OpenDocument Specification Document Options

[Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg <Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM>]

Dear TC members,

I have discussed the options we have regarding a separation of the 
OpenDocument specification into several parts with Mary. The two option 
are described below. It seems to me that option a) fits well to our 
plans for ODF 1.2, while option b) does not. I therefore would like to 
propose to the TC that we choose option a). Compared to the single 
document solution (that is not listed below but of course exists), it 
provides us with some flexibility regarding authoring of the 
specification parts and their approval, but does not change anything for 
the ODF 1.2 ballot for an OASIS standard and its submission to ISO.

Please note that a decision for option a) does not mean that we have to 
use the flexibility we have for public reviews and committee 
specification ballots. We may have separate public reviews/cs ballots, 
but we don't have to. We may decide what is the better option if the 
documents, or one of it, are ready for a public review.

Best regards

Michael

Options

a) We break the ODF specification into three parts, that all
together make up ODF, and there each of these parts is not a
specification of its own. In this case, the fact that we have
three parts is more or less an editorial matter.

Provided that reviewing the individual parts independent of each other
is meaningful, we may conduct public reviews of the parts independent of 
each other. We may further advance the parts to committee specification 
separately, provided that this makes sense. We may not conduct OASIS 
standard ballots for the parts separately, and we therefore may not 
submit them independent of each other to ISO.

b) We break the ODF specification into three parts, where
each of these parts is a specification of its own. The
OpenDocument specification itself is either a separate
document, that references the other three, or one of the
three documents takes over the role of the OpenDocument
specification, by referencing the other two.

This is similar to what the Emergency Management TC does. The three 
parts (or specifications) in this case would be advanced to OASIS 
standards independent of each other, and would require separate 
submissions to ISO.