Re: [office-formula] Editing example

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

David,

David A. Wheeler wrote:
> Eike Rathke wrote:
>> Unfortunately, replacing the entire section about complex numbers with
>> a reference to ISO 11404 and some arbitrary conversion to a string
>> representation doesn't nearly reflect reality of spreadsheets.
>
> I agree with Eike; as Eike notes, current spreadsheets all use type 
> Text (string) to represent complex numbers (if they support complex 
> numbers at all).
>
Sigh, but when I pass a complex number to a function that accepts a 
complex number as an argument, how I have *represented* that complex 
number is a different issue from the datatype that the function is 
accepting.

That is to say when a function that accepts a complex number, say 
IMARGUMENT, the datatype of the input that is accepted by the function 
is complex. That it is represented as a string is a different issue.

Yes?

Unless you wish to argue that all the functions defined in OpenFormula 
accept datatype string so you can talk about the *representation* of the 
datatypes they do accept. That seems like an odd result to me.

If you wish to specify string representations of all the datatypes used 
in OpenFormula (which strikes me as a very good idea) then do so. But 
don't confuse the defining of a representation with the datatypes that 
are accepted by a function.

When a function is passed an argument, the argument may well be in a 
"string" representation but that isn't its datatype. Yes?

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick

PS: I will be offline for about 48 hours starting about 6 AM tomorrow. 
Long, very long plane ride, layovers, etc.

-- 
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)