Re: [office-comment] Re: my comments on the numbering spec proposaldiscussed by David F. andFlorian R.

[Oliver-Rainer Wittmann - Software Engineer - Sun Microsystems<Oliver-Rainer.Wittmann@Sun.COM>]

Hi,

Thomas Zander wrote:
> I read the mailing list archives and wanted to comment on this post from 
> Oliver.
> http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200611/msg00108.html
> 
> Oliver wrote Thu, 30 Nov 2006 13:50:34:
>> The text:style-override approach seems to more natural to me. I've got
>> some numbered paragraphs in a certain list and wants to apply another
>> label format to a part of these paragraphs.
> 
> There is a big assumption in this paragraph that I'd like to address.
> You state that you start out with 'numbered paragraphs in a certain list'. And 
> go from there.
> In reality there is no way to explicitly say that a number of paragraphs 
> belong to a list in the examples given (using text:numbered-paragraph). The 
> assumption seems to be that all numbered paragraphs that belong to a certain 
> style belong to the same list.
> 
Yes, that's my interpretation of the list style. All paragraphs, which 
apply list style "L1" belong to the same list.
That's already the case for the headings in the text document, which all 
by default apply the outline style - the default list style for outline 
numbering.

> Now, this means that having 5 lists, and I want to structure my ODF document 
> to make it clear there are 5 lists, that I would need 5 different styles.
> That completely breaks the concept of separating content from markup.
> 
I didn't understand your conclusion here.
Why does the usage of different list styles for different lists breaks 
the concept of separating content from markup?


> I think that the suggestion that Florian made is based on visual appearance. 
> Which is correct if we want ODF to be used as a fileformat for a text. But it 
> breaks down if you want to use the text for more structural purposes. Like 
> datamining it. Why? Because 2 separate lists using the same style can no 
> longer be separated as their style is their 'list id' in the 
> text:style-override proposal.
> 
If you want to use the same list style for two separate lists, then you 
have to define for the second list, that the numbering has to restart. 
But, in my interpretation - which is somehow technical - of the list 
style the paragraphs of these two list still belong to the same list.


>> The text:list-id approach also allows to break the structural
>> information given by using text:list and text:list-item to defined a
>> certain list.
> I understand your point, and you what you say makes sense.
> There is just one problem; the list-id was suggested by David to allow 
> OpenOffice to use text:numbered-paragraph instead of the text:list tags.
> Naturally the list-id is useless (and, as you point out, counter productive) 
> for the text:list way of working. The hierarchical structure already provides 
> the list id implicitly.
> 
> As a best of both worlds solution; what about this;
> 
> a) To allow style-override the style that florian wants it.
> Note that a list-id is irrelevant since the hierarchical structure already 
> supplies that.  So all the list items auto-inherit the list style, unless 
> they specifically override it.
> 
> <text:list text:style-name="L1">
>    <text:list-item text:style-override="L2">
>      <text:p>Main Chapter</text:p>
>    </text:list-item>
> etc
> 
> The disconnected way that KOffice does numbering is better represented using 
> the numbered-paragraph and the text:level method.
> To allow continues numbering (for example for headers) you can name the list 
> using text:list-id, this property would be optional. Paragraphs following 
> each other are implied to be in the same list.
> To allow any style of numbering, even if its different from the rest of the 
> list the text:style-name  is provided in the numbered-paragraph.
> 
> <text:numbered-paragraph text:level="1"
>           text:style-name="L2" text:list-id="mylist">
>         <text:p text:style-name="P1">Main chapter</text:p>
> </text:numbered-paragraph>
> 

As state in the ODF standard, the <text:list> way and the 
<numbered-paragraph> way are equivalent. Thus, I think we should choose 
a solution that fits both on the same way. Otherwise the equivalence 
isn't as obvious as it is now.


What about my concern about the backward-compatibility of the <list:id> 
approach?

Regards, Oliver.