office-collab — archive

Tables vs. spreadsheets

From: Rob Weir <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Date: Wed, 30 May 2012 00:18:00 -0000

<[email protected]> wrote on 05/18/2012 08:09:55 AM: > From: Patrick Durusau <[email protected]> > To: [email protected], > Date: 05/18/2012 08:10 AM > Subject: [office-collab] Tables vs. spreadsheets > Sent by: <[email protected]> > > Greetings! > > I suppose because I don't want to have to do change tracking more than > once or at least only have to extend what we develop, I am curious what > is the perceived difference between tables and spreadsheets? > > I thought about it early this morning and reasoned that the cells in a > table change one by one, whereas in a spreadsheet, I may have a formula, > the changing of which changes values in many cells. > > OK, but then I thought, how is the spreadsheet example different from a > global save and replace where I have lots of tables and cells in each > table are changed in the save and replace? > > True, not a formula change but it is still a change that is performed by > the application across a potentially large number of locations in a > document. > > Or is the problem how do you capture changes to the formula? That is > while I am changing "+" to "/" does that populate tracked changes in all > the cells? Well, don't do dumb things while you have change tracking on. > ;-) Or, make change tracking in calculated cell values the result of > applying formulas. > This is a recurring question, not only with spreadsheet formulas, but with references, table of contents, indices, and a few other places. The change to one element can trigger a change in another element. Depending on your change tracking model, you could handle this a number of ways. But I think that it is most natural to treat a contingent chain of changes that are reproducible from some root user action as being subsumed into a single change event. > Surely we know which cells are the results of calculations. Data entry > cells are treated as that. Capture changes in calculated cells by > capturing the formulas applied to calculated cells. > > I am sure there are several very large holes in that analysis so would > appreciate your comments/suggestions. > > Hope everyone is having a great day! > > Patrick > > -- > Patrick Durusau > [email protected] > Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34 > Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps) > Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300 > Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps) > OASIS Technical Advisory Board (TAB) - member > > Another Word For It (blog): http://tm.durusau.net > Homepage: http://www.durusau.net > Twitter: patrickDurusau > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] >