Re: [office] Formulas

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

Depends on how you define "problem".
 One man's problem is another man's feature.  For example, take
the needlessly byzantine syntax like 5%%.   I'd bet that this is more
often entered in error by users than intentionally, and IMHO that then
becomes a problem.  

One good source of known quirks and
oddities is Microsoft's own support Knowledge Base:  http://support.microsoft.com/


Query on "Excel formula" and
you'll get a bunch of interesting notes.

That said, I'm not sure a list of Excel
bugs is the best starting point for defining a new formula syntax, unless
used as a counter-example of things to avoid.    Keep it simple.
As the saying goes, "Perfection is achieved not when there is nothing
left to add, but when there is nothing left to remove."    Compare
an Excel formula to a C/C++/Java expression.  There is not a lot of
syntax in the 15-year-old Excel syntax that really adds expressivity beyond
C expressions.   But there is a lot of accumulated crud that has been
maintained for backwards compatibility.  We might consider making
a clean break in the interest of having a formula language which is simple
enough to be evaluated by very simple programs, while be expressive enough
to handle the full range of real world uses.

-Rob

Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>

11/10/2005 07:04 PM

To	OASIS Office <office@lists.oasis-open.org>
cc
Subject	[office] Formulas

Greetings!

There was extensive discussion of formulas during the call in session at
the ODF summit.

Curious if there is a listing of the known problems with Excel?

Thinking that such information, assuming that the TC undertakes work in
the area, could be usefully contributed to the TC as a background document.

Hope everyone is having a great day!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Patrick@Durusau.net
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model
Member, Text Encoding Initiative Board of Directors, 2003-2005

Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work! 



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