019Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (page 81).The spreadsheet is a commonly-used programming tool, useful for a wide variety of data-driven tasks. They, however, lack the capability of robustly representing and manipulating structured data. Espalier is a new spreadsheet-based programming paradigm which uses a powerful scoped-splits model that more easily handles structured data. This thesis focuses on adding styling capabilities to Espalier in order to allow users to build responsive websites. Overall, the thesis makes two contributions: First, we create a styling menu and implement the set of styling parameters associated with allocations and spans listed in the menu. Second, we style the design view of our sheets using those parameters to highlight the underlying structure. In the following chapters, we will describe our styling implementation, how it is utilized in its design view, and provide two applications to demonstrate its capability, flexibility, and ease of use.Funded through Gates Millennium Scholarship Program from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundationby Willow Jarvis.M. Eng.M.Eng. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Scienc