RE: [office] Re: Spreadsheet Formula Conformance - Please Not Now

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

"Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org> wrote on 02/08/2009 
03:03:26 PM:

> 
> Rob,
> 
> I don't dispute the need to tie together the conformance 
interdependencies
> of the parts of the ODF 1.2 specification.  I dispute the need to do 
that
> now using normative pretend language appealing to other normative 
pretend
> language that has not been written yet.  I find this particular approach 
to
> "bootstrapping" makes us appear to be careless (or worse), leaving us 
with
> defects that we have to remember to watch over and deal with in future
> stages.  I would rather not do that.
> 

Dennis, this is a pre-draft.  Drafts are incomplete and subject to change. 
 Nothing here is normative until the ODF TC approves the draft, we further 
send it out for public comment, we further vote to approve it as a 
Committee Specification, further vote to send it out for an OASIS ballot 
and finally until OASIS approves it.  We don't have a standard until all 
of these steps are completed.  One of these steps(sending for an OASIS 
ballot) will require that 2/3 of the voting members in this TC approve the 
Committee Specification and that no more than 1/4 of the voting members 
disapprove it.  So there will be ample opportunity for you and others to 
cry "Halt" if you believe that something is not quite right in the final 
product.

In particular I'd note that intra-part, inter-part as well as external 
normative references will likely continue to be refined until ODF 1.2 is 
ready for final approval.  But that should not prevent us from moving 
forward on the text of ODF 1.2, not even the parts of ODF 1.2 that depend 
on these references. We're working asynchronously in the three parts.  We 
can't expect that they will always be in synch day-to-day.  Obviously they 
need to end up in synch at the end, but they won't always be that way 
while we're working on a pre-draft.

Because of that, I'm not going to hold back a change to a pre-draft every 
time someone notices a comma out of places.  The possibility of things 
getting out of whack between two parts is not cause for holding back 
changes to those parts. My recommendation would be to start up a page on 
the wiki, or maybe in JIRI, and make a reminder check list of things we 
need to check for consistency at the end.  I think Michael's list from 
last week (external references, contributors, etc.) was a good start.  We 
could also put in additional items.

-Rob