On Thu, Sep 22, 2005 at 08:33:44PM +0200, Niklas Nebel wrote: > Jody Goldberg wrote: > >What is the goal of an open-formula specification ? I'd assume it is > >to improve interoperability between versions and implementors of the > >standard. If that is the case then there is already a standard, MS > >Excel. Given the complexity and prevalence of it's evaluation > >engine it seems wasteful for us to produce a standard that does > >anything that is not a superset of Excel's conventions. > > If cases show up later where an "Excel superset" specification differs > from Excel itself, it would be the spec that's wrong. That would turn it > from a specification into a mere description. Useful, no question, but > probably not what the OpenFormula proponents had in mind. > > So "what's the goal" seems to be a very good question here.
The time varying nature of MS Excel does have the potential for problems in the future. However, Microsoft is even more strongly bound by the chains of backwards compatibility than we are. I suspect that the differences will be small, and well documented. When they are discovered or occur there is nothing that would preclude updating the rev of the standard. Ideally OpenDoc, or an xml namespace could be used to which revision of open-formula was being used. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
