[OASIS Issue Tracker] Commented: (OFFICE-3026) Public Comment: Part1 3.10.2 <config:config-item-set> too loose

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    [ http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/OFFICE-3026?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=22002#action_22002 ] 

Michael Brauer commented on OFFICE-3026:
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I have thought about the last proposal, and my first thought was that it may work if we omit the 2nd sentence (it is more an observation), and if we turn the 2nd paragraph into a note.

I when discussed this with Eike and others, and he alerted me about the following: What if an application has a setting that allows to display all text with a particular color, regardless of what is defined in the document. That may be a useful setting in some cases, and it may even be useful to store this in a document. But it would collide with "<office:settings> shall not alter the specified interpretation of other markup.

So, the more I think about it seems that it is rather impossible to exclude "bad" uses of application settings by normative language. Whenever  we disallow something, we also find examples where what we exclude may forbid a valid use of the settings.

So, maybe we should address this issue in a different way: Instead of trying to dispel the concerns mentioned in the comment with normative language, we may encourage vendors to submit us their settings and also their extension. We then could go through them to see if there is anything that we think should better be standardized. The benefit of this is that we consider both, settings and extensions, and that the result are standardizes specification for those things that are of interest for multiple implementations. But of course, this is nothing we can do for ODF 1.2.

> Public Comment: Part 1 3.10.2 <config:config-item-set> too loose
> ----------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: OFFICE-3026
>                 URL: http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/OFFICE-3026
>             Project: OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC
>          Issue Type: Sub-task
>          Components: General, Public Review
>    Affects Versions: ODF 1.2 CD 05
>            Reporter: Dennis Hamilton
>             Fix For: ODF 1.2 CD 06
>
>
> The description is in the first attachment in the public comment posted at 
> <http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/201006/msg00071.html>
> The complete posted comment:
> <quote>
> The text describing the usage of config-item-sets has changed from ODF 1.1 to ODF 1.2 . It used to give examples of data to store in the config-item-sets, but these examples have been removed.
> Problem:
> In ODF 1.1 it was clear that the <config-item-set>-element was intended to be used to store application specific information such as zoom level and printer settings. So the element should be used to store settings that did not impact document layout nor document functionality. I would imagine that the reason for this element was to allow applications to store their individual settings as printer choice etc in the document - while still making sure that interoperability was not hurt (since these settings did not affect the document itself).
> However - this intention has somewhat failed, since not all vendors use this element exclusively for this purpose and several strategies for extending ODF has since emerged
> An example of "improper" extension of ODF (usage of <config-item-set>-element):
> OpenOffice.org stores a large number of settings that directly affect the document layout. These settings include (but are not limited to) "UseFormerLineSpacing", "AddParaTableSpacingAtStart",
> "IsKernAsianPunctuation", "CharacterCompressionType" etc. This is not the intended usage of the <config-item-set>-element since it directly affects the content of the document.
> An example of "proper" extension of ODF (usage of ODF extension mechanisms):
> Gnumeric defines a list of extensions to (primarily) ODF spreadsheets using the extension mechanisms of ODF. These include (but are not limited to) "gnm:GnmVAlign", "gnm:diagonal-bl-tr-line-style", "gnm:format-magic" etc. These are extensions to the functionality of ODF documents and they correctly use the extension mechanisms of ODF to do so.
> Further, ODF 1.2 introduces the notion of "extended documents" and this makes it even more important to be able to distinguish between documents that are extended and those that are not.
> Proposed solution:
> I propose to add the following to the specification:
> To 3.10.2 <config:config-item-set>:
> Add the following text:
> "The setting elements SHALL not contain settings that directly impact document functionality and SHALL not contain settings that impact document layout. Application settings that impact document functionality or impact document layout SHALL use the machanisms described in 21
> "Document Processing".
> Alternatively, add normatory, explanatory text to section 22.3.2 "OpenDocument Extended producers" clearly saying that any application using the <config:config-item-set>-element to store settings that affect document layout or functionality SHALL be labelled as an "Extended producer".
> Alternatively, add normatory, explanatory text to section 22.2.2 and 22.3.2:
> Documents using config-item-sets SHALL be of conformance class "OpenDocument extended documents" and Applications creating documents using config-item-sets SHALL be of conformance class "OpenDocument extended producers".
> </quote>

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