Re: [office] Clarification for frame formatting property style:flow-with-text

[Thomas Zander <zander@kde.org>]

Morning Oliver.
On Wednesday 26 September 2007 09:11:25 Oliver-Rainer Wittmann wrote:
> > I disagree that this is a good way to extend ODF, as I showed with a
> > conflicting usecase in my previous mail already.  In other words; adding
> > implied behavior is not acceptable to me.
> > If you want to specify the behaviors you should create a new attribute,
> > like I described in my previous mail.
>
> Again, I don't want to extend ODF - I only want to clarify things.
>
> I don't know, if I get the conflicting use case in your previous mail.
> Is it, that the user anchored an object inside a table cell and stated
> that the object should be positioned left-aligned at the page margin and
> thus, in your opinion, this conflicts with clipping/capturing the object
> inside the table cell?

Let me try to explain what I think your proposal says, maybe I'm 
misunderstanding.

You state that the behavior of the embedded object is slightly different based 
on where it is embedded. Embedding it in a text in the main page will draw it 
as normal while embedding it in a table cell will make sure that the embedded 
object can not be drawn outside that table cell.
Your 'usecases' are thus embedded positions with slightly different behavior.

Is that right?

> I don't understand your objections.

I don't want different behavior based on position since that is implied 
behavior and if you want different behavior you should not make it implied by 
some slightly-relevant thing like where the text is positioned.
So I disagree with your 'usecases'[1] actually requiring a different outcome.

> Currently, the specification doesn't define the meaning of the frame
> formatting property style:flow-with-text, if the object is anchored
> inside a table cell, the page header, the page footer, a
> footnote/endnote or inside another object.

Yes it does, it defines the behavior exactly.  By not making exceptions the 
behavior written in the spec is for all of those circumstances and thus the 
behavior is defined to be the same for all of them.
The fact that you want to let OOo as well as KOffice and all the others behave 
differently based on where the embedding is done basically doesn't work for 
me.  So I object.

> I only want to clarify these use cases. I think I can do this, because I
> am somehow the original author of this frame formatting property, but
> somehow in the communication process to the OASIS ODF TC some stuff is
> lost. 

Luckely I spotted this in time then, or else KOffice would not be able to 
express its fuller feature set of embedding in ODF :)

Bottom line; your different 'usecases' here should not be expressed add-ons to 
the style:flow-with-text property as that will only work for the model that 
OOo made up. Its not very flexible and it certainly will not work for 
KOffice.
I do agree that clipping would be great to have, but that for sure is a 
different feature which we should get into ODF.

I suggested "clip-to-parent" as a new property, would that work for you?

> Nowadays, we've improved our processes to assure that nothing is 
> lost on the way from the team, which is responsible for the development
> of a new feature in OpenOffice.org, to the OASIS ODF TC.

Which is great. It would be even better if you can take into account some 
discussions with us (KDE) to make sure your proposals are not too much aimed 
at just one implementation.


1) your usage of the term 'usecase' is confusing as it doesn't relate to the 
definition of the word (see wikipedia for example).  Specifically its not 
about different behavior that the user wants.  Its about different technical 
circumstances.
-- 
Thomas Zander

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