Re: [office-formula] "international" characters?

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

"David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com> wrote on 01/20/2009 11:00:13 
PM:


> 
> Granted, perhaps this is just not worth it.  Maybe we should just 
> require Text types to support fully internationalized characters... as 
> long as a UTF-8-based implementation is possible, it's not TOO hard. 
> The funny thing here is that creating a spec that permits simple 
> implementation may be harder than creating a simpler spec that imposes 
> more requirements on the implementation... :-).
> 

In theory we can do it both ways.  For example, we could the OpenFormula 
part have items that are implementation-defined and have very minimal 
requirements as the base (ASCII as a minimum for example.  We could then 
have the main ODF part of the standard state conformance as "The formula 
language used in tables shall be that expressed in OpenFormula, with the 
following additional constraints...".  In fact, OOXML does it that way for 
packaging.  Their packaging part defines a more general packing model than 
what Office actually uses.  Then the main part of OOXML places additional 
constraints on what is allowed in an OOXML document.  We could do 
something similar, with a more generic formula model in the OpenFormula 
part that is profiled, or more narrowly constrained when used in a 
spreadsheet table.

I guess the question is this:  Is the main intent to allow variation in 
spreadsheet formulas in various character set environments?  Or is the 
primary intent to have OpenFormula be amenable to non-spreadsheet uses 
where character support is more basic, but to require full unicode support 
when used in spreadsheets?

-Rob