Re: [office-formula] Grammar

[Eike Rathke <erack@sun.com>]

Hi David,

On Tue, Mar 14, 2006 at 22:02:54 -0500, David A. Wheeler wrote:

> > [... empty parameters ...]
> Agree.  I think we can state some sort of default. . In most cases it's 
> not allowed
> (maybe that's the default!), but when you need it you need it.

I'm not sure about this. When looking at it in The Other (tm)
application, it seems to me that most functions taking numerical values
allow empty parameters instead, whether it makes sense or not. If
necessary, a runtime error #NUM! is thrown.


> >[... reference contatenation operator ...]
> >Personally I'd prefer using an operator even in the UI, _because_ it is 
> >less error prone.
> >  
> Well, that's more likely if the operator is defined already.

I could bet you'd get bug reports if ((...;...)) didn't work, so you'd
have to support both.. however, that's UI stuff ;-)


> This is a trade-off 
> between error detection/speed of reading, vs. making it look exactly 
> like the current UI.  Either direction is defensible, the question is, 
> which is best for the expected purpose?

For the file format of course error detection / speed of reading has
more weight.


> >Is a ReferenceList anywhere used in that context? Anyway, being open to 
> >that possibility, even if not used nowadays, is actually a good thing.
> >  
> 
> I believe in some implementations you
> can have a formula that is ONLY a referencelist, for example:
> =(A1:B2;C3)
> You can then copy this formula around. This would cause
> implicit intersection is then used to get the "correct" result in each cell.

Just tried that in The Other application, doesn't work.. nice idea
though ;-)


> >>4. Cell column letters MUST be uppercase;
> >>    
> >
> >Why? I don't see any other advantage in that except when doing diffs
> >like you mentioned below.
> >  
> 
> Doing diffs is a pretty good argument, yes?

As a developer, what else could I say ;)

> >>I believe the OpenDocument spec specifically requires it.
> >>    
> >
> >I didn't find anything that explicitly says so. Only the examples are
> >kept in uppercase.
> >  
> See OpenDocument specification version 1.0, Section 8.3.1, "Referencing 
> Table Cells".
> 
> Subsection "Absolute and relative cell addressing" defines "cellAddress" as:
>        <param name="pattern">($?([^\. 
> ']+|'[^']+'))?\.$?[A-Z]+$?[0-9]+</param>
> Note that it's only [A-Z]+.

Ah, you got me. Ok, MUST be uppercase then.

  Eike