Re: [office-comment] CD01 -- 8.2.1 Referencing Table Cells

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Alex,

Alex Brown wrote:
> Paul hi
>  
> To be clear, my "it" meant the specific point under discussion, not 
> ODF 1.1 as a whole. There certainly are some firm conformance 
> requirements there -- for example a package that contained 
> non-conformant or invalid XML would clearly fall foul of the stated 
> conformance requirements in section 1.5.
>  
> I am less certain whether there are any meaningful *semantic* 
> conformance requirements in ODF 1.1, however, since that same section 
> 1.5 appears to grant a general exemption from the need to follow any 
> "rules". Since you were a TC member at the time perhaps you could 
> enlighten me about why this was. Perhaps this void was left with the 
> intention that it would be filled by pronouncements on the chairman's 
> blog 3 years later ... ;-)
>  
Sigh. No, I won't take the bait, it simply isn't worth the effort.

I assume you mean:

> There are no rules regarding the elements and attributes that actually 
> have to be supported by conforming applications, except that 
> applications should not use foreign elements and attributes for 
> features defined in the OpenDocument schema.
Perhaps, perhaps in-artfully worded in retrospect (always the clearest) 
but the intent was to allow applications to implement as much or as 
little of ODF as they deemed necessary.

For example, I could have an XSLT stylesheet that solely and only adds 
metadata to every ODF document that arrives in a document repository. It 
doesn't *do* stylesheets, it doesn't obey ODF 1.1 on tables, etc. but if 
it follows the ODF 1.1 rules for the metadata it adds and the resulting 
file conforms to the ODF schema, then it is a conforming ODF application.

Part of the underlying philosophy of ODF, something that Michael Brauer, 
its chief engineer and architect would be more qualified to speak about 
than I am is that implementers need not implement an entire office suite 
of capabilities in order to have a useful and conforming product. I 
suspect that comes from his background in *nix where tool design for a 
particular purpose and not every possible purpose has a long tradition.

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick


> - Alex.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* marbux [mailto:marbux@gmail.com]
> *Sent:* Fri 2009-05-08 12:45
> *To:* office-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
> *Subject:* Re: [office-comment] CD01 -- 8.2.1 Referencing Table Cells
>
> On Fri, May 8, 2009 at 2:01 AM, Alex Brown <alexb@griffinbrown.co.uk> 
> wrote:
>
> > As the discussion between Rob and Dennis on Rob's latest blog entry 
> shows, this whole conformance question is - at the least - highly 
> debatable. I really can't see how any statement about it can be 
> reasonably qualified by an "in fact".
>
> I accept that challenge. "In fact, the ODF specification is highly
> ambiguous." :-)
>
> --
> Universal Interoperability Council
> <http:www.universal-interop-council.org>
>
> --
> This publicly archived list offers a means to provide input to the
> OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC.
>
> In order to verify user consent to the Feedback License terms and
> to minimize spam in the list archive, subscription is required
> before posting.
>
> Subscribe: office-comment-subscribe@lists.oasis-open.org
> Unsubscribe: office-comment-unsubscribe@lists.oasis-open.org
> List help: office-comment-help@lists.oasis-open.org
> List archive: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office-comment/
> Feedback License: http://www.oasis-open.org/who/ipr/feedback_license.pdf
> List Guidelines: http://www.oasis-open.org/maillists/guidelines.php
> Committee: 
> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office
>

-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
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)