Re: [oic] RE: mail merge interop ?

[Bernd Eilers <Bernd.Eilers@Sun.COM>]

Hi there!

 > [... snip ...]

> PS: action point: check how mailmerge is done in your favorite ODF-applications ;-)
> 
> 

OpenOffice.org uses Database Fields in an ODF document template as 
specified in Section 6.6 of Open Document Format for Office Applications 
(OpenDocument)v1.2 
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/32431/OpenDocument-v1.2-cd02.odt 


MailMerge in OpenOffice.org is bascially done by OpenOffice.org 
iterating through the rows of a connected database source, filling out 
DataBaseFields of a template document with data. There is a fixed set of 
address fields the OpenOffie.org MailMergeWizard knows about which is 
matching those to fields of the database source, eg. an address book. 
The Default Settings are such that the database source columns are 
expected to have the same names as those address fields in the 
mail-merge-wizard but different mappings can be configured also.

Basically you can say that there is nothing specific to a mail merge 
operation defined in the ODF Specification and that a mail-merge feature 
for an ODF Application would be just a very special kind of usage of the 
database fields concept of ODF.

So Interoperability here is IMHO not an issue of the completness of the 
ODF Support / ODF Interoperatbility for an ODF-Application here but 
merly an Application compatibility Issue outside the scope of ODF 
Interoperability. For example there may be an issue of using 
compatible/non-compatible address field names in template documents used 
by MailMerge features. And than there may be an issue of which types of 
database sources the applications do support.

Kind regards,
Bernd Eilers