Re: [oic] A simple and easy idea

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

"Alan Clark" <aclark@novell.com> wrote on 03/06/2009 05:37:33 PM:

> 
> >>> On 3/6/2009 at 02:33 PM, in message
> <OF5213621E.173703A9-ON85257571.00746F69-85257571.00764203@lotus.com>,
> <robert_weir@us.ibm.com> wrote: 
> > I'd like to do the following:
> > 
> > 1) Create a table where I list, on a voluntary, opt-in basis, names of 
ODF 
> > vendors, their ODF product, and a URL or email address where ODF 
> > interoperability problems may be reported by end users.  In most cases 
it 
> > will simply be an existing bug reporting page.  We could keep this on 
the 
> > Wiki, for example.
> 
> Who would be the audience that would go looking for the wiki page? 
> And how could we help them find it?
> 

If we did this, we would need some way to get the word out. 
OpenDocument.xml.org would be one way.  We could also mention it on the 
TC's home page.  Neither method is going to get a large % of end-users, 
but it may get a good number of them who are thinking about ODF 
interoperability.


> If I used an ODF app online or downloaded it from the app vendor- I 
> would think that one would first look to the download site for a bug
> reporting mechanism.
> 
> If my ODF app was included with my O/S.  First blush would be to 
> report it through my OS vendor. 
> 
> Does that reduce the audience to those who received it via 3rd party
> build farms or ftp services?
> 

I agree that the first inclination would be to report a bug directly to 
the vendor.  But the problem might not be caused by the application the 
user is running.  It might be caused by the application used to create the 
document.  Suppose I am using spreadsheet A, and someone sends me a 
document created in spreadsheet B.  The document comes out wrong, all 
formulas lost, etc.  I report it to my vendor A, and they just say "your 
document is bad", or "It's B's problem, not ours".  This is the nature of 
interop problems: It is not clear to the user where the problem is and who 
can fix it.

An idea might be to have some tooling, perhaps as part of the ODF 
Validator, that reports out the basic metadata from a document, including 
the application name and version that originally created it.

But in any case, these are really two separable ideas:  1) opt-in interop 
reporting table, 2) encourage submission of trouble files to the OIC TC. 
We could do either one, or both.  I think we'd get the most value from #2.


-Rob