Formula Sub Committee Draft Charter

[Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM>]

Dear TC members,

as promised, please find below a proposal for a formula sub committee 
charter. The proposal contains some explanatory notes, that will not become 
part of the charter.

The charter does not make any assumption whether the TC creates an entirely 
new specification, or uses a specification or proposal that is submitted to 
the OpenDocument TC as basis for its work. This means that the SC may use the 
OpenFormula specification (or any other proposal) as basis for its work if it 
is submitted to the OpenDocument TC, and if an analysis of the proposal shows 
that this is appropriate.

Best regards

Michael



OpenDocument Spreadsheet Formula Sub Committee (FSC) Draft Charter
==================================================================

Statement of purpose
--------------------
To create a specification for a formula language which can be used in 
OpenDocument v1.0 spreadsheet documents as value of the table:formula 
attribute specified in section 8.1.3 in addition to the application dependent 
formula languages that are supported by OpenDocument v1.0. The formula 
language specified by this SC shall be usable in cases where none of the 
application dependent aspects of existing formula languages are required.

[Note: OpenDocument already supports the inclusion of arbitrary formula 
languages for spreadsheet documents. Furthermore, it already uses XML 
namespaces to uniquely identify the formula language used within a certain 
formula. The purpose of this SC therefore is not to define a formula language 
that covers all, sometimes very application dependent, aspects of existing 
formula languages, but to define an application independent and, compared to 
existing formula languages, possibly restricted formula language that can be 
used in all cases where non of the application dependent aspects are required.]

The resulting specification must meet the following requirements.

1. It must specify a grammar for formulas.
2. It must specify a well defined processing model. The description of the
    processing model  should be oriented on the description of processing
    models of programming languages.
    [Note: Since office applications are implemented using programming
    languages, formula languages have the same platform dependence regarding
    the precision of float calculations as programming languages; for this
    reason, it seems to be reasonable to orient the the processing model
    specification on programming language specifications.]
3. It must specify a basic function set. The basic function set must be
    extendible in future versions of the specification.
    [Note: Functions sets correspond to function or class libraries of
    programming languages. The basic function set corresponds to the build-in
    function or class libraries of programming languages.]
4. It must permit application specific extension functions.
    [Note: These correspond to additional function or class libraries that are
    deployed for interpreted programming languages.]
5. It must permit application specific extensions to the processing model.
    [Note: Ideally, application specific formula languages can be (re-)defined
    as extensions to the formula language specified by this SC. This may
    require extensions to the processing model, for instance implicit type
    conversions.]
6. It must be friendly to conversions from and to existing office application
    spreadsheet formula languages.

Deliverables
------------
1. A written specifications for spreadsheet formulas in plain English that
    can be used with the OpenDocument v1.0 specification, and also can be
    included into a future version of OpenDocument. This specification shall
    be delivered in two phases:
    1. A specification for of the formula grammar (syntax).
    2. A specification for the processing model and the basic function set
      (semantic).

Scope of work
-------------
The subcommittee's work is to create a base specification for a spreadsheet 
formula language to be used with OpenDocument. The specification shall permit 
the creation of OpenDocument spreadsheet documents whose formulas are 
exchangeable between applications.

Manner and schedule of work
---------------------------
The work of the subcommittee will be primarily through conference calls and a 
mail list set up by OASIS for subcommittee work. Access by the public will be 
through an openly available mail list archive.

Conference calls will be scheduled on a regular basis as agreed by the sub 
committee after its formation.

	Proposed chair: [TBD]
	Proposed secretary: [TBD]
	Proposed editor: [TBD]