Make numberFormat even better AND Cognitive Load

[Richard Gaskin]

Roland Huettmann wrote:

 >  AGAIN -- having read all - I vote for the LC-NATIVE "Excel style"
 > number format (enhanced numberFormat in LC, not a new one, no
 > depreciation, but just different ways to achieve the same) and the
 > ability of fields (text controls) to express at least the same
 > styling properties that fields (cells) in Excel support, or text
 > boxes in the web browser without having to write my own functions.
 > I would like to have it "built-in". It is a wish. LiveCode should
 > grow so that the team developing it will consist of 100 core
 > developers. It is a wish. Maybe someone else can help developing.
 > We can fund it. Whatever. It is a wish. And I do not want to stop
 > wishing just because there is "no time left" for the core developer
 > team to care for such minor (???) details. They need more support and
 > more funding in such case.

I like that.  A lot.

There are many ways to support a project.  Cash is great (they do have a 
donation button), but so is code.

When we think about code contributions, they already have a team far 
larger than 100s.  It's in the thousands.  It's us.

One of the hardest aspects of this problem is the design.  The Excel 
spec is a guide, but not an implementation.  Making that work robustly, 
flexibly, and sensibly within LiveCode is a considerable design project.

And it's a design project that we can do.

We can start today.

Design doesn't require expertise in C++.  The best qualification for 
designing a solution is a clear understanding of the need.

We want this.  Can have have this.

Having begins with designing, and we can design in script.

And once the implementation's design is well honed, we may find we just 
saved the engine team a boatload of design work.

And along the way we have a functional scripted solution we get to use now.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com