Re: [office-comment] Text in OpenFormula - inadequate forinternational use

["David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>]

First, let me make something clear.
I would *prefer* that formula evaluators' string types support full Unicode.
From the specification-writing point-of-view, making that an absolute
requirement would be trivial... just change a few sentences, and you're done!!

But we need to make sure that *implementations* will do it.
It is a waste of everyone's time to write an unimplemented spec.

Leonard Mada:
> However, column headings may well contain text with unicode characters
> that render the spreadsheet not processable.

That has nothing to do with formulas. Column headings in spreadsheets
are almost always stored as simple table values, where Unicode is already required.
They are normally NOT recalculated.  Formula only gets involved if
there is a recalculation.  The results of a LOOKUP *are* relevant, however,
because then there *is* a recalculation.

I can't speak for everyone, but I'd be *delighted* to mandate Unicode support
in the Text type.   (Just BMP? Or truly everything?)  But I want to ensure
that there will be *implementations*.

Any comments?

--- David A. Wheeler