Re: [office] Open Office XML Format TC Meeting Minutes 15-Dec-03

[Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>]

At 12:05 2003 12 23 +0100, Michael Brauer wrote:
>MINUTES OF THE OASIS OPEN OFFICE XML FORMAT TC MEETING
>DECEMBER, THE 22ND, 2003, 3PM GMT ­ 4:00PM GMT


>Discussion of Packages
>----------------------
>The TC continued the discussion about the URI schema for packages. It clarified that references from files inside a package to files inside the same package as well as to files outside the package are a requirement, but that references from files outside a package to a file inside a package are not an requirement. The TC further clarified that office application might use packages without unzipping them as a whole, while external applications might unzip them completely before processing them. This means that both use cases have to be covered by the URL schema used inside packages and should require no or little adjustment of URLs only.
>
>The TC agreed to use relative URL references as described in proposal 1 of http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200312/msg00029.html, with the exception of the algorithm to resolve relative paths that is contained in this proposal. Instead of this, relative-paths references (as described in chapter 5 of RFC 2396) have to be resolved exactly as they would be resolved if the whole package gets unzipped into a directory at its current location. The base URI for resolving relative-path references is the one that has to be used to retrieve the (unzipped) file that contains the relative-path reference. 

I'm not sure that wording is accurate.  I can't tell whether "one used to 
retrieve the (unzipped) file" means the URI of the package or the location
of the (logical) file within the package.  

Per RFC 2396, the base URI is the location (or "logical location" within
the package) of the file (or "logical file" within the package) in which
the relative URI reference exists.  So for resolving relative URIs within
a "file" within a subdirectory within a package, the base URI is the
location of that "file", not the URI of the package.

I think we all understood this on the phone call, but we have to be careful
about how we word this to ensure there is no confusion for other readers.

>All other kinds of URI references, namely the ones that start with a protocol (like http:), an authority (i.e //) or an absolute-path (i.e. /) do not need any special processing. This especially means that absolute-paths do not reference files inside the package, but within the hierarchy the package is contained in, for instance the file system. URI references inside a package may leave the package, but once they have left the package, they never can return into the package or another one.

Agreed.

paul