Re: [office-metadata] deadlines?

[marbux <marbux@gmail.com>]

On 5/13/07, Elias Torres <eliast@us.ibm.com> wrote:
> Ben Adida is available to review our document on behalf of Creative
> Commons. Bruce do you want to email him what you would like him to try?
>
I urge that if you want to set a short deadline that you give the
metadata preservation conformance issue a high spot on the SC agenda.
The conformance section is currently nonconformant with XML 1.0
because it repeatedly and specifically allows discretion for
implementers to destroy metadata inserted by other applications. That
raises an enormous conflict with RFC 2119's definition of "may" and
"optional" and RFC 2119's definitions are incorporated by reference in
XML 1.0. See <http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt>:

>>>

5. MAY   This word, or the adjective "OPTIONAL", mean that an item is
truly optional.  One vendor may choose to include the item because a
particular marketplace requires it or because the vendor feels that it
enhances the product while another vendor may omit the same item. An
implementation which does not include a particular option MUST be
prepared to interoperate with another implementation which does
include the option, though perhaps with reduced functionality. In the
same vein an implementation which does include a particular option
MUST be prepared to interoperate with another implementation which
does not include the option (except, of course, for the feature the
option provides.)

<<<

The importance of that issue relates directly to the latest proposal
involving Unique XML IDs and the danger is well illustrated by
StarOffice/OOo's missing support for preservation of the foreign
elements and attributes metadata that are described in the conformance
section using the permissive."may." The ODF specification currently
does not incorporate the definitions of RFC 2119 and provides no
definition whatsoever for "may" and "optional."

Clearly, Sun's engineers have misunderstood the nuanced applicable
definitions of "may" and "optional" applicable to processors based on
extensions of XML 1.0. We thus have non-conformant XML being produced
by the market leading ODF application. I think it unmistakable that we
need to provide more adequate explanation of what metadata "MUST" be
preserved to conform to RFC 2119 and XML 1.0.

I do not suggest that Sun should be required to fully support RDF;
that is appropriately within the company's discretion. But
preservation of other vendors' RDF metadata is not optional insofar as
it affects interoperability, if we are to be concerned about
conformance with XML 1.0. And we have a conformance section for ODF so
lax that an empty ZIP file is conformant ODF.

The TC has major work to do in this area for ODF 1.2 and I
respectfully urge that this SC advise the TC concurrently with
submission of its work to the TC as to what changes will be necessary
to the conformance section in regard to RDF support to satisfy the
minimum requirements of RFC 2119 and   XML 1.0. as to preservation of
RDF metadata. The SC work can not rationally be considered separately
from the metadata preservation conformance issue.

<http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/#sec-terminology>:

>>>

The terminology used to describe XML documents is defined in the body
of this specification. The key words MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL,
SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, ***MAY, and OPTIONAL,***
when EMPHASIZED, are to be interpreted as described in IETF RFC 2119
[link omitted]. In addition, the terms defined in the following list
are used in building those definitions and in describing the actions
of an XML processor:

...

at user option

    Definition: Conforming software MAY or MUST (depending on the
modal verb in the sentence) behave as described; if it does, it MUST
provide users a means to enable or disable the behavior described.

<<<

Best regards,

Marbux


> -Elias
>
> "Bruce D'Arcus" <bruce.darcus@OpenDocument.us> wrote on 05/13/2007 10:11:38
> AM:
>
> > For the past few months, I've been asking for some concrete deadlines
> > and a timeline. Can we PLEASE have that?
> >
> > I really want to present our proposal to the TC this month, and
> > preferably at the conference call on the 21st. Can we do that? If yes,
> > how do we get there? When and how do we declare our two documents
> > "finished"?
> >
> > Bruce
> >
>
>