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# Number formatting overview

The number formatting engine in Gnumeric is very powerful: it can be used to display numbers in various formats as well as providing the user with the ability to specify colors based on various simple conditions.

Example 5-1 The available catagories of pre-defined formats are :

Example 5-1. Number Format Categories

      General		A swiss army knife of a format.  It will attempt
                            to display a value it the 'best' way possible.
    			The choice of format depends on the size of the cell
    			and gnumeric's estimate of what 'type' of value is
    			being displayed (number, date, time ...).

      Number		Displays numbers with 0-30 digits after the decimal
    			place.  Negatives can be displayed normally, within
    			parenthises, or turning Red.  Optionally a delimiter
    			can be added every third order of magnitude (thousand,
    			million, ...).  Both the decimal point and the
    			thousands seperator have internationalization support.

      Currency		Is very similar to Number, with the addition of a
    			currency symbol.  Currently known symbols include '$'
    			and the three letter abreviations of a ll major
    			currencies.

      Accounting		A specialization of Currency which pays more attention
    			to the alignment of negative numbers.  It ensures that
    			A small amount of space is prepended to positive
    			numbers so that that align with negatives.
    			ie
    			    ' 600.123 ' : Note the spaces for the positive number
    			    '-500.456 ' : in 1 format for negatives.
    			    '(500.456)' : in another.

      Date			The various permutations and combinations of
    			predefined date representations big to expose the
    			underlying format specification language
    			Example 5-3
    			The short version is that years can be 2 or 4 digit
    			(yy or yyyy).  Months can be as many digits as needed
    			(m), always 2 digits (mm), or as the short form (mmm).
    			Days can be as many digits as needed (d) or two digits
    			(dd).  The various other characters offer a choice of
    			seperators.

      Time			As with dates predefined time formats are selected
    			using their specification.  Hours (h), minutes (mm),
    			seconds (ss).  Sometimes it is necessary to display
    			more than 24 hours, or more that 60 minutes/seconds
    			without the values incrementing the display unit of
    			the next larger measure (ie 25 hours instead of 1day +
    			1hour).  For that instance you can use '[h]', '[m]' or
    			'[s]'.

      Percentage		Multiplies a value by 100 and appends a percent.
    			Can be used with 0-30 digits after the decimal place.

      Scientific		Formats the value using scientific notation
    			and 0-30 digits after the decimal place.  No provision
    			for controling the exponent are provided at this time.

      Text			Treats numeric values as text.  This will show a
    			number with as much precision as available and will
    			lose knowledge of whether it represented a date, or
    			time.

      Custom		This provides a list of the format specifications for
    			all predefined formats and allows a user to enter
    			create new specialized types.

Example 5-2 is an example of some of the many variations of formatting one can apply to a number with the preset formats.

Example 5-2. Some examples of number formatting

          For the number 600.123

          Numbers
             General:                                           '600.123'
                 0.0:                                           '600.1'
          Accounting
              _($*#,##0_);_($*(#,##0);_($*"-"_);_(@_)           ' $600 '
              _($*#,##0.00_);_($*(#,##0.00);_($*"-"??_);_(@_)   ' $600.12 '
          Scientific
               0.000E+00                                        '600.123'

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