ODF 1.2 part 1: radio-button element form:radio attribute form:name exception

[Michael Stahl <mstahl@redhat.com>]

does anybody know if there is an implementation out there that actually
implements this particular exception in ODF 1.2 section 13.5.18 ?

> 13.5.18 <form:radio>
> [...]
> Radio buttons are defined to belong to the same group if they have
> the same control name, as specified by their form:name attribute.

this handling of the form:name attribute on form:radio differs from the
handling of this attribute on any other form element.  it is not even
mentioned in the attribute description, which is confusing.

> 19.294 form:name
> The form:name attribute specifies the name of a form or control
> element.
> Note: This may be used to give a form or control element an identity,
> which is can be used for scripting or for submitting the content of
> controls.

the reason why i'm asking is that OpenOffice.org 2.0 did not implement
the exception; form:name on form:radio is handled as on any other form
element.

Lionel (the LibreOffice database application maintainer) is of the
considered opinion that there are existing use cases with scripting that
are currently supported that require the individual radio buttons to
have distinct names, so with the current specification we would need to
add a "form:real-name" attribute to handle these use cases.

so from our point of view it would be ideal to adapt the ODF
specification to the existing implementation, unless of course there are
other applications that have actually implemented the (somewhat
surprising) exception as written in 13.5.18.

of course it is also necessary to group radio buttons; this could be
done by a new "form:group-name" attribute.  (there was actually a
proposal to do that which i've sadly closed last year, because
unfortunately it was a pretty useless 1 sentence proposal that lacked
any rationale.)


-- 
Michael Stahl | Software Engineer
Platform Engineering - Desktop Team
Red Hat

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