Re: [office] proposal to solve problem with attributestyle:default-outline-level

[Oliver-Rainer Wittmann - Software Engineer - Sun Microsystems<Oliver-Rainer.Wittmann@Sun.COM>]

Hi,

see my comments/questions inline.

Thomas Zander wrote:
> On Tuesday 20 February 2007 10:38, Oliver-Rainer Wittmann - Software 
> Engineer - Sun Microsystems wrote:
>> I want to propose to add value "none" to attribute
>> style:default-outline-level to indicate that the style has no value for
>> this attribute. This will solve the following problem:
>> Currently, only positive integers are allowed as values for
>> style:default-outline-level. Thus, in a ODF document the following style
>> constellation can't be expressed:
>> - Style A is specified to have a default outline level with value 2
>> (style:default-outline-level="2").
>> - Style B is specified to have style A as its parent and to have no
>> default outline level.
>> The problem is, that if attribute style:default-outline-level is missing
>> in style B, it inherits the value from its parent style A. Thus,
>> attribute style:default-outline-level has to be defined for style B.
>> But, in this case currently no appropriate value exists to express, that
>> style B has no default outline level.
>> The new proposed value "none" will solve this problem.
> 
> The usecase is;
> 
> Paragraph Style "Header 1" with style:default-outline-level=1
> Paragraph Style "body" has as parent-style "Header 1" but is not a numbering 
> style.

What do you mean by "Paragraph Style being a numbering style"?
> 
> Now, I have to ask. Why on earth would you want to have the above construct?
> The concept of inheriting styles is that you can change properties in the 
> parent and they will change in the child automatically.

The concept of inheriting styles also includes the feature of overriding 
properties of the parent style in the child style.
Thus, I've made this proposal. In the current specification attribute 
style:default-outline-level can't be overriden as any attributes can be 
overriden.
For example think of attribute style:list-style-name:
- Style A is specified to have a list style applied 
(style:list-style-name="L1").
- Style B is specified to have style A as its parent and to have another 
list style applied. Here you can specify that style-list-style-name="L2" 
at Style B.
- Style C is specified to have style A also as its parent and to have no 
list style applied. Here you can specify that style-list-style-name="" 
at Style C.
Thus, why do you disagree to my proposal to have this possibility for 
attribute style:default-outline-level, too?

> 
> Making validation of this field impossible (due to it not being a number 
> anymore) needs a bit more justification then a weird usecase that is trivial 
> to avoid by any application.

Sure you can. But, this should be specified also in the ODF 
specification. Because otherwise you can't assure that this is avoided 
in future applications supporting ODF. Thus, you would have something 
special for a certain attribute, which isn't needed, if you would 
support my proposal.



Regards, Oliver.