Re: [office] Scope of ODF, was Re: [office] Questions/comments concerning the Select Committee report on Change Tracking

[Svante Schubert <svante.schubert@gmail.com>]

I have been using XSLT a lot in the past and I see no conflict, in using XSLT with MCT - quite the opposite.
Each MCT operation would be related to an XSLT script, which is being triggered using the operation parameter as XSLT argument.
Very modular approach with clear interfaces.

- Svante

On 23.07.2012 13:27, Robin LaFontaine wrote:

On 20/07/2012 23:55, Patrick Durusau wrote:

The question facing the TC is what change tracking mechanisms meets present and future needs, across the widest set of implementation models. ODF is the basis for *interoperable interchange* of documents and *not* a processing model.

This is a key issue and I would ask Rob to include it for a discussion today in our call.

My understanding is that the scope of ODF includes the processing of documents outside editing applications.

Here is the statement of purpose of ODF:

https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/charter.php

Statement of Purpose

The purpose of this TC is to create an open, XML-based file format specification for office applications.

The resulting file format must meet the following requirements:

1. it must be suitable for office documents containing text, spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents,
2. it must be compatible with the W3C Extensible Markup Language (XML) v1.0 and W3C Namespaces in XML v1.0 specifications,
3. it must retain high-level information suitable for editing the document,
4. it must be friendly to transformations using XSLT or similar XML-based languages or tools,
5. it should keep the document's content and layout information separate such that they can be processed independently of each other, and
6. it should 'borrow' from similar, existing standards wherever possible and permitted.

Item 4 (my bolding) does seem to be very clear about this, I see nothing that limits it to interchange (3) only.

The "Anticipated Audience" (at the end of the charter) also includes "makers of XML or office document processing or editing solutions;" which again is clear.

A lot of our apparent difficulties relate to this issue - we are very much involved with 4 and most of the rest of the TC members with 3. That is why we have different perspectives and why we need to debate and challenge one another in technical discussion. That can be difficult at times!