Re: [office] Inversed MCT

[André Rebentisch <andre.rebentisch@arsaperta.com>]

Am 21.07.2012 06:06, schrieb Andreas J. Guelzow:
> I would think that every editing application already implements
> undo/redo, so all this "messiness" is already handled within that
> application.

"UCT" means Undo capability after (re-)load, not only at runtime:

> On load or save one would only translate that into
> appropriate markup.

Implementations are tasked to document MCT changes as Undo MCT
operations, thus safeguard that inversion would be lossless. A useful
side effect of U-MCT would be harmonisation of micro-editing and Undo
operations.

Would it be feasible to transform MCT markup to equivalent E/GCT markup
and vise-versa, as the feature matrix implies?

> For applications whose internal data structures don't
> match ODf this would be significant work. And on load this would even be
> more difficult.

In the lights that applications generate different markup for the same
user-centric editing, they still have to be capable to interpret "MCT
editing operations" cross-implementation. Enables also better
cross-application messaging for collaborative editing. Very fruitful as
an exercise to foster interoperabilty and deeper standardisation!

It is also understood why "mere XML tool" implementer won't appreciate
MCT. The TC collab working group also evaluated other shortcomings of
non-MCT. The MCT approach seems more "cloud-ready". It is great that
implementation experience drags the technical debate from the ivory
tower of XML format orthodoxy.

Best,
André