Conceptual Problem: Ambiguity for Names used in Formulas

["Leonard Mada" <discoleo@gmx.net>]

Dear List members,

a recent bug-report [1] on the OOo-site points to a more fundamental problem
of ODF, especially of column naming vs named expressions/ranges.

[1] http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=90230

The problem is not bound to the OpenOffice implementation,
though I will describe it based on OOo:

OOo 2.4 currently supports 65535 columns, therefore:
'ST1' is a valid name (expression, range, ...).

However, with OOo 3.0, this limit will be moved upward,
so that 'ST1' will be now a valid column [cell].

Ad extremum, IF we consider a very distant future (why not in 10,000 years ;-) ),
then any string used currently as name will probably point to a valid column.
[IF only string, then the whole column, IF string_number_ then a cell]

It is unsafe to assume that the current column limit will be held
[or any other column limit], and changing this limit in the future
will jeopardise existing names.

I propose to enhance the ODF as follows:
 - names should be marked explicitly as such within formulas
 - this will allow to unambiguosly identify a name as such in the future
 - this will be especially improtant, IF the spreadsheet evolves
   to something basically limtless, when every name will point to
   a cell/column

Sincerely,

Leonard
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