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


I'm startled by this reaction.

It is a commonplace that there can be different XML representations of an ODF document that make no perceptible difference for an user.  And even perceptible differences may be immaterial.

  Also, when a document is edited and saved, the representation may change.  These might be immaterial for interoperability.  Some variations may be more significant but possibly immaterial in a given interoperability setting.

Contributing factors include the following: 

 * Compliance requirements for ODF consumers are very loose
 * Different producers may favor one representation over another among semantically-equivalent representations
 * There is a wide range of implementation-defined deviations
 * Users use provisions of producers to achieve the content and appearance that they want, without awareness of how the XML reflects that or how different ways that they accomplish some objective may lead to invisibly-different document representations.
 * Many processors do not use an internal model by which the XML is retained; it is generated on output from an internal model.  That can produce different results on something as simple as a load followed by a save.
 * There is no specified layout behavior, or presentation of tracked changes in terms of an implementation's layout, so there is deviation simply between what an author did and what a reader, editor, or co-author sees.
 * How material any of this is depends on the situation.  It is one force that leads people to stick to a single product and sometimes a specific release of a single product because of variations that can occur from one release to another.  Users also adapt to bugs and then have to deal with the breakage that occurs when the bug is fixed.


-----Original Message-----
From: Robin LaFontaine [mailto:robin.lafontaine@deltaxml.com] 
Sent: Friday, September 02, 2011 09:10
To: office-collab@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: Re: [office-collab] GCT-Issue-2 (was GCT Issues Wiki page)

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 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?

Robin

On 26/08/2011 19:46, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote: 

	I had obviously read that message before. Unfortunately we do not even
	seem to agree on the basic concepts. For me a document has many ODF xml
	representations and changing between those representations does not
	represent a document change, so while GCT may be well suited to for
	recording changes in the representation I fail to see how it can be used
	successfully to recognize changes to the document itself.  

		> 


-- 
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Robin La Fontaine, Director, DeltaXML Ltd  "Change control for XML"
T: +44 1684 592 144  E: robin.lafontaine@deltaxml.com      
http://www.deltaxml.com      
Registered in England 02528681 Reg. Office: Monsell House, WR8 0QN, UK
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