ADV: Want to have math in a FrameMaker table?

[lsmalley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Lester C. Smalley)]

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Framers -

as long as I'm out on a limb, I may as well hand you all the running
chain saw . . .

INFOCON is in the process of developing a client plug-in utility
that will provide _limited_ math capabilities within tables.  This
will not be a spreadsheet tools, but rather offer simple addition
and multiplication operations within a table. 

QUESTION:

We're curious as to whether this would be of interest to other FM
users.  And, generally, need to get more feedback about the nature
of 'math' that people would wish to see available.  

SIMPLE OVERVIEW:

The user will select cells in a row or column, and then choose
ADD or MULTIPLY from a custom menu; the result is stored on the
clipboard so the user may paste it where they wish - into the
table or anywhere else in the document for that matter.

Leading/trailing spaces/tabs will be ignored, embedded spaces/tabs
will be errors.

Empty cells will be treated as the identity operator, that is, as 
0 for addition and 1 for multiplication.

Multiple paragraphs in a cell are errors, non-numeric characters
except leading plus [+] or minus [-], comma [,], period [.] and
single character currency indicators (DollarSymbol, PoundSymbol,
YenSymbol) are errors, i.e., if you want fractions, you'll have
to convert to decimal equivalents (manually) first!

A special case: a letter e (or E) indicating scientific notation
will be allowed so long as the other restrictions on characters
are followed, e.g., 1.7685e-3 is acceptable, but 283 e 10 is not.
Exponent values will be limited (to something like +/- 200) to
help ensure that overflow does not occur.

A big question is what to do with straddled cells -- is it an
immediate error, should it be interpretted as if it were a single
simple cell in each of the selected rows/columns, should any value
be used once for each underlying (straddled) cell?

Please send any feedback directly to me at lsmalley@infocon.com and
not to the general list.

	<< END BLATANT ADVERTISEMENT >>

Thank you in advance,    (please, Sir, may I have some more ;-)

- Lester
----------------------------------------------------------------------
 Lester C. Smalley                    | email:  lsmalley@infocon.com
 Information Consultants, Inc.        | Phone:  (302) 239-2942 ext-13
 Hockessin, DE 19707-0310             | FAX:    (302) 239-1712
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