Open Office XML Format TC Meeting Minutes 12-Jan-04

[Michael Brauer <michael.brauer@sun.com>]

MINUTES OF THE OASIS OPEN OFFICE XML FORMAT TC MEETING
JANUARY, THE 12TH, 2004, 3PM GMT – 4:00PM GMT

Attendees
---------
Doug Alberg <doug.alberg@boeing.com>, Boeing
Michael Brauer <michael.brauer@sun.com>, Sun Microsystems
Simon Davis <simond@naa.gov.au>, National Archive of Australia
Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@emory.edu>, Society of Biblical Literature
Gary Edwards <garyedwards@yahoo.com>
David Faure <faure@kde.org>
Daniel Vogelheim <daniel.vogelheim@sun.com>, Sun Microsystems


Acceptance of Minutes of the January, the 5th meeting
------------------------------------------------------
- The attending TC members unanimously accepted the minutes.


Action Items
------------
- Daniel Vogelheim: Check quality of schemas created by schema 
transformation tools.
   - done, see below
Michael Brauer: Proposal for MIME type stream
   - done, see
      http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200312/msg00040.html
      http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200401/msg00000.html
Michael Brauer: Clarify MIME types to use for the Open Office format
   - in progress
Michael Brauer: Check whether plain XML file format is mentioned in the 
specification.
   - in progress

TC meetings
-----------
The TC agreed to keep the weekly meeting schedule until the end of TC 
phase 1, but that the TC might decide to shorten the current meeting's 
duration while having the meeting.


Schema Languages
----------------
Daniel reported that the "trang" tool generates a high quality and easy 
to read XSD schema from the Relax-NG schema, where only attributes whose 
value is specified by a regular expression need a small rework. In 
addition to this, a few declaration get less specific in the XSD schema 
than they are in the Relax-NG schema.

Daniel also reported that he could not locate a tool for converting 
Relax-NG schemas into DTD that was successfully created a DTD from  the 
Open Office Relax-NG schema. Daniel will ask on the Relax-NG mailing 
list for a confirmation of research result.

The TC discussed whether delivering a DTD is required. One argument for 
delivering a DTD is that the OpenOffice.org and KOffice applications 
ship with or make use of the OpenOffice.org DTD. However, this might be 
changed to use a Relax-NG or XSD schema.

The TC unanimously agreed to deliver Relax-NG and XSD schemas, and to 
deliver a DTD only if it is technically possible to create it 
automatically. The schema language used within the specification 
document will remain Relax-NG. The XSD schema will be delivered as 
separate document.

MIME types
----------
The TC unanimously agreed to the MIME type stream proposal for packages 
as specified in 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200312/msg00040.html and 
refined in http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200401/msg00000.html.

The TC also unanimously agreed to specify the following MIME types for 
the OASIS Open Office format:

application/vnd.oasis.openoffice.<subtype>

(respectively application/x-vnd.oasis.openoffice.<subtype> until the 
registration of the MIME types has been accepted), where <subtype> is 
the local name of the genre element used inside <office:body>, for 
instance "spreadsheet" or "text". Michael Brauer will clarify with the 
OASIS staff whether the use of these MIME types is permitted.


Phase 2 Planing
---------------
The TC started a discussion about the 2nd TC phase. It discussed whether 
the idea of splitting the TC into two threads, one for maintenance of 
the file format, and one for the discussion of new features. The 
maintenance would include error correction (resulting in a 1.0.x version 
of the specification), and minor enhancements (resulting in a 1.x) version.

The TC further started to collect topics that might be discussed in the 
2nd TC phase. Topics that have been found so far are (in addition to the 
topics that have been collected during the phase 1 work, see also 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200312/msg00012.html )

- Security features
- Form features (like Xforms)
- schema templates/user defined schemes
- enhanced bibliography features

The TC agreed to continue the collection of topics first on the TC 
mailing list, and later on in mailing lists that reach a wider audience.


New Action Items
----------------
Daniel Vogelheim: Clarify on the Relax-NG mailing list whether an 
automatic conversion to DTDs exists.
Michael Brauer: Clarify whether the suggested MIME types are permitted.
Michael Brauer: Start collection of phase 2 topics on the TC's mailing list.



Michael Brauer

OASIS Open Office XML format TC chair