Re: [Excel-comptibility] References to empty “date -cells”

[Morten Welinder <mortenw gnome org>]

The language that Gnumeric implements is, by and large, set in
stone.  We can extend, for example with extra functions, but
changing the core language is not in the cards.

Compare this with, say, Gcc deciding to use "%" for percentage
and using "mod" for modulo instead.  It would be possible. It
might arguably lead to more readable programs, interoperability
with other compilers would suffer.

So the fact that referencing an empty cell gives you a zero is
not going away.  Formatting 0 as a date isn't going to give
you anything you like.  Note, though, that we don't produce
the same formatting result as Excel if you include the weekday
in the format.  That is because we don't reproduce Excel's
(or maybe Lotus 1-2-3's?) silly 1900-02-29 bug.

Morten