"Changes" to the XML file

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Greetings!

I have been replaying the conversations about "changes" to the ODF XML file.

While I know we need to speak about "changes" to the XML file in order 
to know what to specify, in a very real sense, there are *never any 
changes* to the XML file.

That is to say that an application loads the XML file into its custom 
memory model and if the user inserts a paragraph after the "second" 
paragraph and before the "third" paragraph.

<text:p>p1</text:p>
<text:p>p2</text:p>
               <--------------Insertion point for <text:p>new p</text:p>
<text:p>p3</text:p>

But that diagram is misleading because the application has no XML to 
track at that point.

It has:

In memory:

p1
p2
insertion point for new P
p3

It only has its own in memory structures and the method it has chosen to 
track changes to those structures.

When the XML file become relevant is when the application serializes the 
in memory structures out to an XML file and records the changes to it 
using ODF change tracking.

That is to say that the reading/consuming application loads the XML file 
into its memory structures and change tracking for those structures. The 
application then becomes responsible for any changes that impact the # 
of a component or its place in the document flow.

This is the simple XML change tracking case.

Serialize all the changes that have been tracked as part of the file 
package for reassembly by the reading application.

All of the changing of numbers, etc., occur in the application and it is 
responsible for putting any accepted change where it should go. All we 
are responsible for it giving it the information necessary to start 
tracking that change when the file is loaded.

*****************

The more complicated case is the one where less than the entire file is 
being interchanged.

But I know there are systems which have successfully tracked and 
interchanged changes with less than whole file updates so I am confident 
a solution can be devised for that case as well.

Hope everyone is looking forward to a great holiday season!

Patrick



--
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Technical Advisory Board, OASIS (TAB)
Former Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)

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