RE: [oic] OOoCon and ODF tests

["Andreas J. Guelzow" <aguelzow@math.concordia.ab.ca>]

Hi,

On Mon, 2008-11-10 at 17:58 +0800, robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
> I'm surprised to hear you say that OpenFormula does not bring us any 
> closer to interoperability.  Can you explain what you mean a bit more? 

I think OpenFormula does a very good job at describing the common
behaviour of various functions that exist in many spreadsheet programs.
By describing this common behaviour it is likely to ensure that
interoperability is not going to decrease in future. 

To improve interoperability to above the current level it would need to
standardize behaviour in areas were spreadsheet functions currently do
not agree. I do not see that happening, since those areas are typically
considered "implementation defined".

For example:
=VLOOKUP(1;A1:B1;2;0)

where A1 contains 1 and B1 is empty. It seems to me the behaviour in
this case is not defined by OpenFormula. (I believe that Gnumeric and
Excel evaluate this as 0 while OpenOffice does something different: the
cell looks empty but isblank returns false.)

Andreas
-- 
Andreas J. Guelzow <aguelzow@math.concordia.ab.ca>
Andreas J. Guelzow