RE: [office-comment] ODF still fails to specify scripting properly (ODF 1.2 CD01)

["Alex Brown" <alexb@griffinbrown.co.uk>]

Rob hi

> I'm making a distinction between perfecting the ODF 1.2 draft versus
an
> expansion of scope.  The issue is not that we define a scripting
> interface
> poorly.  The issue is that we don't define one at all.  The easy part
> is
> specifying a language to use, say EcmaScript, and how it is
> stored/declared in the file.  The hard part is that you would also
need
> to
> specify the runtime API that the script has available to it, the
> setCellFormat("Currency", 2) and similar functions.  That is a large
> expansion in scope and is something that we have no available external
> standards to tap into nor any member contributions.

You *do* have an external standard to tap into: Javascript (ECMAscript).
Also, isn't there existing implementation of scripting in things like
http://framework.openoffice.org/ which could help you?

In your blog piece which I initially referred to, you wrote "[...]
scripting capabilities are essential for the creation of high-value
scripted documents. These features are essential in modern applications.
[...] This lack will cause serious interoperability concerns, as each
vendor, lacking standards guidance, will implement these features in
incompatible ways."

So, I agree with (the former) you. We must conclude that ODF as now
drafted lacks an *essential* feature. That is a defect. A serious one. I
want ODF to be full-featured, not lacking the ability to create the kind
of interoperable "high-value scripted documents" you rightly talked of.

Tell me, are these features any less "essential" now, than when you
wrote that blog entry? Are your "serious interoperability concerns" now
so easily trumped by the need to get an ODF draft out?

I don't think the argument about "member contributions" cuts it _at
all_. If the ODF TC isn't sufficiently resourced (which, I suspect, may
be the case) to produce a standard which covers the "essential" bases in
the timeframe that has been self-imposed, then that doesn't grant it
some kind of special dispensation to have a defective, half-baked spec.
approved as a standard: probably not in OASIS, and almost certainly not
in JTC 1. 

> I guess we could just take the DSDSL approach and say this will be in
> ODF Part 9, eh?

As you know, I do not like PAS or Fast Track submission, so if you were
to put ODF into a JTC 1 sub-committee and multi-part it so that
different parts could progress at different speeds and be standardised
when they were good-to-go (rather than to the beat of some off-stage
corporate drum), then I would *love* that, yes.

- Alex.