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office-formula message

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Subject: Re: [office-formula] Semantics


On 3/4/06, Richard Kernick <yingtong@bluebottle.com> wrote:
>  Tomas Mecir wrote:
>  Hmmm. What about DEFINING the text-conversion routines, to be
> locale-independent ? This is about a file format, right ? The apps
> WILL have to store numbers in a locale-neutral way - probably using
> the US locale. So, why not make it so that text constants can get
> auto-converted to numbers using only the english locale ? For simple
> numbers (integer), this will work normally, for the rest, it's the
> same as if it was not supported at all - we get interoperability,
> because everyone parses using the same rules, and we also get
> flexibility. The best from both worlds :)
>
>  a1: ="1"
>  a2: ="5"
>  a3: =a1&"."&a2
>  a4: =1*a3
>
>  How do you make that locale independent? We will have similar problems with
> dates.

I don't. I am proposing to achieve locale independency by pre-defining
ONE locale, which would always be used to read documents. US locale
fits best, because we ALREADY have to use it to store numbers. The app
can then convert stuff to user's locale as much as it wants, so long
as save is done in the right locale. Of course, this affects UI a bit
as well, because automatic conversion can not happen with locale
settings, unless things like VALUE are used (which should be defined
as not locale independent).

>  I'm not really sure how to handle these. I suspect we should leave this
> issue until later.

That might be best, yeah.

/ Tomas


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