RE: [oic] Confirmation Flavor: #3 Incorrectly-Generated ODF - PS

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

Oh, two other considerations.

1. It is the producer of Processor Y that is receiving all of the
complaints, because their product fails to accept the documents created by
users of Processor X and there is no indication to those users that anything
untoward is happening.  The documents work fine for them and there doesn't
seem to be anything special the users are doing.  The problem that Processor
Y detects is also not something that shows up in every document produced by
Processor X.  It does show up in small fragments of some very large
documents that too a good deal of work to create, though.

It is very costly and dissatisfying at Company Y to be having these support
issues for a mistake that they don't believe to be theirs.

2. I don't know if this applies to the particular case that inspired this,
but consider that the ODF Specification is determined to be rather imperfect
in this particular area and it is not exactly clear which interpretation is
the correct one, but it is clear that it is easy to misunderstand.

 - Dennis 

-----Original Message-----
From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:dennis.hamilton@acm.org] 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/200811/msg00022.html
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 20:23
To: 'oic@lists.oasis-open.org'
Cc: 'Andreas J Guelzow'
Subject: RE: [oic] Confirmation Flavor: #3 Incorrectly-Generated ODF

[ ... ]

Now, it may be that the implementers of Processor Y and the implementers of
Processor X disagree about how the specification is understood.

[ ... ]

In fact, let's suppose the implementers of Processor Y come to the oic-user
list and ask for guidance on what they should do with this case, since they
can	also change Processor Y to do what processor Z does.  This is a bona
fide pragmatic interoperability situation.  What should our advice be?
(Remember, the users of Processor X are busily churning out and circulating
documents and some of them will have this defect, if that is what it is.)

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Andreas J Guelzow [mailto:aguelzow@math.concordia.ab.ca] 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/200811/msg00021.html
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 19:47
To: oic@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [oic] Confirmation Flavor: #3 Incorrectly-Generated ODF

On Thu, 2008-11-13 at 18:36 -0800, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/200811/msg00018.html
> Here's a case that it is hard to imagine creating a test for.
> 
> #3 INCORRECTLY-GENERATED ODF 
> 
> Under certain conditions, processor X produces an ODF 1.1 .odt file
> where the content.xml and styles.xml documents are valid according to
> the schema, but a constraint stated in the specification is
> violated.  

But this cannot happen. If a constraint is violated then the created
file is not an ODF 1.1 file, but just a file the processor X falsely
claims to be ODF 1.1.

[ ... ]

Processor Ys and Zs behaviour here has nothing to do with ODF: they are
acting differently on some strange file. Whether you consider one
behaviour superior to another depends only on your expectations in the
given circumstances.

[ ... ]