Re: gnumeric XML doesn't show result of formula

[John Machin <sjmachin lexicon net>]

Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:
> On Sat, 2008-02-09 at 21:28 -0500, Allin Cottrell wrote:
>   
> > 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.
> >     
>
> Why would you be SOL? The file contains all data in an easily readable
> and completely documented format.
I must be missing something; I went looking for the specs for the 
gnumeric XML format on the gnumeric website and found only a reference 
to a 3rd-party site
"""
An outdated PDF document discussing the Gnumeric file format which 
should provide a useful starting point was developed by the JWorkbook 
project. The file can be downloaded from 
http://www.jfree.org/jworkbook/gnumeric-xml.pdf.
"""
What I found there had not been updated for *many* years and had very 
little detail on cell contents.

Where is the "completely documented format "?
>  Since the formulas are included any
> results are unnecessary. Yes, some programs may prefer not to need to
> recalculate the results, but they should do that even when the results
> are included since there is no guarantee that the result matches the
> formula. In the world of spreadsheets there have been lots of
> incorrectly calculated formulas.
>   
Oh indeed, and the user with a formula calculation engine may be quite 
interested in checking their own results against gnumeric's results :-)
Could even be useful in gnumeric resression testing.
> > 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.
> >     
>
> Good that you can live with that. I would be greatly disappointed if we
> would decide to enlarge the gnumeric files by 10 or 20% just to include
> unnecessary formula results.
>