Re: improvements to INDEX()

[Nicholas Lamb <njl ecs soton ac uk>]

On Sun, Nov 27, 2005 at 10:59:36PM -0500, Jody Goldberg wrote:
> > I can also prepare an XL compat test sheet for INDEX() if that's helpful
> Please.

Such a sheet is attached, as is an updated patch which fixes two mistakes
found when writing the tests.

* INDEX(foo) should be #REF!
* INDEX(foo,0,0) should be the entire range foo

> Additionally this seems like a good time to move the docs to the new
> format.  Indeed some of your changes may strain the proposed system.
> Please try to use the new layout and see how it works.

I'm afraid I struggled pretty quickly with the new layout. INDEX has
essentially two parallel but distinct functions. In the paper docs I
have for Excel it's listed twice, once for each syntax.

Is there any documentation on how to write function docs with the new
format? Compared to what I've seen so far it needs at least:

* Tables - for tiny spreadsheet examples (Excel uses these all over)
  and for lists in functions like CELL or ERROR.TYPE
* A way to declare some parameters more than once, to describe e.g.

INDEX(array,row[,column])
and
INDEX(reference,row[,column,index])

Nick.

Attachment: index.xls
Description: MS-Excel spreadsheet

Attachment: index-try2.patch
Description: Text document