@Andreas: Your analysis needs to be broken down into parts and carefully examined. Thank you for the extensive commentary.
For now, I have only general remarks: I agree. The ODF 1.2 OpenFormula specification does not address entry, display, cell formatting, and import/export cases. There is ambiguity (and explicit implementation-dependency) with regard to text type where Number type (or date-time and time interval) are expected. Nevertheless, an implementation can be precise where the specifications are either incomplete or when it is out of scope for the specification. I also agree that failing hard is, in this case, superior to failing quietly and unpredictably by default. The problem with entry parsing when the type of the cell is not considered leads to the problem of differentiating between 20120728 as a date or a number. I agree that on entry, locale is a consideration if that and ambiguities such as 120711 are to be dealt with. I favor your suggestion that a locale be provided to VALUE() and I would go to the cell format level too. There are similar problems when multiple currency notations are used on the same sheet, etc. Time zone also matters although it takes a crafty user to sort that out. As a general principle, perhaps the idea is to ensure that fluent spreadsheet users can have ways to say precisely what is wanted and have guidance in determining where and when that works. For the casual users, it will take great art to assist them in avoiding likely pitfalls while also not frustrating them and especially in not having users feel stupid. - Dennis PS: I worked for Bob Bemer at the time ISO 8601 dates were being proposed in the 1960s. I began using yyyy-mm-dd and yyyy-mm-dd:HH:mm (now correctly done as yyyy-mm-ddTHH:mm) immediately and have continued to do so. I train my computers and software to use it (although OpenOffice-lineage Calc is rather uncooperative). There was an effort to have check printers provide for ISO dates in the date field of hand-entered bank checks. It didn't take in the US. I use them any how and on many other documents where a date is requested (unless it specifies an exact format and boxes the digits must fit in). I have never received a complaint. I don't set the household clocks to 24-hour format because it confuses other family members. But all others under my control have that format. And, as someone who engages in international conference calls, I am comfortable with UTC. I prefer that meeting times be announced in UTC so there is no question what local time that will be for me, wherever I am. Someday, my calendar software will get this right all of the time, as it is pretty close but recuring appointments tend to be mangled as the result of daylight-time transitions. Not everyone is so fussy and there is need to be of practical assistance nevertheless. -----Original Message----- From: Andreas Säger [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, July 28, 2012 05:14 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [DISCUSS][CALC] String content to numeric value Am 27.07.2012 08:20, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote: > There are several matters here. > > First, the rules for OpenFormula apply to literals as argument and to > references to cells where the value is of type text and the expected type is > Number. The current rules for implicit conversions used to be clear and consistent in OOo 2. The current compromise which converts integers and ISO dates is still reasonable. Excel gives different results depending on the language version. [... lengthy elaboration of comments that deserves careful attention. Thanks Andreas. ...] That's it for now. Greetings, A.S --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
