Re: [odf-adoption] OpenDocument compliance/conformance

[Daniel Carrera <daniel.carrera@zmsl.com>]

Erwin Tenhumberg wrote:
> Since I volunteered to take a first stab
> at the definition of the various levels and aspects of conformance
> I want to provide my first ideas as a starting point for discussions.

Conformance will have to be done in conjunction with the technical TC 
because there is both a technical and a marketing aspect to it.

> Levels of Conformance
> =====================
> * Files look the same in different applications
> * Files behave in the same way in different applications
> * The pure data/content is displayed without loss
[snip]

This is the technical side of conformance. I fear that this suggestion 
has technical problems. For example, AbiWord is a word processor, so it 
will never open an OpenDocument spreadsheet. Does that mean that it'll 
never be conformant?

On a more general note: The OpenDocument spec covers a lot of 
functionality, and no application supports all of it. I can give you 
examples where OpenOffice.org doesn't support an OpenDocument feature.

A more practical approach would be to say that the features that the 
document does support are supported correctly. We can also divide 
conformance into categories like:

* Word Processing: Bronze, Silver, Gold
* Spread Sheet: Bronze, Silver, Gold
etc.

So, for example, AbiWord could be "WordProcessing Gold" and Gnumeric can 
be "Spreadsheet Silver".

Also keep in mind that there are two types of conformance: The 
conformance of the *application* vs a file. The most natural way to 
define this is:
* A file is "level x conformant" if it uses no features outside level x.
* An application is "level x conformant" if it supports at least all the 
features in level x.

Hence, a "level x" conformant app can open level x files.

But you see how this starts to get complicated. We'll need to think a 
lot to come up with a good definition, and we'll need to involve as many 
of the technical people as we can manage.


> Conformance "Program" Requirements
> ==================================
> * Conformance Description/Specification
> * Recommendation for things that cannot be fully specified
> * Test Suite
> * Certifying Organization
> * Logo(s)

Btw, we can start working on a logo before having the definition of 
conformance worked out. These are things we can do in parallel.

Best,
Daniel.
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