RE: [office-comment] ODFF: XIRR

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

David,

Allow me to echo Rob's sentiment.  I find your questions and comments very
useful and something to think about.

I do have a question for you, although I appreciate that your attention has
moved to other matters.

Here's my question: Can you recommend authoritative sources that establish
the principles that are behind certain functions, especially in financial
analysis, treatment of securities and accounts, and so on, that should be
referenced for guidance of those who want to implement appropriate functions
in electronic spreadsheets and their formulas?  I'm particularly interested
in rules that are used in accounting and financial practice, and the
authoritative sources of those rules.  I'm concerned that we have
authoritative subject-matter expertise for citation and also comparison with
what various programs do.  

Any advice that you have would be very welcome.  I invite you to discuss
this further on the office-user list, saving the -comment list for comments
that are specific to the ODF definitions of operations, including
OpenFormula functions.

Regards,

 - Dennis


Dennis E. Hamilton
------------------
NuovoDoc: Design for Document System Interoperability 
mailto:Dennis.Hamilton@acm.org | gsm:+1-206.779.9430 
http://NuovoDoc.com http://ODMA.info/dev/ http://nfoWorks.org 

PS: The concern behind my question -

My sense is that the work on spreadsheet formulas is conducted by software
developers and others with much insight around computation.   It seems to me
that the basis for definition and formulas is often derived from what other
software does (or is thought to do), often with considerable ingenuity.  

My concern is that we risk resolving our concerns for standardization by
consultation of software and various practices without understanding the
domain of practice in the world of users, treating the problem as simply one
of getting software to align.

I appreciate that software implementations raise edge cases that may or may
not represent real-life situations but which need a predictable
computational result anyhow.  It might be useful to take those cases back to
the appropriate authorities for resolution or at least confirmation that
they are not of concern.  [I am reminded that the work to create
tournament-caliber chess-playing programs led to requests for clarification
of the international rules of the game and the rules were updated to clarify
how certain unusual conditions were to be adjudicated in both human and
computer play.]




-----Original Message-----
From: robert_weir@us.ibm.com [mailto:robert_weir@us.ibm.com] 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office-comment/200809/msg00015.html
Sent: Monday, September 08, 2008 06:14
To: office-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [office-comment] ODFF: XIRR

"David King" <openoffice@drking.plus.com> wrote on 09/07/2008 11:46:43 PM:

> 
> I've worried that my contribution on this list has been rather 
> fulsome, to the point of 'noise', and I was intimating that 
> things would be a bit quieter ;)
> 

Hi David,

I certainly have found your review and contributions valuable.  Since the 
ODF TC is still a bit behind on responding to public comments in general 
you probably will not receive a detailed response for another couple of 
months.  But getting the financial function definitions clear and correct 
is critical for ODF 1.2.  So we will be acting on your comments, once we 
get to them.

Regards,

-Rob