[Usability]Re: Viewpoints on conditional formatting, anyone?

[Pavel Shevchenko <pavel telemetry-investments com>]

Jody Goldberg writes:
 > The XL interface supports exactly that.  There are 2 types of
 > condition for each format.
 >     1) The basic version that defines simple expressions based on
 >        the value of the cell (called Cell Value)
 >     2) The more advanced version that allows the user to enter a
 >        generic expression as you mention (called as Formula).  This
 >        is cleaner in some ways, but ugly in others.  Standard
 >        expressions do _not_ have a nice simple way to refer to the
 >        value in the current cell.  The user is forced to just know
 >        that the relative reference A1 in an expression edited in
 >        cell A1 refers to the current cell when evaluated elsewhere.
 > 
 > I'd agree with XL on this point and suggest we support the
 > simplified condition types in the UI.  On the other hand having
 > different sets of basic condition types for
 >     - filters
 >     - validation
 >     - conditional formats
 > is bloody irritating.  It might be nice to homogenize them at some
 > point.

Why we cannot introduce function like VAL() or something which returns
value of the currently evaluated cell BEFORE evaluation. So, we will
not need those simple expression and GUI to specify logical expression
(which is much less powerfull when string expression)

May be VAL() function will be useful as generic spreadsheet function
(I am not sure maybe it already exists). In our company people use
spreadsheets as some sort of programming environment and some cells
updated once a day from external sources, so they have some sort of
history and it can be useful to have access to it.

Pavel.