Re: [office-formula] Names/namespace: OpenFormula, calc, etc.

["David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>]

> On Sat, 2006-15-07 at 11:02 -0400, David A. Wheeler wrote:
> > 1. Should we (continue) to call this language "OpenFormula"?
> I think we should, yes. It's a good name, and one everyone already understands.

That seems to be the consensus so far, and it definitely has the advantage
of being the name people already know.
 
> > 2. Is everyone content with the current proposed prefix and namespace?
> > The current draft recommends using the “calc:” prefix, and uses the
> > namespace “urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:calc:1.0“.
> 
> I think calc is as good as any. It's not fantastic, but I can't think of
> anything better (you already listed the problems with "formula:"). Maybe
> "spread" or "of" would be ok too, but does it really matter?

In a cosmic sense. no :-).  Even from a computing point of view, the prefix name
is irrelevant, because apps depend on the namespace value, and the namespace
can be assigned to any prefix name.   But it's a LOT simpler on the humans who
have to read/debug the XML if we define a prefix convention. ODF does the same.

I don't think we should use "spread:", because this isn't necessarily just for
spreadsheets.  Formulas show up in word processing docs often enough,
and I've been careful to make sure that it could be trivially extended for use
in the animation, etc.

I like "of:" though; it clearly connects to "OpenFormula". On the other hand,
"calc:" is sensible even if you don't know what OpenFormula is.

I'm leaning towards using "of:" as the conventional prefix instead of "calc:".
It's shorter, and even though it's normally compressed, there's
a small advantage in having the uncompressed version be short (in space and time).
Comments, anyone?

--- David A. Wheeler