[OASIS Issue Tracker] Updated: (OFFICE-2672) NEEDS-DISCUSSIONPublic Comment: Text in OpenFormula - inadequate for international use

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     [ http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/OFFICE-2672?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel ]

Robert Weir  updated OFFICE-2672:
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The ASCII character encoding, via ISO 646, is an International Standard.  So its use cannot entirely be called out of order in another International Standard.  The ISO requirement is that standards demonstrate "linguistic and cultural adaptability".  If we allow Unicode then we are clearly adaptable.

We need to distinguish the encoding/repertoire of the formula itself, e.g., of table:formula, from the encoding/repertoire of the run time.

OpenFormula formula parsers requires at least ASCII support, according to Part 2.   Its use in Part 1, however, since it is invoked with the value of the table:formula attribute, must support Unicode.  So we're essentially saying that when hosted in ODF, OpenFormula formulas are Unicode, but there may be other hosts that are not.

As for run time, we do have functions today, such as RIGHTB() that appear to operate directly on the encoded characters, at the byte level.  We know that at least one implementation evaluates such functions differently on the Mac versus Windows, according to native character sets.  Also, some functions, like UNICHAR versus CHAR only make sense in a world where the runtime character set may be something other than Unicode.

I don't agree with the argument that the mention of ASCII biases the standard.  The fact is that the core syntax of OpenFormula can be expressed using only 7-bit ASCII characters. Principle of least power.  If it only requires (from an objective standpoint) ASCII support to parse the entire syntax of OpenFormula, then it is natural to set the minimum conformance requirement to only require that level of support.  We're not preventing conformant implementations from doing more.

> NEEDS-DISCUSSION Public Comment: Text in OpenFormula - inadequate for international use
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: OFFICE-2672
>                 URL: http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/OFFICE-2672
>             Project: OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC
>          Issue Type: Bug
>          Components: OpenFormula
>    Affects Versions: ODF 1.2 Part 2 CD 2
>            Reporter: Robert Weir 
>            Assignee: Andreas Guelzow 
>            Priority: Blocker
>
> Copied from office-comment list
> Original author: Alex Brown <alexb@griffinbrown.co.uk> 
> Original date: 5 May 2010 10:45:54 -0000
> Original URL: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office-comment/201005/msg00002.html

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