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Subject: Re: [office-formula] Implementation-defined, Unspecified, and Undefinedbehaviors in OpenFormula
robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote: > I've been going through the current draft of OpenFormula, looking for > areas that are specifically called out as "implementation-defined", > "unspecified" or "undefined". I did not find as many as I thought I would > find. I think that's a good thing! > I created a spreadsheet that illustrated each one of these cases, which I > am attaching. Thanks for doing that. And I agree, a little form to fill these out (for example) would be great. > Then I wonder if we truly need to have all of these items be > implementation-defined? Or to ask the question differently, would there > be tangible user benefit, in terms of increased interoperability, if some > of these items were fully specified, knowing that some implementations > would then need to change their code in order to conform, and that they > would need to deal (perhaps with version-conditional logic) with legacy > documents? Re-examining these is a good idea. However, I think that expecting "0 implementation-defined values" is both unrealistic and undesirable in most real standards, including this one. In all non-trivial standards there are areas where there are legitimate differences, and trying to prematurely force a specific answer is simply undesirable. Simply identifying those areas, so users know what to avoid, is a major benefit, even when we don't specify the specifics. Regarding the specifics, I have comments on two: * I have to admit, I'm tired of the 0^0 discussions, but we can have another one. There are good arguments for 1, or 0, or an Error, and actual implementations DO vary, so it's hard to pin that down. I don't think this has a massive impact on interoperability; it'd be NICE to pin down, but it can be managed. * In practice, I don't know why anyone would CARE what SUM() does with an empty argument list. This is not a REAL interoperability issue; it's hard to imagine a normal user even DOING that. We could leave that completely *undefined*, and not impact real world interoperability. If we can nail down a few more specifics, that'd be great. But we needn't get hung up on this. --- David A. Wheeler
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