Re: Excel ate my DNA!

[mortenw gnome org (Morten Welinder)]

Note, btw., that keeping entries ("4/1/2005", "42.33") around in the form
they were entered and converting to numbers when needed is a seductive,
but doomed route.  We unthinkingly did that in the file format very early on.

"4/1/2005": That would be the fourth of January, but if someone opens the
sheet in a different locale it might be the first day of April.

"42.33": That would be precisely 42 if your decimal separator was a comma.

We really do need to know the meaning of the user's input early.

- * -

The difference between Gnumeric and Excel on input of "4e5" is also much
smaller than you might think.  Both interpret the input as a number, it
is only that they apply different formats to it.  If you change the font
or the column width, Gnumeric might show you "4e5".  And it would do the
same thing if you had entered "40e4".  (And anyone awake out there would
of course ignore that I was an order of magnitude off in my last post...)

- * -

I am quite appalled at seeing the biometrics people so forcefully blame
Excel for what I see as a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the foot.
After all, numbers in E-format have been standard in spreadsheets since
the Queen of Hearts was just a little girl.

(That being said I do question the wisdom of accepting 1/4 as a date in
a field not already formatted as a date.)

Morten