Re: [PATCH] lisp/org-table.el: Allow named columns on lhs

[Max Nikulin]

On 22/07/2023 14:25, Ihor Radchenko wrote:
> Max Nikulin writes:
>
> > Perhaps git blame for the manual may give some hints. If the change is
> > really old then org.texi (removed at certain moment) should be inspected
> > as well.
>
> This has been added very, very long time ago. org-table has undergone
> through major transformations since that time.
>
> I cannot find anything blocking the proposed change.

I have not found anything valuable as well. So the only conflict is 
named cell vs. named column.

The comment in the code was added in
d85ddfba0 2015-11-26 22:41:14 +0100 Nicolas Goaziou: org-table: Fix 
c651e150cc8fb230fca99dfff27caedfddced8ff

in response to
https://list.orgmode.org/20151126195059.GC13848@scotty.home/T/#u

that was a fix for
c651e150c 2015-11-12 23:12:18 +0100 Nicolas Goaziou: org-table: Fix 
`org-table-get-range' with column formulas

https://list.orgmode.org/CAKzohg+2eU474+rcAzKwjYk2Vcj1p-9zvbYkMqwDhta8WAa02Q@mail.gmail.com/T/#u

I am not familiar with table code enough to track earlier changes.

There are were experiments with last row references as $LR12

dadc9a1af 2008-12-19 18:28:58 +0100 Carsten Dominik: Tables:  Implement 
last-row references.

later replaced by @>

https://list.orgmode.org/A8BC38BE-FAD6-4834-ACD9-8C0D372B4B08@gmail.com/T/#u
Carsten Dominik. Re: Table rows and ranges as LHS of formulas. Wed, 2 
Mar 2011 23:57:32 +0100

3dd474575 2011-03-08 14:49:53 +0100 Carsten Dominik: Tables:  Make @< 
and $< point to row/column 1 in a stable way

Note to the manual was added by
6761dcbbd 2009-02-12 07:12:38 +0100 Carsten Dominik: Minor fixes

The following commit

8237c9ae6 2011-03-01 09:05:56 +0100 Carsten Dominik: Implement table 
formulas that apply to field ranges, fix minor issues

added support of @L last row reference, $LR12 is mentioned as backward 
compatible way to specify a last row column.

So names after $ were used in the past, but only named fields are 
currently supported, so it is not serious reason to disallow column names.