Re: [office] [Fwd: clarification: OpenDocument and SVG]

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

Dear SVG working group members,

first of all, please let me clarify that it neither was nor is the
intention of the OASIS OpenDocument TC to add any definition to the SVG
namespace. We fully understand that this namespace is owned by your
working group, and our only intention is to reference definitions from
the SVG specification.

As you know, the OASIS OpenDocument TC is specifying a schema for office
applications. This schema on the one hand has to be usable by (existing)
office applications as a native file format, and on the other hand
should be highly interoperable and for that reason, should make use of
existing standards wherever possible. Regarding SVG, the situation is
that SVG contains many definitions at the attribute level (like widths
and heights) that could be used by the OpenDocument schema, but that
this is not the case on the element level. Reusing attributes from SVG
is considered to be very reasonable by our TC, because SVG is a
widespread and established standard already. However, we face the
problem that, if we want to reuse attributes from SVG, we need to
reference them from our own schema, although the attributes themselves
are contained in anonymous or per-element partition namespaces. We tried
to solve this issue by adding the SVG namespace (prefix) to them, and we
were not aware of the fact that this could be interpreted as an effort
to add new attributes to a namespace that we don't own.

The OpenDocument TC until now did not have the chance to discuss this
issue, but I would like to ask the SVG WG to reconsider this issue with
the information I've provided. If there are still concerns regarding the
way the OpenDocument schema uses the SVG namespace, I'm sure the
OpenDocument TC is willing to change the namespace URI from the one the
SVG specification defines to a different one. Ideally, our two working
groups agree on a URI to use for this purpose, so that other efforts
that face the same problem as our working group can reuse this namespace
URI.

Best regards

Michael Brauer

OASIS OpenDocument TC chair


Lars Oppermann wrote:
> Michael,
> 
> there seems to be some concern within the SVG group on how we are 
> referencing their anonymous attributes via the svg namespace.
> See also http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-svg/2005Feb/0000.html
> 
> ~Lars
> 
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: clarification: OpenDocument and SVG
> Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2005 23:24:41 -0500
> From: MenTaLguY <mental@rydia.net>
> To: SVG List <www-svg@w3.org>, Jon Phillips <jon@rejon.org>
> CC: Inkscape ML <inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net>, dean@w3.org, 
> Lars.Oppermann@Sun.COM, Daniel Carrera <dcarrera@openoffice.org>
> References: <41FEDE94.5040901@rejon.org>
> 
> Jon, to restate the issue more concisely:
> 
> The OpenDocument specification, which is under consideration as an EU
> standard[1], introduces a number of XML attributes into the SVG
> namespace that are not part of the SVG standard.
> 
> For example, there is a non-standard svg:width attribute that is applied
> to non-SVG elements to specify width[2].
> 
> My concern is that if OpenDocument gets standardized by the EU in its
> current state, that would set a really ugly precedent for putting
> non-standard extensions in W3C-specified namespaces.
> 
> I have gone ahead and CCed the SVG WG staff contact and the OpenDocument
> Committee secretary.  Hopefully I've not wasted anyone's time, and they
> can talk to the appropriate people in each group and put the issue to
> rest quickly.
> 
> -mental
> 
> ---
> 
> [1] http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20050130002908154
> 
> [2] The most recent draft of the OpenDocument specification (Dec 2004) I
> could find is available here:
> 
> http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/10765/office-spec-1.0-cd-2
> 
> Section 9.2 of the specification, which starts on page 275, is most
> relevent.
> 
> Here is an example from section 9.2.1:
> 
>    <draw:rect svg:x="2cm" svg:y="3cm" svg:width="10cm" svg:height="20cm"
> svg:transform="rotate(45)" draw:style-name="object-with-shadow">
> 
> (in this example the 'draw' prefix is bound to the
> urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:drawing:1.0 namespace, and 'svg'
> to the http://www.w3.org/2000/svg namespace)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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-- 
Michael Brauer                                Phone:  +49 40 23646 500
Technical Architect Software Engineering      Fax:    +49 40 23646 550
StarOffice Development
Sun Microsystems GmbH
Sachsenfeld 4
D-20097 Hamburg, Germany                e-mail: michael.brauer@sun.com