RE: [office-comment] Unacceptable presentation of content models (ODF 1.2CD01r5)

["Alex Brown" <alexb@griffinbrown.co.uk>]

Michael hi

> Well, that's a complex topic, and opinions differ whether a statement
> which does contain any of the keywords like shall and may is a
> normative
> one or not.

For a JTC 1 standard, everything is normative text unless otherwise
specified (or unless in well-defined informative areas, like notes).
This is why getting the wording details in this spec right is so
important.

So one approach would be to break these things out into clauses called
"Structural Context (Informative)" (or some such).

> Thanks for these suggestion. Actually, I think the exact wording is to
> some degree also a matter of personal preferences, and I would like to
> leave it up to the TC editor to find an appropriate wording.

Of course; I'm sure Patrick can do a better job.

> I
> personally have an issue with using the term "shall" here as this
again
> raises the question of whether this normative language or not (or why
> normative language is used in informative text).

"Shall" in informative text is a bit odd, I agree.

> Again, this is to some degree a question of personal preferences.
> People
> which are familiar with reading RNG in compact notation may prefer
this
> notation, others may prefer RNG in XML notation, and others may prefer
> natural language even if it is not as exact as a schema fragment.

True, but remember the audience for this kind of standard is going to be
a techie.

I'd be interested to find any person on this planet who preferred the
current presentation for the 'children' of <text:p> to something
expressed and pretty-printed in RNG compact!

- Alex.