Operation Definition Template

[Svante Schubert <svante.schubert@gmail.com>]

Allow me to summarize and extend what we have discussed today:
Each operation is only an abbreviation for a change (or transition) of a document state.
We will define an operation in the ODF 1.3 specification by the change of the ODF XML.

We have four possible types of operations

1. add
2. delete
3. move
   
4. replace

"Move" & "Replace" are only listed for efficiency reason of the application and can be substituted by a combination of "add" and "delete". (Currently I have not ever used "replace" uncertain if we ever need it).
"Add" & "delete" can be used for everything: components, properties or delimiters.

When defining the add/delete for a component, the definition of the location by path would be made only once in the spec. The definition of the add/delete of every component the operation description would be quite similar.
We would mention the root element for the component and its name. In our first step this would be <text:p> and paragraph. We would reference to the ODF 1.2 specification, this can be done already in a generic way as our editors did a good job in the past: For instance, a reference to an element of the ODF 1.2 specification in HTML would be:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/os/OpenDocument-v1.2-os-part1.html#element-text_p
for <text:p>

For an attribute as the @style:name
http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/os/OpenDocument-v1.2-os-part1.html#attribute-text_style-name

Adding the element, would describe the attribute for this particular element:
http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/os/OpenDocument-v1.2-os-part1.html#attribute-text_style-name_element-text_p

The most important part would be the XML change.
Like the insertion of the <text:p> element, which must have all mandatory attributes and child elements, i.e. none.

The schema is sometimes hard and time consuming to read, a short ODF reference in HTML would be nice, but unfortunately the one I know, the one generated by the Apache ODF Toolkit (incubating) still lacks BNF as choice and sequence. I have taken the time this evening to fix the generation of the ODF reference in HTML, but the addition of Backus–Naur Form (BNF) is hardly to be done aside.
Still I have uploaded the current HTML file to https://dl.dropbox.com/u/49473263/OdfReference.html
(If someone is interesting in the Java Sources the initial description of my fix is here - http://markmail.org/message/eu5yrw6sqfkkn3v6)

Regards,
Svante