[Libreoffice] Newbie question: i18n numeric formats

[Eike Rathke]

Hi Olivier,

On Tuesday, 2011-11-22 16:23:50 -0200, Olivier Hallot wrote:

> I found that the number of pre-defined numeric formats could be
> improved to handle telephone number, postal codes, social security
> numbers, and other locale numeric formats.
> 
> My question is: is it OK that I patch the xml file with these new fomats?

hmm.. well, yes, but.. ;-) it depends on what you want to achieve.

For one, numeric input is limited to 15 digits, more digits are
converted to scientific format and lose precision.

Second, for example, a format code of 00-000-000 will display the number
12345678 as 12-345-678, so if the user sees such values in a column and
wants to add a value or replace an existing one he might key in
12-345-678 that would result in a string instead of a number,
effectively leading to a mix of numbers and strings. Number format codes
are not input masks.

Third, the actual cell content does not preserve leading zeros while the
format may leave the impression it would. If that number was used as
a key to lookup items that had this key stored as strings with leading
zeros there would be no match.

I might have forgotten something.

Anyway, you'd probably want to decide on a case by case basis, YMMV.

  Eike

-- 
LibreOffice Calc developer. Number formatter stricken i18n transpositionizer.
GnuPG key 0x293C05FD : 997A 4C60 CE41 0149 0DB3  9E96 2F1A D073 293C 05FD
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