David A. Wheeler wrote:
OpenDocument is a good specification, but I believe its spreadsheet formula specification needs more detail. I have crafted a very early draft of those details, and I hope to create an effort to further improve them into something useful. I've named this work "OpenFormula". More information about OpenFormula is at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/openformula http://www.dwheeler.com/openformula/ http://software.newsforge.com/software/05/09/09/192250.shtml?tid=93
The idea of OpenFormula may look like a logical extension to the OpenDocument specification, but it isn't. Two very different concepts are mixed up here: Specifying a file format (like OpenDocument does) and specifying an application's behavior.
If your application keeps its cells organized in columns instead of rows first (like, incidentally, OOo does), or keeps cell formats separate from cell contents (which OOo does to some extent, too), or stores all strings backwards (which OOo doesn't do), you can still convert all of that to store it in the specified format.
If, howewer, one application includes the day 1900-02-29 in date calculations, and another one doesn't, how in the world are you going to "import" or "export" their formulas to a common specification?
By the way, the question "what is the goal of it" has been brought up on the sc-dev list before, without really finding an answer.
From my point of view, to complement the OpenDocument specification in a useful way, what we need is something that's confined to the file format. It would probably include the general formula syntax, a list of function names, but not much more.
Of course, if we do such a description for the formulas of OOo Calc instead of creating a new specification, we'll instantly have a working implementation. That would make the sc-dev list the right place.
I do _not_ plan to use the "dev (at) sc.openoffice.org" mailing list do this, because this work is about a specification that ANY spreadsheet can use, not just OpenOffice.org. Thus, the mailing list cannot be tied to any particular project. But participation from spreadsheet projects is absolutely vital, or it won't succeed.
If a mailing list for cross-project discussion is needed, we still have the old office_standards list, see http://xml.openoffice.org/standardisation/.
Please discuss "where to put a forum" at: openformula-discuss (at) lists (dot) sourceforge.net and not (just) at other places; no one wants to follow ten different mailing lists!
Do we really need a new mailing list for discussing what mailing list to use?
Niklas --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
