Re: [office-formula] HYPERLINK definition (was: Looking for HYPERLINK volunteers)

[Eike Rathke <erack@sun.com>]

Hi Robert,

On Thursday, 2007-03-08 17:53:32 -0500, Robert Weir wrote:

> How does OpenOffice and other applications handle this today?
> 
> For example, I can just enter www.ibm.com into a cell and it is treated as 
> a hyperlink.  I don't need to use any special function to do this.

That's detected during cell input.

> But if the same text comes from a formula, then it is not treated as a 
> hyperlink.  For example:   =CONCATENATE("www.";"ibm.";"com")
> 
> Ideally, I'd want clickable links to occur whenever the text in a cell 
> matches a URL pattern, whether the text was entered as a literal text, or 
> whether it was calculated.  Maybe it is too expensive to do it that way?

Yes, it is. You don't want every formula result getting parsed to maybe
detect some URI or such. And you also don't want every string clickable
just because it may look like a web or email address.

> In any case, if we want to define Hyperlin()k as a also having navigation 
> behavior, then we might want to add an optional third parameter,

argh, no

> to specify the target, as in _self, _new, _parent, etc.

A spreadsheet application is not a browser. You don't want to open some
web page and have it replace the content of your sheet.

> The default for 
> heavy weight editors would be _new,

Btw, _new is not a valid frame target. It just spread as a myth.

> but I think that web-based spreadsheets, whether Google or Wikicalc
> may want the ability to specify the target of the URL.

Think what would happen if you had a modified sheet and clicked a link
with a _self target.

  Eike

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