There are a few things that a spreadsheet can get wrong. You can be hard to use. You can be ugly. You can be slow. You can even crash occasionally. These are all annoyances. With a monopoly, annoyances are a way of life. However, there is one place … [Continue reading] about Fractured YEARFRAC and Discounted DISC
Spreadsheet file format performance
I've been doing some performance timings of file format support, comparing MS Office and OpenOffice. Most of the results are as expected, but some are surprising, and one in particular is quite disappointing.But first, a little details of my setup. … [Continue reading] about Spreadsheet file format performance
Berry Good, Berry Bad
It has been an interesting Spring here in Westford, weather-wise. April dipped below freezing on the 3rd, 8th, 9th, 15th and 16th. Then we got a warm spell, a week of days that reached 75 °F (23 °C) and even one day that reached 87.4 °F (30.8 °C) … [Continue reading] about Berry Good, Berry Bad
Achieving the impossible
Unadulterated copy of James Clark's Relax NG validator jing. Unadulterated copy of Kohsuke Kawaguchi's Sun Multi-Schema Validator msv. Unadulterated copy of the ODF 1.0 Relax NG schema. Unadulterated copy of the ODF 1.0 Standard, in ODF … [Continue reading] about Achieving the impossible
Standards Words
Introduction There are several words, more widely used than understood, that recur frequently when discussing standards. Specification and standardization requires us precisely to describe technology in such a way that practitioners in that field … [Continue reading] about Standards Words