Re: [office-formula] List of functions in OpenFormula, dealingwith LEGACY.*

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

> > LEGACY.NORMSDIST => NORMSDIST
> >   where NORMSDIST(x) = NORMDIST(x;0;1;TRUE())
> >   since this is also well-defined and useful
> 
> I disagree here. In fact I could see much more reason for dropping
> LEGACY.NORMSDIST completely rather than turning it into a non-legacy
> function. After the above change with respect to the default values of
> NORMDIST,
> 
> NORMSDIST(x) = NORMDIST(x)
> 
> As a consequence there is no reason why, in the file format, we would
> distinguish between NORMSDIST and NORMDIST. While NORMSDIST would could
> exist in some legacy MS Excel files, when the file is converted to
> openformula format NORMSDIST could (should) just be translated into
> NORMDIST.
> 
> It really does not make sense to have two versions of the same function,
> even if one of them can be called with additional arguments.

Well... I guess the issue here is being able to restore _exactly_ what was
entered into the application, without change.  In some sense we already do this;
"%" is functionally equivalent to "/ 100", but no one wants to enter "5%"
and load back "5/100".

> > Rename:
> > LEGACY.CHIDIST => CHISQDISTRIGHT
> >   since this is well-defined and useful (no need to eliminate)
> 
> Since CHISQDISTRIGHT is just (1 - CHISQDIST(...;TRUE())) I would
> question whether it is indeed useful, but that probably lies in the eyes
> of the beholder.
> Having said that, if we want to accept this as a non-legacy function, I
> would think that we should similarly have right tail functions for all
> other DIST functions. I don't think it makes sense for a standard to
> treat one distribution special in this regard. (IN fact if we wanted to
> treat one special then it should be the normal distribution rather than
> the chisquare distribution.)

Are you hard over on this?  If so, then I think we should add *RIGHT
functions for all the distributions.  There aren't that many
distributions, and this is trivial to implement.  So it's a bonus for users,
and no big deal for implementors.

> > LEGACY.CHITEST unchanged; maybe we can get more info on it.
> 
> Without further info what it should be doing, at best we can emulate
> Excel or Gnumeric (which differ in their implementation) or OO (I don't
> know what that is doing). SO this is a clear case of a legacy function.

Well, let's see what Doug can find.  This could be a case of something
that is sensible once all the information is in.

--- David A. Wheeler