Re: [office-formula] A-functions

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

Tomas Mecir wrote:
> That means, non-A versions always count logical values - that means,
> if the implementation doesn't have a distinct logical type, no drama,
> everything still works because logicals would be treated exactly like
> numbers anyway :D

But on implementations that DO have distinct logical types, there IS
drama, because such a semantic is FUNDAMENTALLY incompatible with them.
NO implementation with distinct logical types includes logical
types in a NumberSequence if the NumberSequence is a range.
That includes Excel, Gnumeric, and SheetToGo at least, and probably others.
What's more, document creators have been encouraged for over a decade
to DEPEND on this behavior - so you could NOT have an application
that can read arbitrary legacy documents AND meet this spec.

I think it would be DISASTROUS to spec something we KNOW
is not true, and will NEVER become true.  Better to make it
implementation-defined... which is in fact what we do.

If you want to create a separate function called "SUMA" that has
this behavior, that would be plausible enough.  Since SOME applications
do have this functionality, defining a function name with those specific
behaviors would make some sense.

--- David A. Wheeler