https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=94771

--- Comment #4 from [email protected] ---
Ok. I have done a deep dive into how calc does time. Let me summarize in case I
don't have it down to the quantum level:
(1) Time is represented as a real number of days. Cool. I get that.
(2) Format shows that value. No such thing as Duration. That's a problem for
interpretation by the user, and not the software apparently.
(3) [m]:s or some such formatting allows representing a large number of minutes
and the residual seconds. Which is a hack that lets the software ignore that it
does not understand duration vs absolute time.

So my remaining confusion is "Why doesn't the format affect the input method?".
Apparently when you type a time into a cell, the format is completely ignored.
So if you type: 11:19 it is taken as 11:19 AM, even when it is typed into a
cell formatted as [m]:s, which seems like complete nonsense to me. I didn't
test the case of 111:19, which should make perfect sense based on the format,
but probably causes something very strange since if you don't take format into
account, 111 is an invalid value for any time field except "days".

See I grew up programming Freaking FORTRAN where there were INPUT THE FREAK
FORMATS. Yes boys and girls, I am that freaking OLD.

So why doesn't the format condition the interpretation of the text as it is
typed into a Cell?? if that were the case and I typed 11:19, or 111:19 into a
cell formatted as [m]:s then it would make sense and you would get what you
expected. After all that's why you formatted the cell in the first place?

Well if there is a "Backwards compatibility problem" with doing this, for some
reason that I can't fathom at this time, then add a check box to the Formatting
dialogue that says "[] Format affects input" or some such intelligent name. As
far as I can tell this has no bearing on the format of the spreadsheet file,
except that the format spec needs to be saved with this new BOOL setting. But
the file format is XML - eXtensible Markup Language? Correct? So no problem
adding a new setting, right?

Comments on this bug fix?
- ww

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