[OASIS Issue Tracker] Created: (OFFICE-1898) CHAR and CODE areinconsistent

CHAR and CODE are inconsistent
------------------------------

                 Key: OFFICE-1898
                 URL: http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/OFFICE-1898
             Project: OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC
          Issue Type: Bug
          Components: OpenFormula
    Affects Versions: ODF 1.2
            Reporter: Dennis Hamilton
            Priority: Blocker


In 6.19.2 CHAR in OpenFormula working-draft OpenDocument-formula-20090508.odt, it is recommended that CHAR(n) for n > 255 have an error-return result, while also recommending that the identity transformation n = CODE(CHAR(n)) be preserved.   

6.19.4 CODE has an implicit requirement that c = CHAR(CODE(c)) be preserved for c a single-character string although CODE behavior is implementation-defined when c has a code-point greater than 127 in the internal representation of strings (which section 4.1 is not exactly definitive about).   

There seems to be quiet neglect for the possibility of "code pages" where the code points from 0 to 127 are not those of the ASCII code.  There are other difficulties around strings being used to carry arrays of bytes that are not safe as strings in the implicit character-set encoding.

I think there needs to be work on clear-cut abstractions for distinguishing internal representations, disguise of a different representation in the stored form of the internal representation, and in the interpretation of string constants and string values as text.

These proposals are intended to help in movement in that direction.

-- 
This message is automatically generated by JIRA.
-
If you think it was sent incorrectly contact one of the administrators: http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/secure/Administrators.jspa
-
For more information on JIRA, see: http://www.atlassian.com/software/jira