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

[John Cowan <cowan@ccil.org>]

Cox, Bruce scripsit:

> But, why would one localize the content, rather than localize the style
> sheet for the cell?  Is it not possible to populate the cell with
> the UTC date and apply a style that matches the local conventions,
> including language?  In that case, a process relying on the type
> attribute should work correctly.

That is an unreasonably high barrier to reuse.  A cell has two faces:
what is displayed in it, and the underlying formula (broadly construed;
it may be a constant formula) that computes what is displayed.
Some applications, like word processors, care only about the former;
some applications will care primarily or only about the latter.

To require all applications to be able to compute the display value from
the formula is to demand that all applications have a calculation engine,
even when they only need to display the precalculated results and don't
support changing them at all.  You might be able to do Danish dates with
a stylesheet, but if the underlying formula is "=A1+B1" or "=NOW()" or
"=SIN(3.141592653)", you can't ask the stylesheet to figure that out.

-- 
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John Cowan      cowan@ccil.org      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan