I believe the original comment is about documentation of the Basic language used with OpenOffice.
See <https://issues.apache.org/ooo/show_bug.cgi?id=121307>. In those cases, the correct notation (with multiplication sign and exponents) is shown in some languages for the page and different notations is used on corresponding pages in other languages. Because it is about the scripting language, the use of the scientific notation for numerals is appropriate in that context. This avoids any presumption of mathematical truth with regard to what is in the interval [;<). Somewhere, the correspondence between the notation and the representable numbers needs to be established, but that might be in the description of the syntax. For Calc formulas and the values in cells of type Number, the situation is very different. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: jan iversen [mailto:jancasacon...@gmail.com] Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2012 10:36 To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org; dennis.hamil...@acm.org Subject: Re: [DOCUMENTATION]Wrong use of scientific notation ups, our calc does not like "." if it is setup for e.g. en-GB, so actually calc accepted the second notation if I changed it to "," Would it be possible to have a macro or something for "." so it appears in "," for me "." signals 1000 (1.000) Jan. On 3 November 2012 18:29, Dennis E. Hamilton <dennis.hamil...@acm.org>wrote: > It appears that all three forms are correct as notations for the same > numerical value where "." is recognized as a decimal point. > > I agree that there should be consistency. > > I think context of the numeral is important. In particular, which is most > likely to be easily recognized and understood by the intended reader of the > particular information? Is there something about the form chosen that is > relevant to the context in which it occurs. > > Off hand, 1.79769313486232E+308 (my preference) is related to the > expression of numerical constant values in input-output of data and in > programming languages. > > The common formula presentation, using mathematical notation, is more like > 1.79769313486232 x 10^308, namely > > 1.79769313486232⨯10⁵⁸ > > (The above example depends on having a good Unicode font.) > (I couldn't find a good superscript 3 so I changed the exponent in the > Unicoded example). > It should not be difficult to use correct symbols and superscripts in the > documentation. > > - Dennis > > -----Original Message----- > From: RGB ES [mailto:rgb.m...@gmail.com] > Sent: Saturday, November 03, 2012 07:21 > To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org > Subject: [DOCUMENTATION]Wrong use of scientific notation > > On the help files, you find numbers written like > > 1.79769313486232 x 10E308 > > This is wrong: it should be either > > 1.79769313486232 x 10^308 > > or > > 1.79769313486232E308 > > what do you think? > > Regards > Ricardo > >
