Re: [office-formula] CODE and CHAR should not be Unicode aware,proposing UNICODE and UNICHAR

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

Eike:
> > > For a clean Unicode environment and portable documents I propose to add
> > > two new functions UNICODE and UNICHAR. Objections?

Andreas J Guelzow wrote:
> > Please note that Gnumeric already has a unicode and a unichar function.

Excellent!  I completely agree with adding UNICODE and UNICHAR.

I believe we still should include CODE and CHAR; they'll simplify round-tripping.  Spec'ing them is tricky; I think we should note that they are platform-dependent, and then state in both cases that "Portable documents SHALL NOT use this function, as it is fundamentally platform-dependent."

What's the point in having a standard but platform-dependent function?  Well, it gives you a standard way to access the nonstandard junk underneath, if you need it.

The term "Unicode" is probably a trademark of the Unicode Consortium, but I expect that this would be considered a fair use in any country. ISO 10646 and Unicode are intentionally joined at the hip for their encoding values, but there might be someone in ISO 10646 who's unhappy that Unicode gets top billing here.  So I'd put this in the "UNICODE" text this rationale:
Rationale: This function is named UNICODE because it has this name in at least one pre-existing applications, and it is the obvious name compared with CODE.

I'd also note that UNICODE "Returns the Unicode/ISO 10646 code" as its summary.

Eike: I'm assuming that you're creating/modifying all four (CODE, CHAR, UNICODE, UNICHAR), since you're the proposer.  Let me know if otherwise.

--- David A. Wheeler