RE: [office-formula] Year 1900 bug

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

Your proposed wording is certainly an improvement.

I think further improvement could be found by assuming that there is always
a mapping between ordinal dates and calendar dates in effect for a formula
evaluation.  Some mappings have a 1900-02-29 and others don't.  (This
impacts day of week determination and other nutty things, of course.)

I see two parameters involved in translating between ordinal dates and
calendar dates: What is the origin date and on what (not-necessarily
Gregorian) calendar.  I suspect that these are parameters of the global
context in which an evaluation occurs.  If the parameters are selectable or
even variable in conforming implementations of an OpenFormula-hosting
specification, the use of origins and calendars that introduce 1900-02-29 as
a date should be dealt with there.  Also, the consequences of assuming a
different origin and calendar or being able to change it can be addressed
there.  

Once we establish what we mean for the global parameters that are bound by
an OpenFormula-hosting specification that supports date calculations, I
don't think there is anything more to say.  We might have a note about
pitfalls, but I don't think there is any normative language required at all
other than the mapping and its selection, if any, SHALL be specified by the
OpenFormula-hosting specification.

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Durusau [mailto:patrick@durusau.net] 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office-formula/201001/msg00074.html
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2010 13:55
To: office-formula@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: [office-formula] Year 1900 bug

Greetings!

I am sweeping the draft for application/implementation -> evaluator 
purposes and encountered:

> Applications *may* reproduce the 1900-as-leap-year bug for 
> compatibility purposes, but *should not*.
>
I suppose it is the combination of a permission with a recommendation 
against following that permission that strikes me as odd.

Perhaps better:

"Applications should reproduce the 1900-as-leap-year bug for 
compatibility purposes only."

Yes?

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

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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