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

[Robin LaFontaine <robin.lafontaine@deltaxml.com>]

I understand what you say about change _tracking_ but there is a use case of document comparison that also needs to be satisfied (a user expects to be able to compare docs and see the changes).

I agree not all changes are significant, Rob lists some different types of change. It seems to me that the spec should say when two documents can be considered the same, otherwise we are all making our own (different!) assumptions about this.

Perhaps we should ask the TC to clarify this? It seems important for us in the SC to have an answer.

Robin

On 02/09/2011 18:24, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:

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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

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Robin La Fontaine, Director, DeltaXML Ltd  "Change control for XML"
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