Re: [office] Suggested ODF1.2 items

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

Hi Florian,

first of all: thank you very much for compiling this list of enhancements.

My understanding of most of your items is that they shall improve the 
interoperability between OpenDocument and Microsoft Word/Office Open XML 
(OOX). So, you propose to add some Word features to OpenDocument that 
you believe can not be represented in OpenDocument, and you propose to 
deprecate some features that OpenDocument supports but Word/OOX does 
not, or to discourage their use. Is that correct?

Well, I'm very open to discuss enhancements to OpenDocument if they 
improve the interoperability with MS Word/OOX. But at the same time, I 
see no reason for deprecating existing OpenDocument features (or to 
discourage their use) because Word/OOX does not support them. Instead, I 
think they should be added to OOX/Word.

Frankly, I think your item list is somehow unbalanced in this aspect. It 
proposes to add Word/OOX features that are in your point of view missing 
in OpenDocument to OpenDocument, but rather than recommending to add 
those OpenDocument features that are not supported by OOX/Word to the 
two, you propose to deprecate them in OpenDocument. I'm a little bit 
surprised that you propose this to the OpenDocument TC, in particular 
since Novell is a member of ECMA TC45, and therefore should be able to 
make proposals for OOX, too.

A last question just for curiosity. My assumption is that you are making 
these proposals because you would like to implement them. Will this be 
in OpenOffice.org, or will this be in some other implementation?

Best regards

Michael

Florian Reuter wrote:
> Suggested enhancement for OpenDocument V1.2
> 
> Tables:
> * introduce table:allowCollapse attribute for paragraphs following nested tables to encode WW and HTML-like tables.
> * declare sub tables as deprecated
> 
> Numbering
> * introduce text:level-text attribute to encode arbitrary number formats
> * introduce text:num-follow-char to encode WW-like numbering
> * introduce text:list-override to encode WW-like numbering
> * declare style:list-level-properties/@text:space-before as deprecated. Effect can be achieved with paragraph indent.
> 
> Master-page styles
> * add header-first and footer-first to encode WW-like page-styles
> * modify master-page styles such that WW-like sections can be encoded; current CSS3.0 like text:sections are not applicable
> * declare the style:next-style-name attribute of master-page declarations as deprecated.
> 
> Styles:
> * allow deriving paragraph-family styles from text-family styles.
> 
> “Break chars”
> * introduce a <text:page-break/> command and a <text:column-break/> command similar to the <text:line-break/> command
> 
> Fields:
> * enhance field support by introducing a <text:field-start/> and a <text:field-end/> element to which metadata can be attached.
> 
> Change tracking:
> * introduce change tracking for tables
> * introduce change tracking on property level
> 
> Discourage the use of the following OD feature for MOOX interop:
> * nested frames 
> * current CSS3.0 like text:sections
> * use fo:break-before instead of fo:break-after
> * use fo:margin-* for tables
> 
> ~Florian
>