Terry North wrote:
I'm not a programmer but I've been using spreadsheets
for a long time, including Lotus, which went through a
number of changes. I hope that reading this does not
take too long, if my suggestion has no merit.
Sorry for the late reply. It's good to see some suggestions, instead of
the usual declaration that the problem is impossible to solve.
Rather than loading the program with various
alternative formula expressions, formula conversion or
translator utilities could be considered. In support
of that suggestion I offer the following:
1. Autocorrect and similar functions already exist.
How about a function that recognises obsolete formula
expressions and offers the new expressions in their
place?
Something like "deprecated" functions? Sounds possible, and perhaps less
confusing to the user than just having numerous ways to express similar
things. But from an implementation point of view, supporting such
deprecated functions would still require the same effort as normal ones.
2. File conversion already exists. When I converted
my main Lotus spreadsheet to MS Excel (using "Save As"
in Lotus) so that I could open it in OpenOffice, a lot
of formulas were translated into language I had never
used or even encountered.
Some formulas were not translated. They stood out,
of course, because they were converted to text.
Were only the function names changed, or the structure of the formulas?
For Excel import, the FLOOR and CEILING functions make a good example.
We added an extra parameter to these functions, and the Excel import
changes formulas to include this parameter (a small change to the
formula). Instead, I guess it would be possible to change all occurences
of these functions to some construct containing "IF(...<0;...;-...)".
That would probably surprise a user, but at least it seems like a
possible option for such cases.
3. I know a specific translator is possible because
when Lotus changed a lot of their old macro
programming language (way before LotusScript was
adopted, I'm talking about macro commands written into
the spreadsheet itself), the new program version came
with a macro translator. It translated, at the
user's request, macro commands in the spreadsheet into
commands using the new expressions.
A log could be provided showing the location of
formulas which could not be translated.
But would a user know they have to run such a command? When they load a
file, and see some results, I think only few users would bother to try
if converting the formulas would give a different result.
Hope this may be worthwhile even though it's from a "layman".
This is certainly worthwhile and contains some ideas to keep in mind.
Thanks
Niklas
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