Re: [office-collab] Counting issues, etc

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Andreas,

First, thanks for the example which may do more to clarify this issue 
than anything I have posted to date!

Second, a comment below about relevance to the format:

(you may want to jump all the way to the end where I may get it right. I 
have preserved the first part just in case I didn't.)

On 09/29/2012 07:56 PM, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:
> On Sat, 2012-09-29 at 13:18 -0600, Patrick Durusau wrote:
>
> > Following closely onto those two, however, is the common experience of
> > turning change tracking on and also turning it off.
<snip>
> > Is that a fair statement?
> I really don't understand how the fact that users can turn change
> tracking off or on some applications is related the the ODF file format.
> I would think that the file format should store the current file and any
> change tracking information that has been collected.

Well, the capacity to turn change tracking on or off can have an impact 
on design of the CT format for ODF.

For example, say that change tracking is stored in the content.xml file 
by the simple expedient of surrounding or creating well-formed XML 
segments.

That is to have:

<text:p>A paragraph</text:p>
<del><text:p>Deleted paragraph</text:p></del>
<text:p>Another paragraph</text:p>

To represent where the "second" paragraph in this view has been marked 
as deleted.

(Leaving aside all the downsides of such a method, it is for 
illustration purposes only.)

The add/del of any track changes appears directly in the markup stream 
so turning it on or off, leaves the application able to apply every 
change before change tracking is turned off and to apply every change 
after change tracking is turned back on.

Yes?

Now, assume that staying with an all <text:p> example (apologies to 
Dennis but Knuth says it is easier to start with simple examples and 
work your way up), we have:

<text:p>A paragraph</text:p>
<text:p>Paragraph that will be deleted - no change tracking</text:p>
<text:p>Another paragraph</text:p>
<text:p>Paragraph to be inserted - with change tracking</text:p>
<text:p>Yet another paragraph</text:p>

Let's assume we are counting <text:p> as components and with change 
tracking on, we want to insert a paragraph following the third 
paragraph. So we count down to the third paragraph and insert:

<text:p>Paragraph to be inserted - with change tracking on</text:p>

How do we record the insertion point in the ODF format for that change? 
Do we say, insert after the 3rd paragraph?

The reason that *may be* (not sure yet) problematic is that later in 
editing the file, with change tracking off, we delete:

<text:p>Paragraph that will be deleted - no change tracking</text:p>

So that:

<text:p #1>A paragraph</text:p>
<text:p #2>Paragraph that will be deleted - no change tracking</text:p>
<text:p #3>Another paragraph</text:p>
<text:p #4>Paragraph to be inserted - with change tracking</text:p>
<text:p #5>Yet another paragraph</text:p>

becomes

<text:p #1>A paragraph</text:p>
<text:p #2>Another paragraph</text:p>
<text:p #3>Paragraph to be inserted - with change tracking</text:p>
<text:p #4>Yet another paragraph</text:p>

Where is the numbering that I can tie the change tracking to? Hasn't it 
changed?

That is the "format" impact of turning change tracking on/off is on the 
"matching" mechanism we use to align changes to the text.

> Whether there may have been some changes made for which change tracking
> info is not available is really not important. Of course one would
> expect that the change tracking information stored is in fact compatible
> with the current file content.

This may be what you are capturing with your "...in fact compatible with 
the current file format."

It could be that I am viewing the serialization as "fixed" at the wrong 
point in time.

That is when the content, along with changes, is serialized to the ODF 
format, that all changes, dels/adds, etc. are written to their *current* 
locations, not the locations when changes were made.

Is that what you meant?







> Andreas

--
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Former Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)

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