Re: [office-formula] "international" characters?

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

It might be useful (and simpler) to define this entirely within the value 
space and not say anything about how the characters are displayed.  In the 
value space we don't say anything about the encoding.

In fact, OpenFormula should be equally valid for describing an expression 
language executed on a terminal-less server which has electrodes hooked up 
to a horse that taps its hoof to indicate the correct answer.

I don't know if it is too late to get this in, but I've been thinking of 
the idea of defining OpenFormula on the basis of operations on an abstract 
machine.  The details wouldn't change, but we'd have a section that 
formally defines the capabilities of the abstract machine: can read a 
string Unicode characters, parse the formula, has certain range of 
arithmetic and logical operations that it can perform, etc.  Each function 
would then be a statement about how the abstract machine processes input 
and produces output.  But we can operate purely in the value space for 
that.

-Rob


Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net> wrote on 01/06/2009 10:04:52 AM:
> 
> Greetings!
> 
> The phrase "international characters" is used under small group (2.1.1) 
> for named expression identifiers. It is noted that some applications may 

> not display a glyph but an ISO 10646 code.
> 
> But, under text (string) (4.1), it is noted that "implementations 
> *should* support Unicode strings, but *shall* at least support strings 
> of ASCII characters."
> 
> Question: In all cases are we talking about Unicode strings in one of 
> the defined representations (UTF-8), etc.?
> 
> Question: Or, is the string (4.1) language meant to allow a non-Unicode 
> based encoding?
> 
> Question: If a non-Unicode based encoding, which definition of that 
> encoding are we using?
> 
> I don't necessarily disagree but it does seem odd that Unicode support 
> is required for identifiers but optional under text.
> 
> Noting that Unicode "support" doesn't necessarily mean that you get a 
> meaningful display of the text. (Can someone more familiar with display 
> issues comment on the usual behavior for missing characters? I seem to 
> recall that all you usually see are some glyph but I don't remember 
> which one. I don't recall it being the Unicode code number.)
> 
> Hope everyone is having a great day!
> 
> Patrick
> 
> -- 
> Patrick Durusau
> patrick@durusau.net
> Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
> Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
> Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
> Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)
> 
> 
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