Re: gnumeric XML doesn't show result of formula

[Allin Cottrell <cottrell wfu edu>]

On Tue, 5 Feb 2008, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:

> On Mon, 2008-02-04 at 20:37 -0500, Allin Cottrell wrote:
> > OK, it's a balancing act.  Gnumeric files are nice and slim 
> > compared to most spreadsheets -- but I think they would remain 
> > comparatively slim even with formula-results added (given the 
> > economical XML structure and gzip compression).
>
> Which percentage of gnumeric users do you think would even 
> consider using gretl or some other program that parses the xml 
> and expects to find the values in addition to the real data?

If you confine the question to gretl and this year, the answer is 
obviously "a minuscule percentage".  But if you enlarge the 
question to XML-aware free-software applications over a timescale 
of, say, the next decade, I'm not so sure of the answer.

The implication of your point of view seems to be: gnumeric XML is 
strictly a private format -- if you're a third party and want to 
make use of files saved in this format, you're SOL.

I can live with that, but I'm disappointed.  Even the wretched XLS 
binary format enables third parties to read formula results if 
they're willing to grub among the saved bytes.

Allin Cottrell