Re: [office-metadata] Suggested Changes on the Metadata proposal

[Svante Schubert <Svante.Schubert@Sun.COM>]

Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
...
>> 3. The focus of ODF of course are office documents. But there always 
>> was the assumption that also other kind of applications should be 
>> able to use ODF. So, if someone develops a small text editor and 
>> wishes to support ODF to the extend that typical text editors can, 
>> this should be be possible. Our language should not prohibit that. We 
>> should also not forget the various ODF plug-in efforts for MS Office 
>> or similar ODF implementations. They have only limited control of 
>> what happens with certain information during complex load, edit and 
>> save operations within MS Office. I'm not sure if they can preserve 
>> all metadata and all xml:ids under all circumstances in a way that 
>> keeps the metadata consistent and therefore of value.
>
> Well, let's say an application doesn't care about metadata. All they 
> have to do is preserve the files in the package and the xml:ids as is. 
> They need not do any kind of processing.
>
> I don't see how this is any real burden (?).
It is our goal that a wide range of applications comply to the 
OpenDocument file format.
And yes, your request would be indeed another burden for any of these 
applications to accept the OpenDocument format.
Therefore it seems best to keep these rules optional unless the 
application plan to implement the metadata feature.
And when I mentioned ODF applications, I do not meant OpenOffice.org, 
for which it won't be a problem as we desire the feature.

regards,
Svante