I noted one option about logical:
> > A. Logical is REQUIRED to be distinct from Number.
> > Inconsistent with OOo, Lotus 1-2-3, & many others.
wrote:
> How about A, but allow automatic conversion to Number type? I believe
> this is different from C, in that the conversion from Number to
> Logical would not be automatic.
I think that would be one of the sub-options of A
(A1: auto-convert, A2: do not auto-convert). The current
implementations that have distinct logical types (Excel, Gnumeric,
SheetToGo, and probably others) all do auto-conversion
if the expected type is Number.
> Generally I'd rather give an error than to do something which has a
> good chance of being wrong. We've come a long way since spreadsheets
> first came about. Back then we programmed in assembler, and maybe the
> old C before prototypes, when everything looked like an int. Now
> we've generally learned that strict typechecking is often a good
> thing. But this view is not universally held. What makes sense for a
> spreadsheet which is used by non-programmers? We want them to avoid
> the common mistakes, but we don't want to force them to work hard at it.
>
> So, auto-conversion to text in the general case is dangerous, and I
> don't mind forcing the user to invoke it specifically where needed,
> perhaps specifying a fixed locale, or defaulting to the current
> runtime locale.
An interesting variant of the "mixed" idea (E) would be to set some property
"what to do for numeric conversion" -- probably at the sheet level.
Then you get to choose. But again, almost nobody does that today (to my
knowledge).
Actually, if you set Excel to have Lotus 1-2-3-equal semantics, I think
it'll do
the "always convert to 0", but that's an-all-or-nothing setting (it sets
other
semantics besides this conversion.
> So, I think I'm suggesting E, without A1 and without A2. So, an error
> for a naked use of text in the context of a number, but allow
> Value(text;locale) and value(text) to avoid the error.
Alrighty. This is incompatible with many spreadsheet data files, though --
since many implementations DO perform the automatic conversion.
Oh, I just realized.. another option:
F: Like E (multiple options), but "deprecate" some of the options for
version 1.0.
--- David A. Wheeler
