Re: [office-comment] Support for overlined text in ODF

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Martin,

Great example of how to make a request for a feature.

I particularly liked your rationale section.

When you said that ODF support overlining as a font attribute I take it 
that does not satisfy the need to overline non-continguous strings of 
text? That is there is not overline for a spacing character in most fonts.

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick

Martin Whitaker wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am working on an enhancement to OpenOffice.org (OOo) that adds 
> support for
> overlined text. As part of this work, I need a way to save the overlined
> attribute in an ODF file. At present ODF does not support overlining as
> a text style (although it does support overlining as a font attribute).
> I would therefore like to propose that this capability be added to ODF.
> I suggest this would be best done by adding the following attributes:
>
>   style:text-overline-type
>   style:text-overline-style
>   style:text-overline-width
>   style:text-overline-color
>   style:text-overline-mode
>
> with syntax and semantics copied from the similarly named underline
> attributes.
>
> As rationale for why ODF should support overlined text, the following
> uses have been identified by OOo users who have voted for this
> enhancement:
>
> 1) In Boolean algebra, an overline is used to denote negation (i.e.
> logical inversion).
>
> 2) In digital electronics, an overline is used to denote an active
> low signal.
>
> 3) In high energy physics, an overline is used to denote an antiparticle.
>
> 4) In older West European texts, an overline is used to denote an
> abbreviation.
>
> 5) Overlines are used in sign language transcriptions.
>
> Overlines also appear to be used in CJK languages, although I don't
> know enough about this to comment on whether OOo's current approach of
> subverting the underline tag for this purpose is appropriate.
>
> In most of the above cases, the overline attribute is applied to a
> word, so using a combining overline character is awkward and causes
> problems for search and replace (besides which, most fonts don't
> include a combining overline character).
>
> I know of two other word processor applications that support overlined
> text: Adobe FrameMaker and AbiWord. AbiWord also supports ODF import
> and export, so adding these attributes would not just benefit OOo.
>
> Finally, a few supporting quotes from other OOo users (taken from
> http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=5991):
>
> "Unfortunately, one absolutely critical
> there-is-no-other-convention-for-doing-this ability we have to have
> in even the most basic sign language transcriptions is overline text."
>
> "It's an issue with mathematical texts as well. It is no way a feature
> for luxury publishing products, but it is a basic
> need-it-to-get-my-work-done-feature."
>
> "This isn't a "magic" feature, it's a standard text-font convention for
> a number of common documentation types: logic, finite mathematics,
> electronic specifications, etc.
>
> An example: JEDEC's Software Tools Committee would adopt OO.o as our
> standard document format for editable specifications in a heartbeat if
> we could just flag active-low signals properly."
>
>
> Martin Whitaker
>
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-- 
Patrick Durusau
Patrick@Durusau.net
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model
Member, Text Encoding Initiative Board of Directors, 2003-2005

Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!