Re: [office] Restoring examples in OpenFormula spec

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

David,

Expand your focus just a bit!

David A. Wheeler wrote:
<snip>
>> The point being that we could easily see a 1,500 to 2,000 page ODF 
>> standard that is mostly *non-normative* examples.
>>     
>
> It's not too bad with the OpenFormula spec; even displaying all hidden text it's
> not THAT many pages.
>
>   

The problem is that we need some principle or standard (sorry) to guide us.

You see, the problem really isn't that a few examples for a few 
functions in the formula section, assuming we choose wisely, would be a 
problem of length, but how do we avoid choosing in an arbitrary fashion?

Or to put it another way, why should we as a committee decide that 
examples are more important for functions and not so important for 
tables? We did have some examples for tables but not nearly what would 
be considered a complete set of examples. Some people no doubt find 
tables really hard to understand given their support in most 
applications. Perhaps we need more examples there.

And then the graphics people, who like graphics quite naturally, will 
want to have more examples for their section.

So, if we look at the standard as a whole, how do we avoid playing 
favorites for one side or the other?

Granted, you really like the formula section and so see the need for 
examples more there than anywhere but really isn't a principle for 
standards editing.

Particularly, when we have alternatives. We can quite easily produce the 
Complete Guide to ODF, which just happens to also include the entire 
text of the ODF standard. We can finally leave the dead document world 
behind us. Why does that bother you so much?

Hope you are starting 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)