RE: [office-comment] Text in OpenFormula - inadequate forinternational use

[Alex Brown <alexb@griffinbrown.co.uk>]

Patrick hi

> Just to clarify:
> 
> Are you saying that ODF 1.2 should make it impossible for evaluators that
> only support ASCII to claim conformance to ODF 1.2?

Certainly, if ODF aspires to be a new "International Standard"!

> Evaluators that only support ASCII may be of limited appeal but that is a
> market question and not a standards one.

OpenFormula is a new standard - evaluators will come later. If such evaluators support just ASCII they are of limited utility to most of the world's population, but maybe of use among limited communities of users - but that (the sins of our fathers) should not be dignified by retrospective standardisation.
 
> ODF 1.2 does not standardize ASCII, that was done by prior standards.
> ODF 1.2 is simply recognizing that some evaluators may conform to earlier
> character set standards.

If there is really a need for OpenFormula to mirror such  implementations - and if so I'd be *very* interested to know what they are - then maybe having some deprecated side-standard ("OpenFormula Transitional"?) might be allowed which overrides/augments/modifies the provisions of the base spec. But in general standardising poor practice is problematic and totally in opposition to the stated purpose of International Standardization. As things stand the standard give a green light for a fresh implementation to be ASCII-only. That can't be right.

Does OpenFormula promise to shadow legacy implementations anyway? I see nothing in the Scope statement of the spec, or in the TC charter, to suggest this is a valid goal ...

> I don't understand why recognizing existing applications, prior standards and
> conformance to them is problematic?

If it's to be done it need to be done very clearly, and in such a way that poor practice is deprecated. I can't see what the argument for standardizing poor practice in this case is - maybe it's just nobody has made that argument?

- Alex.

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