Re: Parsing of numeric values

 
>>> Daniel Dekany wrote:
>>>> 
>>>> Tuesday, September 15, 2009, 3:46:17 PM, wkbutler wrote:
>>>> I don't know... it's not enough concrete for me to form an opinion.
>>>> The part that is a bit suspicious for me, that if the numerical output
>>>> generated by the 1st order macros meant to be treated as numbers by
>>>> the 2nd order macros, then why are they in human-audience format? I
>>>> mean, FM can output in computer-audience numerical format as well.
>>>> 
>>>
>>> Good question - consider the case of subtotals and grand totals. Grand
>>> totals operate on subtotals, subtotals operate on 'raw' data. Both are
>>> products for the user.  You allude to another possible solution though,
>>> which is to store both formats; I would rather avoid that, but it may be
>>> the
>>> easiest approach.
>> 
>> In principle you don't generate the grand totals from the formatted
>> output of the subtotals. You just generate them from the
>> presentation-independent data that represents the subtotals.
>> Extracting data from formatted output is quite difficult in general
>> (since that output is optimized for human brains, not for computer
>> programs), and thus avoided whenever possible.
>> 
>> Of course, building presentation-independent data structures is not
>> something FM is often used for, since it generates text, not Java
>> objects and like. But, there are some exceptions, when FM generates
>> XML or JSON, which are not about presentation but describing
>> structured "data", and still are text.
>> 
>
>Yep I'd agree completely, ordinarily. But the way this system is designed,
>the raw data is actually unknown to the system. The user is in control of
>the raw data content and all macros. Hence only the user knows which data
>points are numeric (string representation of numerics of course), and how he
>wants to use the data.  
>
>I guess that means the user should be responsible for setting up two
>versions of each numeric macro. I may fall back to that solution, it
>probably is the safest for the reasons you mention. But for maintenance
>concerns on near-duplicate macros, I press on...

In fact since you are using macros for data processing all your macros should produce computer-audience numbers. Only when a number reaches the view it should be formatted for human audience.

-- Denis.

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