Measurements

                     http://mattmccutchen.net/measurements/

       Written and maintained by Matt McCutchen <matt@mattmccutchen.net>

This OpenOffice.org Calc add-in provides a basic set of spreadsheet functions
for manipulating scientific measurements, tracking units of measure and
significant figures.

This is version 1.3.

To use
------
- You might like to look at the included demo spreadsheet,
  measurements-demo.ods .

- Input a measurement as a string consisting of a floating-point numerical
  value (scientific notation preferred), a space, and a unit expression.  The
  unit expression consists of one or more unit symbols, each optionally	raised
  to an integer power with ^, and separated by *, space (implied multiply), or
  / (inverts the rest of the expression).  Example: 1.20E3 kg*m^2/s^2 .
  Only a few units are supported so far; see the list in
  src/net/mattmccutchen/measurements/Unit.java .

- The number of significant figures is inferred from your entry.  You can
  indicate that a number is exact by following it with a lowercase x.

- A measurement that does not contain a space is interpreted as an exact pure
  number (because the spreadsheet forgets the number of sig figs entered by the
  user anyway).  To enter an inexact pure number, enter a formula containing a
  literal string with a trailing space: ="1.497 " .

- Use the M* functions (MADD, MSUB, MMUL, MDIV, MNEG, MPOWINT, MROOTINT, MPOW,
  MEXP, MLN) to do arithmetic on measurements.  A computed result shows up as a
  scientific-notation value to the correct number of significant figures and
  units (for your benefit) followed by a code containing the add-in's
  representation of the result (including precision beyond the significant
  figures).  Example: If mass is in A1 and volume is in A2, put this in A3 to
  compute the density: =MDIV(A1;A2) .

- The difference between MPOWINT and MPOW is that MPOW lets you	use a
  pure-number measurement for the exponent but requires the base to be a pure
  number, while MPOWINT lets you use a base with units but requires the exponent
  to be an integer.

- To have a computed result shown in units other than the default, pass it and
  the desired unit expression to MSTRAS.  Example: =MSTRAS("1 m^3";"L") .  This
  affects only the user-friendly form, not the code.

- If you're picky and want to show the user-friendly form of a result without
  the code, use MCLEANSTR.  There is also MCLEANSTRAS.

- If you see ERROR, something went wrong, but you have to guess what.  :)  A
  future version might have better diagnostics.

If you find bugs (which are almost certain to exist), please report them to me!

To build
--------
I build the add-in against the OpenOffice.org 3 SDK included with Fedora using
the Eclipse Java builder for the Java code and a makefile for the other steps.
This sequence builds the installable add-in (measurements.oxt):

$ . ./shell-setup
$ make bin-types
Refresh and build the project in Eclipse
$ make

I'm not really confident in what I'm doing here, so your mileage may vary,
especially with other packagings of the SDK.

Legal
-----
Measurements consists of:

- Robert Harder's Base 64 encoder/decoder ( http://iharder.net/base64 ), which
  he has placed in the public domain

- Code by me, Matt McCutchen, which I hereby place in the public domain

Measurements comes with absolutely no warranty.

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