RE: [office] Single XML file

[David LeBlanc <dleblanc@exchange.microsoft.com>]

Yes, you can do signatures, but the current standard does not cover it. You would need to create a new section determining how to do this. The current standard mandates a document-signatures root in a particular file. You can obviously put that node internal to a larger XML, but we don't currently document it.

In addition, you need to create a transform that excludes the signature node, or conversely, you would not sign the top-level root container node, and then sign all the child nodes excepting the signature container node itself. Both approaches are possible, but again, the standard itself doesn't tell you how to do that. I'd suggest taking the second approach, but others could have different opinions.

So if you want to continue to support the single XML file format, and would like to also support signatures with it, then you need to add a paragraph to the signature area to cover how it should be done.

On the issue of whether to support the single XML format, I'm personally agnostic, and you should let someone else at Microsoft chime in on the bigger issue. A suggestion I might make would be to do some web searches and see how many of the single XML files you find in the wild, and then decide whether you think it is worthwhile doing the work to maintain the standard for parallel formats.

-----Original Message-----
From: office@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:office@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Dennis E. Hamilton
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2012 2:49 PM
To: 'Thorsten Behrens'; 'Jos van den Oever'
Cc: office@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [office] Single XML file

I agree that the single XML file is very utilitarian.  It is adaptable to a wide variety of special-purpose uses and it is easy to generate, even manually and with or without a schema-aware editing tool.

Also,

 1. The existing change-tracking model, however ill-specified, works with the single XML file.

 2. It is a trivial matter to allow the RDF/XML <rdf:RDF> element or even node elements within the metadata section.  These can work without any need of the OWL classes or any of the other contortions.  Internal relative IRIs are also easy in this case.  The internal RDFa is already allowed although it is not clear to me why, since ODF uses XML, embedded RDF/XML wasn't allowed more generally in content.xml in the first place.  Of course it could be used anyhow in an extended ODF document.

 3. XML DSig and XML Encryption work with these XML documents, of course, and again, there is very little that needs to be said beyond their allowance.

 - Dennis

PS: I would also argue that just because there are pathological or at least impractical cases for the single XML file, that does not mean all single XML files are evil.  RTF is a text-based file structure and there seems to be no way to avoid accepting and producing RTF in interoperating office-productivity implementations.


-----Original Message-----
From: office@lists.oasis-open.org [mailto:office@lists.oasis-open.org] On Behalf Of Thorsten Behrens
Sent: Friday, August 31, 2012 06:52
To: Jos van den Oever
Cc: office@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [office] Single XML file

Jos van den Oever wrote:
> The single xml file format for ODF is tremendously useful in my 
> opinion, for a number of reasons. I will list what I think are reasons 
> pro and contra the single xml format.
> 
I concur with Jos. Highly useful when you want to stream stuff, both in and out of odf processors. Also nice for being treated with run-of-the-mill revision control systems.

Cheers,

-- 

Thorsten Behrens

SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstr. 5, 90409 Nürnberg; GF: Jeff Hawn, Jennifer Guild, Felix Imendörffer, HRB 16746 (AG Nürnberg)


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