Requirement

[Rick Jelliffe <rjelliffe@allette.com.au>]

+NAME
Rick Jelliffe

+CONTACT
rjelliffe@allette.com.au

+CATEGORY  
general

+SCOPE  
general

+USE CASE
 
Product evaluators need guidance as to which features of ODF implementations are relevant to their requirements.

Implementers need guidance about how to prioritize feature support.

Users need guidance about the completeness of support of features in ODF applications.

+DESCRIPTION
Every element and attribute in ODF 1.2 should be labelled with one of the following labels (or their equivalents):

 * Fundamental
 * Rich
 * Full

Thus every element and attribute are allocated to being part of the Fundamental Feature Set, the Rich Feature Set and the Full Feature Set.

Membership of each set should be determined by simple objective criteria: here are those for text:

  * If an element or attribute contains information which the plainest rendition of the document would use, it is Fundamental. For text documents, this is equivalent to plain text with simple bitmap images.

  * If an element or attribute contains information which it is possible the author could  refer to in the document or which could convey semantic information by the author, then it is Rich. For example, an author might write "I added the bold emphasis" so an element that added bolding would be rich.

  * Any other information is Full. For example, headers and footers and complex typesetting. 

Product evaluators for procurement might say, for example, "The product must support all Fundamental features, should support all Rich features, and may support any Full features." I.e that a product that does not support all Fundamental features is not satisfactory, however a product that does not support any or all Full features will not necessarily be penalized, but that complete support of Rich features will be a competitive criterion to judge between applications.

Implementers might prioritize features to make sure that their development effort supports Fundamental features ahead of Full features. 

Users might look at a product and say "Oh Product X calls itself an ODF application yet it doesn't support Full ODF only the Rich Feature Set."