[Libreoffice-ux-advise] new range name dialog proposal

[Christoph Noack]

Hi Eike!

Am Dienstag, den 01.11.2011, 19:01 +0100 schrieb Eike Rathke:
> Hi,
> 
> Let me chime in late on this..
> 
> On Monday, 2011-10-24 23:28:09 +0200, Christoph Noack wrote:
> 
> > > > As far as I know, it is currently not possible to know the characters in
> > > > advance, because the valid characters are influenced by localization
> > > > settings and some other stuff. We may only know that "something" is
> > > > wrong - any input has to be evaluated by the expression parser.
> > > 
> > > I think I already implemented somenthing in this direction. I think
> > > the Add and the modify button are only enabled if the name is valid. I
> > > still think that allowing all characters and showing a warning that
> > > some characters are not allowed is better than too much magic that
> > > nobody understands.
> > 
> > Do we know the characters being not allowed in advance? In my statement
> > above, I guessed we don't know them ... that was my understanding in
> > Munich.
> 
> The allowed characters are defined in ODF OpenFormula
> 5.11 Named Expressions
> http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/cs01/OpenDocument-v1.2-cs01-part2.html#__RefHeading__1017964_715980110
> with the 'Identifier' EBNF and actually do not depend on localization or
> separators used.
> 
> However, showing a list of characters that are not allowed is way out of
> the possible, as it would encompass hundreds (or thousands?) control
> characters and separators of the Unicode range.

<fun> Oh, we should definitively provide a scrollable list of such
characters. </fun>

> Provide a positive list
> similar to the EBNF definition (but just saying "Allowed are letters,
> digits and underscore and the name must not represent a cell address" or
> some such for simplicity), or/and dynamically display the first invalid
> character encountered.

Okay, that sounds perfect ... even more if we could check the validity
of the name after each entered character. Then a warning message could
be thrown (in my last proposal: the small line above the entry fields).


> > > Invalid entries in the expression line are much
> > > harder to detect. I think these errors can only be detected if we
> > > compile the formula.
> > 
> > How long does that take usually / worst-case? (just curious, I need to
> > learn some new aspects)
> 
> I think this was already mentioned elsewhere, but in case it was not:
> just compiling the expression for syntactical correctness isn't
> problematic, we already do that.

Cool!

> P.S. @all: please don't Cc my *@erack.de accounts on LibO topics
> anymore, use erack at redhat.com instead so I get all LibO related mails
> bundled on one account, thanks.

Already done in my last mail, if I remember correctly. Again, its great
to have you working at Red Hat :-)

Cheers,
Christoph