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Subject: Re: [office-formula] Who's doing what this week,Redux (including a request to Stefan Nikolas)


Hi David,

On Wednesday, 2007-02-14 13:36:16 -0500, David A. Wheeler wrote:

> David A. Wheeler wrote:
> > > Robert Weir has volunteered to do NETWORKDAYS and WORKDAY, since they
> > > have the same I18N issues.  Basically, he's going to need to add an
> > > additional optional parameter to handle internationalization
> 
> Eike Rathke responded:
> > If we add a parameter that no application is supporintg yet I suggest to
> > define it the way that if the parameter is not given comply with the
> > Ecma/Excel definition. Eases interoperability.
> 
> Oh, absolutely, that was the reason I want it optional.  Sorry I didn't make that clear.  It's really not just Ecma/Excel; I think everyone does it the same way.

Sorry, I didn't make that clear myself. I would not define it as
something like "if omitted or 0 do like Excel", but instead "if omitted
do like Excel, if present don't". So users are not tempted to have
a calculated value that may act like Excel or may not, which is
difficult to export when they expect that a calculated 0 should export
fine to Excel. Of course with a flexible parameter there will always be
the possibility to calculate it such that it acts identical. Just that
we don't raise the expectation it could be interoperable with Excel.


> > > - not EVERYONE's weekend is Saturday/Sunday.  I see two major options:
> > > (1) a parameter saying which day of the week begins a two-day weekend,
> > > or
> ...
> > > (2) a parameter that's a boolean representation of the days of the
> > > week that are to be considered non-workdays.  Option #2 is more
> > > flexible, but also is harder to implement and explain... does anyone
> > > care which way he goes?
> > 
> Eike adds a #3:
> > It may also be necessary to include half days, as in "Saturday is half
> > day off, Sunday one day". The most flexible IMHO would be to have an
> > array with a factor in the range [0,1] for each weekday, if that's not
> > considered overkill.
> 
> Eek.  Actually, you can even pile on the overkill further; many people in the U.S. work in 2-week cycles, so they work 5 days one week and 4 days in the alternate week.  That would add yet another option:
> 
> #4: The new optional parameter accepts an array; if 14 days instead of 7, it that describes a two-week cycle.

Anyone coming up with a 4-week cycle? ;-)

> I think #3 and #4 are more flexible but would be much harder to use.  You could partly address that yet another option:
> 
> #5: Merge #2, #3, #4. Basically, detect if the new parameter is a scalar number, and if so, interpret as #2. If the new param is array/multi-cell range, then interpret as #3 or #4 (depending on its length).  That might make common cases easier to use, and still be very flexible - but it's more work to implement.
> 
> I have to admit that #3, #4, and #5 seem awfully like overkill to me. Does anyone have an opinion on what is best for our purposes?

Even if overkill, #5 actually sounds quite nice to me. If we don't want
#3, #4 and #5, I would suggest #2. Users sometimes have a hard time
though to figure out bit values..

  Eike

-- 
Automatic string conversions considered dangerous. They are the GOTO statements
of spreadsheets.  --Robert Weir on the OpenDocument formula subcommittee's list.


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