Re: [office] Metadata subcommittee discussion

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Bruce,

Excellent use cases!

I do have a niggle about implementation side of things:

Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
<snip>

> There's a way to do all three fairly elegantly.
>
> In order:
>
> 1) we adopt a set of rules for extension. Those rules are likely to be 
> RDF or some subset (e.g. XMP).
>
> This gives the predictability you note in the sense of the model, but 
> opens up significant flexibility. It's the best of both worlds really.
>
> 2) We define a list of document content elements which can hold an 
> attribute (or set of them) that point to metadata descriptions (that 
> conform to 1) that are stored in the package (see more on this below), 
> or might simply be an identifier uri.
>
> 3)  As with 2, we allow these (optional) attributes to be attached to 
> style definitions, so that in tagging content with a given style, a 
> user would be adding those richer semantics.
>
If we are doing pointing in #2 and #3, do we really need to store 
metadata directly in the document? Thinking that would free us from 
having to choose a metadata flavor as opposed to enabling users to pick 
ODF applications that support the metadata they like to use.

If the IRI is pointing to a local instance of metadata (file:///), the 
user could be given the option of including it in the document package.

Some ODF applications may want to support only Dublin Core and not full 
RDF or XMP. If we do the attributes and pointing correctly, it opens up 
opportunities for both developers and users without forcing us to make 
some lesser of the evils sort of choices with regard to metadata formats.

If anything, we have seen a lot of development in metadata formats over 
the years and I don't see any signs of that slowing down.

What has been lacking is an effective way to get any granularity in the 
use of metadata in documents.

I think your proposal solves that problem (despite our differing 
opinions on #1) rather neatly.

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick

-- 
Patrick Durusau
Patrick@Durusau.net
Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model
Member, Text Encoding Initiative Board of Directors, 2003-2005

Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work!