Re: [office-formula] Portable documents language

["Andreas J. Guelzow" <andreas.guelzow@concordia.ab.ca>]

On Fri, 2010-02-05 at 07:37 -0700, robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
> Do implementations actually prohibit names that look like cell addresses, 
> or only names that are actually cell addresses?

Or perhaps more importantly, can implementations handle names that look
like cell addresses even if they are not actual cell addresses?

> 
> Particular example.  Excel before 2007 supported 256 columns.  So columns 
> A through IV.  Excel 2007 increased the limit to 16K, so columns through 
> XFD are allowed.
> 
> In Excel 2003 I get an error if I try to define a name called "A1".  But I 
> do not get an error if I try to define a name called "XFD1".  Presumably 
> the later would be an error in Excel 2007 or later.
> 
> So I'm wondering whether "looks like a cell address" even if we give a 
> regex, will be entirely accurate.
> 
> But I suppose as  a portability note, this is good advice.
> 

So if I create a 128 by 128 table then EA1 is not a real cell address. I
define this to be a name referring to an existing range. In an ODF file
its use would look like:

 <table:table-cell table:style-name="Gnumeric-default"
table:formula="of:=SUM(EA1)" office:value-type="float"
office:value="4"><text:p>4</text:p>          </table:table-cell>

OOo 3.1 when opening that files misinterprets this as "of:=SUM([.EA1])".
(Well at least when the name definition itself is missing, I can't test
it with a name definition at this time.)

Andreas