Re: Excel ate my DNA!

[mortenw gnome org (Morten Welinder)]

Helmut Wollmersdorfer wrote:

> Unchanged will _never_ be wrong.

Let's see:

A1 = 1-dec-2004
A2 = 24-dec-2004
A3 = A2-A1

--> #VALUE! error.  File a bug, get "works as expected" answer, move on
to next spreadsheet program.  (Actually following the "unchanged" rule
completely you would see "=A2-A1" as text; useful for a word processor,
not for a spreadsheet.)

People have come to expect that spreadsheets "do the right thing" with
data.  For example it is expected that "4e5" means the same as 40000
and the biometrics researchers clearly haven't thought their do-not-
interpret request through.

If you want something not interpreted you simply poke a single quote in
front of it.

And don't use .csv files (or any other type-less format) for such data.
Use .xls or .gnumeric instead.

(On top of that I have the feeling that these guys are using a spreadsheet
to do a database's job.)

Morten