Re: [office-formula] Grammar

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

"David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>
wrote on 03/12/2006 07:54:47 PM:


> Below is a new draft for formula syntax.  What do you think?


Open question -- to what extent do we want to final
standard to contain the comments comparing the specified behavior to OpenOffice
and Excel?  Is this necessary or even desired?  Generally you
want a standard to either be self-contained or refer only to other recognized
standards.  The ISO ODF review currently is giving us a good examination
in this area, coming up with a list of places were ODF was not references
relevant standards.

Statements like Excel does this and Excel does that
are a bit out of place.  First, Excel and OpenOffice do not have normative
formula specifications.  So we have nothing to reference, other than
to state that someone (who?) tried it on Excel on a particular day with
a particular release with a particular patch level and observed a certain
behavior.  This does not make an standard we can site.

So, I wonder if we want to keep the rationales and
vendor comparisons out of the specification and save them for another venue.
 For example, they might work better as a standalone article/paper,
or even a value add in a book, "The Annotated ODF Specification".

-Rob