Re: [office-formula] Semantics

["Tomas Mecir" <mecirt@gmail.com>]

On 2/28/06, Eike Rathke <erack@sun.com> wrote:
> Hi Tomas,
> I think all spreadsheet applications handle this the same: SUM, COUNT,
> AVERAGE, and all the like, get passed what OpenFormula called
> a NumberSequence. This by definition ignores string cell content,

They currently do, yeah. So the question is - do we want it to be like
that ? And do we even have a better solution ? I realise that I may be
playing a devil's advocate here a bit :)


> We'd then end up with a definition of "how does it the one application
> of the big player". Which is not our goal, though will be congruent in
> many but not all cases.

Isn't this what OpenFormula has been doing so far ? With tests being
adjusted for OOo to pass them and all ... I'm not saying that this is
necessarily bad, however, it very well could be ...

> > I think this introduces the problem of our goal: shall we design a
> > spec based on real spreadsheets, or also put in new/changed things, if
> > we feel that it makes sense ?
>
> Based on real applications, with changes only when and where necessary
> for clear benefits.

Well, those are the points that I'm trying to raise - where the
current implementations could be considered ... a bit dirty. Everyone
agrees with the complex number problem. Then we have datatype
conversion, and I think that's about all there is to difficult
problems.

/ Tomas