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

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

Patrick hi

I appreciate the intent in 1.1.

Clearly if ODF 1.1 stated that implementations had to conform to all the
semantic provisions of the spec, then a large class of legitimate and
useful applications could never claim to be conformant.

However, the wording in 1.5 went way too far, by allowing *all*
conforming applications to ignore *anything*.

The solution to this is to have something like the "application
description" feature that was introduced into OOXML during its BRM --
yes, there were one or two sensible decisions made there ;-)

Broadly, this allows implementers to define feature sets. OOXML has two
pre-defined feature sets ("full" and "minimal" IIRC), and provides a
mechanism to define more. Feature sets are identified by URIs.
Application developers can then indicate which "application description"
they are claiming conformance too.

I think this is a really elegant way to solve this problem; it would
also neatly solve the conformance class issue you have, since you could
define application descriptions for "strict" and "extended" (only the
latter would produce foreign XML).

This approach is already standardised in 29500, so ODF could just borrow
it. In fact, I believe your TC charter recommends that as a good general
approach :-)

- Alex.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrick Durusau [mailto:patrick@durusau.net]
> Sent: 08 May 2009 14:36
> To: Alex Brown
> Cc: marbux; office-comment@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [office-comment] CD01 -- 8.2.1 Referencing Table Cells
> 
> 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." :-)
> >
> > --
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> > <http:www.universal-interop-council.org>
> >
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> 
> --
> 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)