https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=67822

--- Comment #17 from Mike Kaganski <[email protected]> ---
Here arise other related concerns, that deserve to have their own issue
reports.

1. When a cell locale is directly set, corresponding format codes must be used.
A user may be unaware of it, or may be unaware of specific characters, and the
documentation is not very verbose on this, too. It is desirable to at least
have a notification area in the formatting dialog showing active codes, or
(better) have buttons inserting those characters (a keyboard may lack the
required keys);

2. There is no way (at least in UI) to change the locale of a cell without
dropping the format string. But it should be possible, especially given that LO
does this internally when the locale of a cell is "default", and this default
is changed in LO settings;

3. Possibly, the very idea to use locale-specific characters in format string
is bad. Besides being not very obvious and leading to this kind of mistakes,
there is another issue: imagine having a format string of a cell like "#
##0.00". If I have the LO default locale set to English (USA), and the cell
locale is default, then the space has no special meaning, and should be treated
as textual insert. The number 1000000000 is displayed as 1000000 000.00 . If
then I change the LO default locale to Russian (or send the file to a user
having this locale), the space becomes standard thousands separator. LO
modifies the format string representation to be "# ##0,00" (note dot changed to
comma), and the format string is expected to make 1000000000 look like 1 000
000 000,00 (at least that is what I get when I enter this fmt string diretly in
a Russian-locale cell). But in this previously-English cell, this format string
will continue to treat the space as textual character, giving 1000000 000,00 -
and that is absolutely unexpected to user looking at the format string!

It would be better if the separator characters of format string were fixed, and
inserting them as text would always require quoting them. It would make the
format string unambiguous.

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