Re: [office] YEARFRAC, etc.

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Rob,

robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
>
>
> > Well, inartfully worded, I suspect: "All months have 30 days." covers
> > all the cases. Yes? Looks like someone got tied up in how many days 
> each
> > month has. Really irrelevant if you want to say that all months have 30
> > days. Just say that, full stop. How an application treats a particular
> > date is determined by that rule, every month has 30 days. What more 
> need
> > be said?
> >
>
> The provided definition is not inartful.  There is no JTC1 requirement 
> for artful definitions.  What we have here is simply broken, useless, 
> non-functional, unimplementable and yet another indictment of a review 
> process in JTC1 that failed to accomplish even a basic level of 
> quality.  Far from getting "tied up in how days each month has", the 
> sole purpose of date counting conventions is to establish these very 
> conventions in a clear and unambiguous manner.  This is hard to do if 
> you don't come to grips with how many days are in a month.  If this is 
> not done, then you do not have a standard.
>
> Noting that the entire formula subcommittee has stated that these 
> definitions are technically inadequate (and they are the ones who 
> would know) I'd be pleased if our ODF 1.2 Editor would simply 
> acknowledge that these OOXML definitions are broken and assure us that 
> he will do his best to ensure that ODF 1.2 does not have similar 
> lapses.  I in turn will strive to do the same.
>
Yes, these definitions are broken and I have no intention of having 
broken definitions in ODF 1.2. But I am not going to avoid interoperable 
and useful definitions simply because they are also adopted as 
replacements for these broken definitions by other standards.

I am going to do my best to make ODF an example of how a markup standard 
should be written. (full stop) However, that does not include being 
different simply to be different from other standards or avoiding 
opportunities to have the same solution for common problems as other 
standards. If our formula subcommittee or others can derive a 
technically sufficient definition for YEARFRAC that is accepted for use 
by other standards, such that it promotes more interoperability, that is 
the one I will support over a technically sufficient definition that is 
different from that used by others.

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick

> -Rob 

-- 
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)