Hi all,
I am in the process of drafting a specification for the concept known as "structured references" in Excel. I am interested in your ideas and comments.
The concept is described in https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/using-structured-references-with-excel-tables-f5ed2452-2337-4f71-bed3-c8ae6d2b276e.
The formal syntax is given in section 2.2.2 Symbol "structure-reference" on page 37 in [MS-XLSX] - v20240416 Excel (.xlsx) Extensions to the Office Open XML SpreadsheetML File Format.
LibreOffice has also implemented it, but only uses it for files in .xlsx format. When saving in .ods format, a structured reference is converted into an ordinary cell range reference.
The use of structured references makes formulas easier to read and maintain. This concept is particularly useful for the new functions. It is therefore desirable to have such a concept in ODF as well.
Because "database-range" in ODF and "table" in Excel are slightly different, a direct transfer is not possible. In particular, it must somehow be taken into account that "database-range" can have both "row" and "column" orientation.
The work is tracked in https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162088. The attachment https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/attachment.cgi?id=195468 there has my first thoughts.
The post https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/libreoffice/2024-July/092252.html is asking for ideas from LO Developer.
@Alfred: Is there any work already done on Microsoft side about bringing "structered references" to ODF?
Kind regards,
Regina
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Regina Henschel
The Document Foundation
Dortmund
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