Re: [office-formula] Semantics

[Eike Rathke <erack@sun.com>]

Hi Tomas,

On Wed, Mar 01, 2006 at 17:34:44 +0100, Tomas Mecir wrote:

> > > Even if the text is "3" ?
> > No. What if it is "３"?
> 
> So, basically, staying consistent amongst locales is more important
> than greater flexibility with string parsing.

Especially this example isn't only about locales. OOoCalc allows numeric
input in both, halfwidth (ASCII) and Unicode fullwidth digits, in any
locale, and parses as number. If it _did_ interpret textual cell content
as numbers on the fly, it might as well do so for both halfwidth and
fullwidth. Now if another application that doesn't parse fullwidth
digits as numbers read the document it would calculate different. In the
same locale.

> Well, maybe. I personally don't like this conclusion. I really don't.
> Especially given that we don't solve the problem, we just bypass it,
> hoping for the best.

You're hoping even more for the best if you guess numbers from textual
content.

  Eike