Daniel Rentz wrote:
Leonard Mada schrieb:
What are shared formulas?
Is it the same as the concept I presented in a previous e-mail, where
one can have a default formula for a column? This is indeed a very
useful feature to have in OOo Calc and is one issue that gets into my
TOP 5 of major design flaws of existing spreadsheets.
You cannot create shared formulas by yourself, neither in Calc nor in
Excel. Excel creates them automatically e.g. when pasting a formula
cell to a range selection. They are not visible in the user interface.
A similar concept to have a named formula definition for multiple
cells are "defined names" (Insert->Name->Define).
*Default Formulas* (defined for a column) was a new concept of the late
'80s-early '90s and are important in multidimensional Spreadsheets. Sun
even has bought the rights for such a next-gen spreadsheet in the mid
'90s but never developed it further.
This is one major BUG that makes it into my TOP 5 of major design flaws
of existing spreadsheet applications and I will file such a feature
request later (in my series of major design flaws).
It definitely helps reduce the spaghetti code inherent to
spreadsheets and is also an important concept when extending the
simple spreadsheet to multidimensional spreadsheets. I will file a
new feature request when I will have some time.
Shared formulas are intended to reduce memory usage and file size,
don't know if they would help you. What do you mean with spaghetti code?
Daniel
One effect of shared-formulas is surely to reduce memory usage, BUT the
most useful one is to reduce ERRORS.
You write only once: C[] = A[]*B[], or E[] = C[]+D[]. You avoid in this
void the spaghetti code inherent to spreadsheet programming. Also , this
concept is very useful for multidimensional spreadsheets.
Lets say we have the following dimensions
the name of the retailer
quantity of items sold in this month
price of every item
the months: January, February till August
Then the multidimensional formula would be:
revenue[retailer]=SUM(quantity[]*price[]) for the monthly revenue
global_revenue[retailer]=SUM(revenue[January:August]
Risk of error is greatly reduced. And you have all the data fully
organized and easy to analyse. Adding another month simply recalculates
the values for the additional month: *NO formula change needed*!!!
Sincerely,
Leonard
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