11 messages in org.oasis-open.lists.office-commentRe: [office-comment] Re: Unit system ...| From | Sent On | Attachments |
|---|---|---|
| David A. Wheeler | Jun 10, 2007 7:36 pm | |
| Leonard Mada | Jun 10, 2007 11:00 pm | |
| Bryce L Nordgren | Jun 11, 2007 9:27 am | |
| Bryce L Nordgren | Jun 11, 2007 9:41 am | |
| robe...@us.ibm.com | Jun 11, 2007 10:00 am | |
| David A. Wheeler | Jun 11, 2007 11:12 am | |
| Alex Hudson | Jun 11, 2007 11:44 am | |
| Bryce L Nordgren | Jun 11, 2007 12:07 pm | |
| David A. Wheeler | Jun 11, 2007 3:34 pm | |
| Thomas Zander | Jun 12, 2007 12:41 am |  .pgp |
| Bryce L Nordgren | Jun 12, 2007 2:18 pm |
| Subject: | Re: [office-comment] Re: Unit system tracking | |
|---|---|---|
| From: | Alex Hudson (ho...@alexhudson.com) | |
| Date: | Jun 11, 2007 11:44:32 am | |
| List: | org.oasis-open.lists.office-comment | |
Hey David,
On Mon, 2007-06-11 at 14:13 -0400, David A. Wheeler wrote:
We discussed adding units of measure at today's OpenDocument teleconference. Certainly, automated tracking/conversion of units of measure can be very valuable.
But I think most people view this capability as out-of-scope for this round. The formula charter specifically says in point 6: "It must be friendly to conversions from and to existing office application spreadsheet formula languages." Trying to add full automated conversions is a MAJOR change that would permeate any formula language. Even +,-,*,/, and ^ would have to be modified to track units, and every value would now be a tuple of (value, units).
I think that's a bit of a hostage to fortune: essentially, we're talking about typed data (in CS-speak), and if the other side isn't typed then automated conversion into the typed format is obviously impossible. But, I don't see why you'd attempt that - e.g., ODF doesn't ask people to up-convert tables into page columns when they're used for layout. The typed stuff is extra mojo on top. While it doesn't aid conversion, I don't see that it hampers it.
I probably mostly agree with the end decision, but I think this should be kept on the radar. Stuff like <number:currency-style> seems to me a horrible mishmash of presentation and meta-data, and this type of proposal could sort this out (i.e., separate the "this data is currency in USD" from the "format USD values in blue with a $ on the front").
If correctly used (ha ha ha!), this would also be a significant user convenience, I can think of two big use cases:
* detection of user error - e.g., "time multiplied by time makes no sense!" * being able to get away from formulas to do conversions - e.g., no more "(A1/12) is the rental value per month", so when A1 changes from being an annual value to a six-monthly value, the calculation still works
Cheers,
Alex.