Calc: let things such as formulas do the rest of the work

users
#1

In a recent "Macro's in Libre Calc" thread, Andrew Douglas Pitonyak, an expert on macros, wrote:

"Be certain to only do what you really need to do using a macro, and then let things such as formulas do the rest of the work."

Good advice, which I would like to take further. It is frustrating, as a user, not to be able to use formulas to do things that a macro could do. I'd like to propose as a (long-term) design aim:

"Enrich the functionality of Calc to enable formulas and similar to do what currently needs a macro. Use experience gained to influence the OpenFormula specification."

As a simple example, take REPLACE
     REPLACE("Text"; Position; Length; "NewText")
My spreadsheets would be greatly simplified if Text and NewText could be regular expressions. Currently, either I have to use macros, or use SEARCH, which does support regular expressions, and code the NewText regular expression myself. It's frustrating as the code to do what I want is in the Edit -> Find & Replace... dialog. Note that the enhanced REPLACE would be OpenFormula compliant.
Another example is character editing within a cell: I realise that this is more demanding technically.

I seek feedback, advice and, I hope, support. In particular:
1. Are there design aims, or similar, in LibreOffice? If so, who owns them: does the Engineering Steering Committee have a role here?
2. Should we progress the strategic aspects first? Or should I propose tactical enhancements such as the one to REPLACE above?
3. How should I push this forward, whether tactically or strategically?

David Lynch

#2

Hi :slight_smile:
This all sounds like questions worth raising on the "Discussion"
mailing-list. I think their address is;

Discuss@Global.LibreOffice.Org

We can usually signpost people to the exactly right mailing list for each
individual thing but this sort of thing is a bit outside our scope. There
are teams such as Design and Marketing and it's always possible to post
bug-reports/feature-requests against this or any other OpenSource project.
If the problem is with the format then it's worth taking to OASIS as they
are always working on developing the next release of the specification.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: