Re: [opendocument-users] Guidance for using cells in tables (ODF Spreadsheets)

[Jesper Lund Stocholm <4a4553504552@gmail.com>]

Hi Rob,

2009/10/8  <robert_weir@us.ibm.com>:
> I just thought of a legitimate use case.  A cell with a formula =NOW().

Yes - and I believe the use case I mentioned with the dates and the
formatted date are just as valid.

<table:table-cell office:value-type="date"
office:date-value="2009-10-08T09:45:00" >
 <text:p>Onsdag d. 8. oktober 2009 kl. 9.45</text:p>
</table:table-cell>

The above string is an example of "Danish date format" for date and
time, and the problem arises when I store this value in a paragraph in
a cell along with the UTC-date in the attribute and send this to
another tool - possible in another part of the world. It is not likely
that the application will be able to interpret this and find the
correct value - as specified in the date-value attribute.

So to the application, the situation is, that "there is a date value
in the date-value attribute, but the content of the cell is not a
date". What do I do now?

I was looking for some guidance in the spec along the lines of "if the
content in a paragraph of the cell has been qualified in a
<table:table-cell>-attribute, this attribute value takes precedense of
the content itself when evaluating the value of the cell".

But as I read your response, this behaviour is application defined. I
do agree with you, though, that it is difficult to pin down exactly
what to do in any specific situation and that it's certainly a
tradeoff between what you want and what you can.

Thanks for your input. If there are other implementers out there that
have implemented behaviour like this, please feel free to pitch in.

:o)

-- 
Jesper Lund Stocholm
www.idippedut.dk
SC34/WG4 http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/wg4/