2013/2/10 Hagar Delest <hagar.del...@laposte.net> > Le 10/02/2013 00:43, Rob Weir a écrit : > > Spreadsheets are used by businessmen and not only mathematicians. >> > > I think that very few mathematicians use AOO at all. > Even in the industry (in which I work for almost 15 years), MS Excel is > not used to perform high level calculations. Even the nice charts we can > see from complex tests are in fact exports from dedicated software that > just give the numbers and let MS Excel draw the chart with all the bells > and whistles needed (secondary grid, axis, legends, ...). > Real calculation is made with specific applications, often developed by > the companies to be sure they master the process.
+1. I remember a conference (I'm physicist) on which one person presented charts made with excel. One of the senior scientist on the audience then said "you are masochist, don't you?" Regards Ricardo > > > > - In 3.4.1, "=0 ^ 0" returns 1 >>> - In 4.0, as patched by Pedro (see issue), "=0 ^ 0" would return an error >>> - According to ODF, valid results are 0, 1, error >>> >> >> In other words, the results we were giving before were entirely valid. >> > > It just means that an acceptable shortcut was used. Giving 'error' would > be valid too (regarding the ODF compliance). > But I would not say that mathematics POV 1 as a result is valid. Even if > some tend to think that 1 is OK. > > > > Microsoft has gone decades with treating the year 1900 as a leap year. >> Should we? >> > > Agreed, who cares what MS Excel does? It should not dictate what AOO > should do. > > > > - We lose backwards compatibility if someone was relying on the fact that >>> OpenOffice returns 1 as the result of "=0 ^ 0" >>> >> >> Correct. The fact is we have returned 1 for this calculation for over >> a decade. Whether mathematicians think it is right or wrong (and they >> do not all agree), that is what we did. So changing it now has the >> potential to break real user spreadsheets. So this is a serious >> change. >> > > First, how many users would face such a problem when both the base and > exponent are null??? > Again, real maths are not done in spreadsheets. So it's very likely the > 0^0 cases would not break that many sheets and with an error, users will be > able to spot quickly the issue and adapt to prevent that situation to be > calculated. > > Second, and that's my main point here: you're angry about such a minor > change when you don't mind breaking the backward compatibility of the whole > extensions eco-system? See: http://www.mail-archive.com/** > a...@openoffice.apache.org/**msg00107.html<http://www.mail-archive.com/api@openoffice.apache.org/msg00107.html> > I'm lost about the priorities... and how end-users fit in your agenda. > > Hagar >
