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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: KSpread functions
From:       Ariya Hidayat <ariya () kde ! org>
Date:       2003-10-09 7:17:17
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> 1. About Excel compatibility...In order to be compatible with Excel the 
> functions should be the same, same name, same parameter list. Right? Or 
> is there another route already followed by the filter? 
Yes, that's the rule, plus that they must behave the same and (to 
certain extent) produce the same result. Not suprisingly, the Excel 
filter only provides the name of the functions. The rest is done in the 
KSpread main code. Since back then, I have introduced many fixes (which 
I couldn't remember to details) to improve Excel compatibility. A set of 
Excel documents from Gnumeric team proved to be very helpful.

> 2. Excel provides translation of the functions in the different 
> languages that are supported, but I don't know if internally they are 
> tokenized. I'll test that in the coming days. Do we, should we provide 
> translations of the function names?
At the moment, KSpread doesn't have this feature. As I rewrite the 
KSpread formula engine at the moment, having translated function name 
will be one of the new advantage.
I still think that internally (inside the document file), KSpread should 
save untranslated names. But I still have to check OO.o Calc file format 
for this (as we want to switch someday).

> 3. What about copyrights on mathematical numerical methods. Does anyone 
> have experienxe with this. I have some expertise in the financial area 
> myself, and I would like to develop some advanced financial functions. I 
> found a library (written, no code) of financial functions on the web ( 
> http://finance.bi.no/~bernt/gcc_prog/ ) that would be very useful. In 
> this case they are explicitely under GNU licence, so usable, right. But 
> what about the scores of published methods? Does the book copyright 
> prevails, or does the character of the thing change as soon as I 
> transform it into an algoritm?
KSpread is LGPL, so it will be preferable if the code is also LGPL. If 
there's no code yet, then please code the algorithm as LGPL. And if you 
want to implement functions, please spent some time to take a look first 
at Excel, Gnumeric, and/or OpenOffice.org Calc so that we can stay as 
compatible as possible.
As for copyright issue, I'm not a lawyer so I can't help.

> 4. As I am new, I suppose that I have to submit possible patches or code 
> to some of you more experienced guys...but don't expect things very 
> soon. First I have still a lot of studying to do, and I am very busy 
> professionaly as well...but I'd like to get involved very much.
Just take your time. If there's still things which confuse you, just 
throw mails in this mailing-list.
And, anyway, patches are always warmly welcomed :-)


Best regards,

Ariya Hidayat
http://ariya.pandu.org

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