Hi Dennis
> Can you recommend authoritative sources
In short, I'm afraid not - there are many books about, but because I'm
not a
specialist I think it would be unwise for me to recommend. I found
mistakes in
one book... And many sources skirt around the detail.
The good news is that we now have a pretty good understanding of what
the
financial functions actually do - and I think ODFF will nail it down so
that
future implementors can succeed (in a way that OOXML has not). The main
outstanding issue is probably the calendar systems, which David Wheeler
is
working on I think.
The bad news is that it's hard to know how useful (and used) the
financial
functions are. Two of the Calc functions always return an error, and no-
one
complained (I've raised an issue now). I suspect that despite the huge
effort
of implementation, not many people find them useful, except for students
doing
assignments. Personally, as things are at the moment, I'd often be more
inclined to go back to basic principles, so I could be sure of the
result...
> I'm concerned that we have authoritative subject-matter expertise for
citation and also comparison with what various programs do.
Agreed, a good point, but it's hard to find the right *international*
expertise. Or at least I've found it so. I think the financial functions
are
quite biased towards the US.
We also have to remember that a spreadsheet is a general tool, and that
specialist software will always do more for that area. Like R and
statistics.
Not sure it that helps at all...
David
