[Libreoffice-ux-advise] [Bug 141292] Calc should display hint "internal calculation is done without rounding".

[bugzilla-daemon at bugs.documentfoundation.org]

https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=141292

--- Comment #29 from Mike Kaganski <mikekaganski at hotmail.com> ---
(In reply to steffan.steffner from comment #27 and comment #28)

Your issue is clearly understood, don't worry.

But note that using "precision as shown" is generally *not* a correct option.
You assume that it would be what your accountants would expect, but this is not
necessarily the case: the specific legislation may (and actually does) regulate
what to do when imprecise numbers appear in calculations; some may ask usual
rounding; some may require rounding to even; some may require truncation. It
*actually* happens in practice; and misusing the dangerous and simplistic
"precision as shown" as substitute for knowingly following rules that are set
at your place at this time is a bad option. I would agree that hiding that
option better, and not advertising it in help, or at least adding disclaimers,
would be good.

The proper way when filling "invoices" is not relying on implicit
general-purpose software rounding rules, but to explicitly define proper
rounding in proper places (=ROUND(A1/B2;2)), or use pre-made templates from
your accountants, with such thigs prepared. And no, trying to implement what
you suggest to make this "special case but not a rare case" is just misguided.

(In reply to steffan.steffner from comment #24)
> And I would agree with comment #23 that
> in order to achieve this (=only show if it makes a difference) there is a
> performance penalty in that you have to do the calculation twice, one time
> with the normal precision (which is about 15 digits) and a second time with
> the decimal accuracy as shown. My best bet would be that this could take
> like 50 milliseconds on an average computer. 

I laughed when read that. You obviously do not realize what tasks spreadsheets
are used for. It's common to have hundreds of thousands of formulas in a
document. Some recalculations may take minutes. What you suggest is "dear heavy
Calc users, please rest more, waiting while your spreadsheet is recalculating".

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are on the CC list for the bug.