Bug 154234

The difference is from the 28th item. For "A, B, C" you get AB AC AD etc. while for "A.., AA.., AAA..." you get BB CC DD etc.

That also confused me in https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=152985#c9

Let's make this a documentation issue, which should clarify the difference in:

https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/shared/01/06050500.html

Thanks!

Updating also needed for:

https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/01/06060100.html
https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/01/06080100.html
https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/01/06080200.html

But how to describe?

Perhaps "A,B,C" must also be modified?

For example

--------
A,B,C,...  Alphabetical numbering with uppercase letters A-Z. After item 26, numbering continues AA, AB, AC...

A,AA,AAA,...  Alphabetical numbering with uppercase letters A-Z. After item 26, numbering continues AA, BB, CC...
----------------

This solution/proposal simply shows the difference between the two numbering schemes, but does not give an explicit general principle, like: A,B,C "numbering in modulo 26".  But I could not find short, comprehensible verbal explanations for the two schemes, hence the indexical solution. 

Can anyone help here?

The reason for specifying letters A-Z is that some alphabets have other letters, but they do not seem to be used (e.g., the numbering scheme does not include æ, å, ø from the Danish alphabet, when using Danish UI and locale).

Unless there are objections or a better proposal, I am inclined to use the text shown between the dashed lines.

Created attachment 186033 [details]
screenshot of proposed updating

The attached shows how the help page [1] would appear, after the proposed changes.

For an alternative approach, see [2]. (I can understand the description there now, thanks to Maxim's essential clarifying comment).

The plan is to find one formulation, and embed it into the other pages, so that only one translation is required, and consistency can be maintained across the pages.


[1] https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/shared/01/06050500.html
[2] https://help.libreoffice.org/latest/en-US/text/swriter/01/06060100.html

"Single-Character Accumulation" vs. "Full-String Growth" or "Alphanumeric Steps" vs. "String Extensions".

Internally it is SVX_NUM_CHARS_UPPER_LETTER vs. SVX_NUM_CHARS_UPPER_LETTER_N

Skimming through the web it seems MSO has no ..Z,AA,AB... scheme and does always ..Z,AA,BB... We could name it therefore "Text Document-Style" vs. "Spreadsheet-Style".

The reason is to either keep it short or to make it easier to distinguish, could be useful for the documentation too.

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #5)

Thanks for interesting investigations.  Sympathetic with "keep it short", but unsure what change/addition you are proposing.

fwiw, from a documentation pov, there is no real need for labels, because I do not think other help pages refer to these numbering schemes.

(In reply to sdc.blanco from comment #6)
> ...unsure what change/addition you are proposing.

To resolve as NAB ;-)

(In reply to Heiko Tietze from comment #7)
At the very least, there should be a consistent description across the different help pages, and clear documentation of the difference between the two numbering schemes. Here is a proposal, that corresponds to attachment 186033 [details]. 

https://gerrit.libreoffice.org/c/help/+/149028

Seth Chaiklin committed a patch related to this issue.
It has been pushed to "master":

https://git.libreoffice.org/help/commit/9c5ba9aeebcfb261ea59f2a43e489884c04a2e88

tdf#154234 clarify meaning of A,B,C (a,b,c) and A,AA,AAA (a,aa,aaa)