Re: [office-metadata] Rough notes (I won't call them minutes just yet)

[Michael Brauer <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM>]

Hi Patrick,

the last sentence is close to my concerns. An application *may* of cause 
preserve arbitrary meta data at arbitrary elements. But ODF would become 
difficult to implement if we require that applications *must* preserve 
or *should* preserve arbitrary meta data at arbitrary elements. So what 
we have to do is to identify those elements where we want to say that 
applications *should* preserve metadata. For all others elements, 
applications *may* preserve metadata.

Is that clearer?

Michael

Patrick Durusau wrote:
> Michael,
> 
> Snipping to your last point:
> 
> Michael Brauer wrote:
> <snip>
> 
>>> 5. Preservation of all metadata? Means content not understood must be
>>>    preserved. 
>>
>>
>> We have to careful with this. What works is that we say that RDF-XML 
>> streams in the package should be preserved, and that we identify a 
>> couple of XML elements where we also say that meta data related 
>> attributes have to be preserved. What will not work is to preserve 
>> meta data at arbitrary elements.
>>
> Why not?
> 
> The reason why we discussed this some months ago in SC was to deal with 
> the issue of "lite" applications that may not understand metadata that 
> would be useful to a "richer" application (realizing that "lite" and 
> "rich" are relative and rather vague terms) must preserve that metadata.
> 
> However, then the issue is, since the metadata work will allow arbitrary 
> metadata (which the SC has avoided defining, working only on the 
> mechanism for adding metadata), how do we distinguish what must be 
> preserved.
> 
> Yes, saying RDF-XML streams in the package plus attributes on defined 
> XML elements would work, but why?
> 
> ODF 1.1 says applications may preserve content that they don't understand.
> 
> I would think if preservation of content that is not understood, whether 
> metadata or not, "will not work" we would not have permitted it in ODF 
> 1.0 and 1.1.
> 
> Granted, that may "not work" with some particular implementation 
> strategy but that is not really our concern.
> 
> Close? Or did I miss the issue? Or do you see ODF 1.2 moving towards a 
> more restrictive model in terms of everything in the package *must* be 
> understood?
> 
> Hope you are having a great day!
> 
> Patrick
>