OpenDocument 1.2v7-02: Table of Contents

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

In Document OpenDocument-v1.2-v7-02.odt

Table of Content and Section-Name Approach (as implemented so far).

1. I hate to mention this but the use of the opening tags as the titles of
sections about the elements having those tags is, well, um, a child that
only its mother could love?

2. It is embarrassing to mention because I fancy using the tag as the name
of the element in many contexts myself.  But I think the tipoff is that I
always end up saying "the <foo> element ..." whenever I am talking about the
element and not a form of its tag.

3. I also think this engraves the prefixes of the QNames too much into the
minds and hearts of the readers.

4. And then there's the business of changes to the namespaces and the desire
to rationalize the spellings and punctuation of XML element names and XML
attribute names.

5. Finally, this is awful when the specification is translated to another
language.  It would be great if the TOC could be translated too, and use of
these names won't really permit that. 

My sense is that this change in labeling was to provide greater consistency
and value in locating things, as part of anticipation of going to JTC1 with
1.2.  I don't know what to say.

REQUEST:

A. Please give some consideration to coming up with natural-language
headings that have a systematic relationship to the elements the section
addresses, when that is the case.  (This could even be more systematic than
those element and attribute names that have been identified as falling
outside of the preferred system and might be tidied-up some day.  

B. I don't have any good recommendation about the QName prefix that is
nicely shown in the draft TOC.  Maybe prose instead.  It is nice to have a
cue about the namespace involved.
 
 - Dennis

Dennis E. Hamilton
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