Microsoft XML

[Ken Ray]

On Tue, 28 Aug 2007 10:43:06 -0500, Peter T. Evensen wrote:

> I should have said something on digg.com about #2.  I don't really 
> consider #2 a problem.  It has to do with converting decimal to 
> binary.  Excel stores numbers as numbers, not as text, and there is 
> no way to store 12345.12345 in binary as exactly that.

I guess the point is that this is in the *XML*, so everything is text. 
Excel is already doing a conversion from the internally stored numbers 
to a text representation that is displayed in the spreadsheet, so the 
complaint is that if the point of the XML format was to allow other, 
non-Windows, non-Microsoft apps to work with it, it should represent 
what's displayed in the spreadsheet exactly in the XML. On the other 
hand, if the intention of the XML format was to *appear* to be able to 
"play with others", but in actuality was intended on only being used by 
Excel itself or other Microsoft products (or only other Windows apps), 
then leaving it in the form that Excel internally stores data and 
making it accessible only through a Windows-only API would make sense.

;-)


Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software, Inc.
Email: kray at sonsothunder.com
Web Site: http://www.sonsothunder.com/