Change Proposal for ODF 1.2 Metadata according Embedded DocumentScenario

[Svante Schubert <Svante.Schubert@Sun.COM>]

Dear TC members,

I would like to discuss with you my change proposal [1] for the new ODF
1.2 metadata feature in one of the upcoming TC calls.
As explained in the rationale of the Wiki proposal [2], the scenario of
adding and removing an ODF document within another ODF document makes
this change reasonable.

The change in one sentence: The core metadata mapping file
'manifest.rdf' shall no longer be used once per package, but once per
document.

To further clarify that the metadata feature is still also a package
level feature, I suggest to add to our OpenDocument Package
specification the term of a 'package document'.

We would state that in an ODF Package a 'package document' exists, which
is on this level just a set of files building a unit. We would than be
able to specify how package documents may embed further documents and
how their MIME types are being specified.

Therefore I have added aside of the proposal document [3] (the existing
metadata draft adapted with change tracking), a wording for a section of
the 'OpenDocument Specification Part 3: Package' in the Wiki proposal [4].

Regards,
Svante

[1]
http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/Change_Proposal_for_ODF_1.2_Metadata_according_Embedded_Document_Scenario
[2]
http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/Change_Proposal_for_ODF_1.2_Metadata_according_Embedded_Document_Scenario#head-353bf4aa7b12f5b1c4647d2080a16112918c38fe
[3]
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/29446/08-09-24-ODF-Metadata-Change-Request.odt
[4]
http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/Change_Proposal_for_ODF_1.2_Metadata_according_Embedded_Document_Scenario#head-f8a61251a0d0265f9a4ee6383a2183341990333c

Svante Schubert wrote:
> Dear TC members,
>
> During implementing the ODF 1.2 metadata feature in OpenOffice.org, we
> faced some metadata scenarios, which draw our attention back to the
> metadata specification of ODF 1.2.
> As general overview of this feature we created a task [1] and a wiki [2]
> to list all relevant user scenarios.
>
> But the most interesting and releveant scenario is the following:
> It is possible to embed an ODF document within an ODF document. For
> instance to embed a spreadsheet document within an text document and
> later separate or remove the embedded document from the host document
> again.
> Both documents might have metadata before merging and should still have
> their metadata sets after splitting the documents.
> Even more it is preferable that the metadata RDF files from the embedded
> documents are split up according to their usage, when the ODF
> documents are being separated.
>
> We came to the conclusion that this scenario can much easier be
> implemented if every embedded ODF document has its own metadata
> manfiest (ie. manifest.rdf), located in the directory of the embedded
> document (aside its content.xml). This would help us to handle a
> metadata repository separately for every embedded document, allowing us
> to split the metadata easily as required by the scenario above.
>
> We further suggest, that the manifest.rdf files of the embedded
> documents are NOT linked by the host document manifest.rdf - as linking
> is not an explicit RDF/XML feature - but are defined by their entry in
> the manifest.xml of the ODF package.
>
> If you would agree on this, I would prepare are wording for the ODF
> specification.
>
> Regards,
> Svante
>
> [1] http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=91562
> [2]
> http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Writer/Metadata_Support#Handling_of_metadata_on_editing.2Fupdating_an_text_document
>
>