Re: [office-metadata] Suggested Changes on the Metadata proposal

[marbux <marbux@gmail.com>]

On 6/29/07, Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net> wrote:

Marbux.

marbux wrote:
> To all those who said we were being unreasonable to decide that we
> were no longer willing to place our faith in Sun's leadership of the
> OpenDocument Technical Committee, we give you Exhibit A. Sun
> Microsystems is the enemy of ODF interoperability. It will be
> interesting to see how those who eschew confrontation deal with these
> proposals, which will -- if adopted -- eviscerate the Metadata SC's
> work, allowing Sun to break interoperability with other applications.
>

As you may or may not know, Svante's first language is not English but
he has done a hell of a lot better job than I would trying to write a
standard in German.

Asking for more information before simply jumping to the conclusion that
the proposals are the enemy of interoperability would be a more
productive course.

Did you not see my posts that asked for more information?

Take the first proposal for instance:

> VI) Dropping non modification requirement
> "Metadata files should not be modified unless the content of the
> metadata file is changed.
>
> This sentence describes application behavior. The described behavior is
> moreover not essential, nor do we have something similar for ODF
> content, like keeping the XML structure, when the document is not being
> changed.
What is at issue is not modification of the metadata file but
preservation of the metadata file.

In other words, an application might simply keep the metadata file but
on the other hand, it might also read the metadata file and save it in
another RDF syntax that it prefers for the file. Is that modification?
Yes.  Is that preservation? Yes.

It may be that our wording was inelegant in the proposal in that the
intent was to have the metadata preserved but not to restrict how that
was done.

Since we don't constrain the RDF format in the first place, requiring it
to not be modified doesn't really advance interoperability. One can
expect to encounter RDF in a finite number of formats as specified by
the W3C as the proposal is currently written. So taken at face value, if
we preserve the metadata, we have no more and certainly no less
interoperability than we did before.

You can argue that we should require some particular RDF format (I
personally don't have strong feelings one way or the other) and that
such format be preserved but that is a separate issue.

I think we are having a confusion of terms. By "interoperability" I mean round-tripping of documents amongst a multitude of applications without loss of data, i.e., fully integratable applications acting in the role of routers of information rather than as end points. If Application A sends a document to Application B which sends it to Application C which sends it to Application A, will Application A still find the data it needs to properly render the file? Right now, ODF is only for end point solutions and because StarOffice/OpenOffice.org are the most featureful, they are the only applications that can handle everything another ODF app may throw at another.

Do we need to preserve Application A's unique flavor of RDF in order for the data to survive a trip through many applications before returning? If so, then we should be concerned about specifying "some particular RDF format" and the preservation of such metadata.

The key is understanding the technical aspects of what is being proposed
and not simply assuming that every change is a change for the worse.

I am not making assumptions. I am dealing with what I understand to be factual. If I get it wrong, I get it wrong. But I am not dealing with assumptions.
 

I have worked for a very long time on the metadata proposal and I have
every intention of ODF having an interoperable metadata mechanism. I
think I know enough about both to make sure that happens.

As with Bruce, I question whether you have sufficient votes to make sure that happens.