Re: [office-formula] Portable "documents"

[Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM>]

Patrick,

On 12/16/09 15:55, Patrick Durusau wrote:
> Michael,
> 
> Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg wrote:
>> Rob, Patrick, all,
>>

>> 3. In a third pass, the notes are checked individually. If they can be
>> turned into statements what is implementation or undefined behavior of
>> evaluators, they are rephrased accordingly. If they can be turned into
>> statements what is optional behavior of an evaluator, the are also
>> rephrased accordingly. And if both is not possible, they are kept as is.
>>
> Err, so if it is possible to re-phrase a "portable document" statement 
> as would be the case for minimum integer size (I like that example by 
> the way) that would no longer be a note but a normative requirement:
> 
> evaluators shall support integers up to (some size). Evaluators may 
> support integers in excess of (some size).

Well, what I meant by "re-phrase" includes to turn the notes back into 
normative statements. So, yes, some notes may be turned into normative 
statements, and if that happens, the "Note:" in front of the statement 
has to be removed again.

> 
> Making conformance a matter of supporting the minimal amount. Supporting 
> the larger amount is also conformance because it includes the lesser 
> amount.
> 
> The question then becomes what do we require, if anything, of 
> applications that support larger amounts? Are those implementation 
> dependent or defined?

Sorry, I don't understand that questions.

>> If we specify the minimum integer size, and declare the use of larger 
>> integer sizes to be optional, document authors know the minimum 
>> integer size that is supported, and they also know that if larger 
>> sizes are supported, the result of the formulas is well-defined. 
>> That's much more than in the first case.
>>
> As I said above, I like this example.
> 
> Perhaps it will be easier to reach a consensus or at least move in that 
> direction with the first couple of steps that you suggest above. Some of 
> the "portability" issues are likely to attract near universal consent, 
> like integer size. It may help us move more quickly than debating 
> "portability" in abstract.

Yes, that's the idea behind my suggestion. There are probably a lot of 
portability statements that can be turned into normative language 
without much discussions. There this is possible, we should do so. For 
the others, we may decide if the keep them as notes, remove them, or 
move them into an appendix if we know how many and which ones are left.

> 
> Unless Eike needs the text back to enter more of his technical 
> corrections, I will start working on it along these lines. Will try to 
> upload a rough version by next Monday so everyone can see the 
> preliminary results.
> 
> Hope you are having a great week!
> 
> Patrick
> 
Best regards

Michael

-- 
Michael Brauer, Technical Architect Software Engineering
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