In tdf#123388, tdf#123354, tdf#123390, tdf#123356, new functions were added to formulas in Writer: PRODUCT, ABS, SIGN, COUNT. They all are written into ODF using usual syntax, e.g. in text:formula attribute of text:expression element, or in table:formula attribute of table:table-cell element. These attributes are defined as "The attribute value should begin with a namespace prefix followed by ":" (U+003A, COLON), followed by the text of the formula. The namespace bound to the prefix determines the syntax and semantics of the formula". The namespace used in current master for these formulas is xmlns:ooow="http://openoffice.org/2004/writer". It looks like we expect any application that supports the old OpenOffice formulas to support these new added functions. Should we introduce a special namespace for the formulas with new functions? Maybe have the functions standardized in a next version of ODF standard (as a common standardized set of functions and formula syntax)? Otherwise, we risk having multiple incompatible extensions/implementations of the formulas for Writer.
ideally all the formulas in Writer should conform to the OpenFormula part: https://oasis-tcs.github.io/odf-tc/odf1.3/content.odf13-formula.html ... but whether the current implementation does that is anybody's guess ... if we could be confident that the implementation matches the specification, we should use the corresponding namespace from the specification.
@Mike: You are right, the extra functions mean potential back compatibility problem in this form. It seems for me, both Writer and Word use obsolete formula syntax, and the future solution (in the case of Writer and the ODF standard) would be to replace the recent formula engine, adding a formula conversion for old files. But I don't know, whether it's possible to record my interoperability extension with a relatively simple namespace change. But most of the extra functions have a full-compatible preliminary version in the git, so maybe it's possible to re-use those for the ODF export to avoid back-compatibility problems. Thanks for the report.
(In reply to Michael Stahl (CIB) from comment #1) > ideally all the formulas in Writer should conform to the OpenFormula part: > > https://oasis-tcs.github.io/odf-tc/odf1.3/content.odf13-formula.html > > ... but whether the current implementation does that is anybody's guess ... > > if we could be confident that the implementation matches the specification, > we should use the corresponding namespace from the specification. Unfortunately, the new conformant functions (for example, AVERAGE instead of Writer's MEAN) can be combined with the old non-conformant functions.
Dear Mike Kaganski, To make sure we're focusing on the bugs that affect our users today, LibreOffice QA is asking bug reporters and confirmers to retest open, confirmed bugs which have not been touched for over a year. There have been thousands of bug fixes and commits since anyone checked on this bug report. During that time, it's possible that the bug has been fixed, or the details of the problem have changed. We'd really appreciate your help in getting confirmation that the bug is still present. If you have time, please do the following: Test to see if the bug is still present with the latest version of LibreOffice from https://www.libreoffice.org/download/ If the bug is present, please leave a comment that includes the information from Help - About LibreOffice. If the bug is NOT present, please set the bug's Status field to RESOLVED-WORKSFORME and leave a comment that includes the information from Help - About LibreOffice. Please DO NOT Update the version field Reply via email (please reply directly on the bug tracker) Set the bug's Status field to RESOLVED - FIXED (this status has a particular meaning that is not appropriate in this case) If you want to do more to help you can test to see if your issue is a REGRESSION. To do so: 1. Download and install oldest version of LibreOffice (usually 3.3 unless your bug pertains to a feature added after 3.3) from https://downloadarchive.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/old/ 2. Test your bug 3. Leave a comment with your results. 4a. If the bug was present with 3.3 - set version to 'inherited from OOo'; 4b. If the bug was not present in 3.3 - add 'regression' to keyword Feel free to come ask questions or to say hello in our QA chat: https://web.libera.chat/?settings=#libreoffice-qa Thank you for helping us make LibreOffice even better for everyone! Warm Regards, QA Team MassPing-UntouchedBug
fwiw i looked into this a year ago with some help from Eike and filed https://issues.oasis-open.org/browse/OFFICE-4135 "investigation of suitability of OpenFormula for word processors"