Re: [office] Database Frontend Proposal

["David A. Wheeler" <dwheeler@dwheeler.com>]

Michael Brauer:
> I have uploaded a proposal for adding a new document type "Database 
> Frontend" at
> 
> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/22334/12-02-07-database-fontend.odt
> 
> Actually this proposal is not new[1]. We discussed it already more than 
> a year ago[2], but missed to vote about it. In this revised proposal, a 
> few errors and inconsistencies were corrected, and default cell and row 
> styles were added.

I like the idea of a standard way to exchange front-end data.

In the intro text, please change "may actually not" to "might actually not".  The "may" is ambiguous; is this FORBIDDING something, or noting that something might not be true?  I believe it's critically important that documents be PERMITTED to embed the data.

Which raises a more general issue - applications should be able to exchange simple databases in a standard way.  Think citations, data that is graphed in multiple formats, etc... I'm thinking of basically using the table format.  Is there anything along those lines?

A nit: in "3.2 Forms and Report", the word "described" is in red.  Why?  Probably shouldn't be.

--- David A. Wheeler