Re: [office-collab] GCT-Issue-2 (was GCT Issues Wiki page)

["Andreas J. Guelzow" <andreas.guelzow@concordia.ab.ca>]

On Fri, 2011-09-02 at 10:10 -0600, Robin LaFontaine wrote:
> I am worried by your comment 
> "a document has many ODF xml representations"
> because if the same document has many representations it is difficult
> to say when two documents are 'equal' or the same document. If we do
> not know when they are the same we cannot say what has changed.

I agree. Isn't that the point of change _tracking_. We know what changes
when the change is made. If you compare two files there would be lots of
possible differences in the xml representation that do not change the
document. For example:
-- Changes in the names of any automatic styles. 
-- Changes to repeated-rows (or columns), ie, any such could be split
into rseparate rows
-- Various issue related to <text:s>
-- some attribute orders
and many more.  
> 
> I am making the assumption that if the XML representation of two
> documents is different then the documents are different. Of course
> some differences (e.g. text content) are more important that others
> (e.g. automatic styles). If this basic assumption is wrong then
> perhaps we need to define a canonical form. Or is there some other way
> forward?

As I said above we know document changes when they are performed. We
should not care (I at least I do not care) about changes in the xml
representation.

Andreas
> 

-- 
Andreas J. Guelzow, PhD, FTICA
Concordia University College of Alberta