RE: [office-formula] serial number? Don't we mean serial date?

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

Yes, I have been arguing for two ambient properites (nice term), 

  - one for the origin-date (what calendar date the serial-day value 1 corresponds to, and I wouldn't use "null" in that context) and 
  - and one specifying the calendar mapping to use.  

[I would prefer 0 as the origin date, but I am not sure all spreadsheet systems recoognize serial-day number 0 as having a corresponding calendar date.  If we do set 0 as the origin date, we have to allow a calendar mapping to rule out serial-day numbers 0 and less just as some might rule out other serial-day numbers in the overall allowed range.]

I think skip-after-feb-1900 is too specific when there is more variability to deal with.  A calendar mapping might also have limits, map serial-date values less than the origin value to some lower limit, etc.  All of that we can leave to the evaluation context and the OpenFormula-hosting specifications that establish those and the variability that is permitted of their conforming implementations.

I think this is an appropriate foundation for OpenFormula-hosting specifications and their implementations to converge on a worthwhile set of common cases over time.  It appeals to me that OpenFormula can stay intact and neutral with respect to that.

 - Dennis



-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas J. Guelzow [mailto:andreas.guelzow@concordia.ab.ca] 
Sent: Thursday, January 28, 2010 13:20
To: office-formula@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [office-formula] serial number? Don't we mean serial date?

On Thu, 2010-01-28 at 14:17 -0700, robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
> If we go down that path, then this goes into the "evaluation context" that 
> we've been talking about, an ambient property called "EPOCH" or 
> "DATE-ORIGIN" or something like that.  Then Part 1 can map a sheet-level 
> attribute to that context property.

the null-date attribute is supposed to do that. We just also need to
have attribute skip-after-feb-1900 and a corresponding ambient property.

Andreas

> 
> -Rob
> 
> "Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org> wrote on 01/28/2010 
> 03:23:15 PM:
> > 
> > RE: [office-formula] serial number? Don't we mean serial date?
> > 
> > Rob, that's a nice breakdown of the cases.
> > 
> > My vote is on the lines of #4 to support the spreadsheet ecumenicalism 
> that
> > seems to be part of the OpenFormula thrust and also to give the
> > OpenFormula-hosting specifications and their implementations the 
> discretion
> > that might be required for them to embrace OpenFormula.
> > 
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that
> generates this mail.  Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at:
> https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php 
> 



---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that
generates this mail.  Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at:
https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php