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Subject: Re: [office-formula] (from Bryce L Nordgren) Fwd: Use case; multi-radix& roman numeral formatting


robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
>
> I like the idea of a formatting in a different number base.

Me too, though I suspect that's a "future extension" rather than 
something we
need to do right now.
>  But we would need to define what this means for non-natural numbers. 
>  How is -1 displayed in binary?  Two-complement?  Or just -1?
You can't do two's complement unless you have a fixed number of bits,
so "-1" is probably the only safe answer.
>  What about decimals?  Binary-coded decimal or IEEE floating point?

I don't understand this, what do you mean?

> I think Roman numerals leads to other questions.  How do you represent 
> numbers greater than MMM ?  How do you represent decimals?  How to you 
> indicate zero?  The word "Nullus"?

I'd propose "0" as the representation for zero, it's certainly 
unambiguous, and
again allow a leading "-" for negative numbers.
I think applications should be free to display some sort of out-of-bounds
indicator if the number is too large.

For fractions/decimals, I have no idea.

This is in some ways simple; just declare
"this format calls ROMAN() and displays its result".

> We'd also want to keep in mind that the set of allowable output 
> formats also sets expectations for parsing of input and automatic 
> string to number conversions.

Yes.  That may be the biggest problem, managing expectations.

--- David A. Wheeler



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