preserving metadata (was deadlines?)

[Bruce D'Arcus <bruce.darcus@OpenDocument.us>]

On May 13, 2007, at 5:24 PM, marbux wrote:

...

> 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."

I'm not clear what you're objecting to. Is it this sentence?

"The attribute xml:id may occur on the following OpenDocument elements:"

Would it be resolved by adding an additional phrase?

"Xml:id attributes shall be preserved, unless their containing element 
is removed." or some such?

> 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.

The statement about preserving RDF/XML files is as follows:

"An OpenDocument package may contain an arbitrary number of metadata 
files. The content of the metadata files shall conform to the [RDF-XML] 
specification. Applications that read and write documents should 
preserve all metadata files. Metadata files should not be modified 
unless the content of the metadata file is changed."

Suggest how you would change it and we can talk about it.

...

Bruce