OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC

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Proposal: references to entire table columns/rows

  • 1.  Proposal: references to entire table columns/rows

    Posted 01-29-2007 14:40
    Hi,
    
    A proposal for references to entire columns/rows independent of the
    application's column/row size.
    
    Section 8.3.1 currently says that cellRangeAddress references are of the
    form
    
    1. The address of the cell at the top left of the range.
    2. A colon (:).
    3. The address of the cell at the bottom right of the range. 
    
    ($?([^\. ']+|'[^']+'))?\.$?[A-Z]+$?[0-9]+(:($?([^\. ']+|'[^']+'))?\.$?[A-Z]+$?[0-9]+)?
    
    This makes it impossible to reference an entire column no matter which
    size it has in the application, which is desired for spreadsheet
    applications, especially in the table:formula attribute, but also in
    other places. Suggested additional form is A:A for entire column A, and
    1:1 for entire row 1, respectively A:B or TableX.A:TableY.B for extended
    2D and 3D forms, 1:2 and TableX.1:TableY.2 analogous for rows.
    Additionally notations with mixed absolute/relative ($ or not) reference
    are valid as well, same as now.
    
    Since regexp notation for "either this or that or another or yet another
    if not something else" tend to grow quite beyond recognition, maybe we
    could introduce "named subexpressions" for clarity, or does it have to
    be a parsable regexp?
    
      Eike
    
    -- 
     OpenOffice.org Engineering at Sun: http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS