I know it's off topic, but...

[D. Hugh Redelmeier]

| From: James Knott <james.knott-bJEeYj9oJeDQT0dZR+AlfA at public.gmane.org>

| Don't confuse the file format with the application.  A new file format is the
| ideal time to break such bugs.

I agree, but I don't think that that is what is happening.  Not with
OOXML and not with ODF.  I hope that I'm wrong.

I feel this way because I don't have years of work embodied in
fragile spreadsheets.

I do have years of work manifested in fragile programs and I do whine
when there are "silent changes" in the programming language.

C's evolution has rarely had these silent changes.

Unless you count things like sizeof(int) changing.  They generally
don't break my code because I know that I was never promised that they
were stable.  But lots of other folks' code breaks that way.

Spreadsheets started out being quick and dirty.  There was a lot of 
inferring of what the user meant.  This, I think, makes many potential 
changes silent and hence dangerous.

| Or would you rather go on having spreadsheets
| that can't deal with dates prior to 1900?

Extensions are often possible.  So handling prior to 1900 is OK.  But
I seem to remember there is a bug with respect to 1900 being treated
as a leap year.  That may not be able to be changed under the accepted
rules of the game.  Yuck.

Let's say that you extend support to all years.  Then what does "93" mean 
as a year?  1993? 0093?  It probably must mean 1993 for compatibility 
reasons.  At least until 2093 gets closer.

|  If you're reading an Excel file,
| accept there's a bug and fix it going forward.  Don't perpetuate it forever.
| If you read through what information has been available for OOXML, you'll find
| there's all sorts of exceptions that have to be dealt with, within the various
| versions of Excel and other files.

Has it not been decided that ODF has to have many of the same warts?
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