RE: [office-formula] Expression Calculation: expression = formula?

[Andreas J Guelzow <aguelzow@math.concordia.ab.ca>]

On Tue, 2010-01-26 at 14:50 -0500, robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
> So I'm wondering if it would be cleaner to instead say:
> 
> In Part 1, where we define table:formula as:
> 
> NamespacePrefix':='('=')?Expression
> 
> Where Expression is defined by Part 2, OpenFormula.
> 
> (Allows 1 or 2 = signs, since the 2nd one would indicate forced recalc)
> 
> Then in Part 2, simply define Expression.
> 
> In other words, I think the equals sign is just how an OpenFormula 
> expression is embedded in a spreadsheet, but Part 2 doesn't really need to 
> say anything about it.
> 
> It is not a big deal either way, but I have a slight preference for 
> factoring out the spreadsheet-specific portion of the syntax into Part 1. 
> That way the remaining OpenFormula syntax can be more easily reused in 
> other contexts.
> 

We should keep in mind that we are still allowing non-OpenFormula
formulas.

In that context it will make a significant difference whether we have an
'=' that is part of the formula syntax or not. For example if I have a
formula syntax with namespace "myf" and all my formulas start with :
then currently we would have myf::now[] versus myf:=:now[] if we change
things.

of course this forced recalculation mode '==' still makes my head spin:
I don't see how that could be part of a formula language (it seems to be
very much spreadsheet specific) but this marker follows the namespace
spec so could easily collide with the formula syntax.

Andreas   
-- 
Andreas J. Guelzow
Concordia University College of Alberta