Re: [office-metadata] Re: [office] Suggested ODF1.2 items

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

Hi everybody,

Patrick Durusau wrote:
> Florian,
>
> Florian Reuter wrote:
>
>> Hi Bruce,
>>
>> the problem here is that we need to be able to encode documents like
>>
>> <p><span/><field-start/><span/><p>
>> <p><span/><field-end/></p>
>>
>>  
> Did you mean:
>
> <p><span/><field-start/><span/></p>
> <p><span/><field-end/></p>
>
>
> Ah, are both <field-start> and <field-end> empty elements?
>
> To put it another way: What is the content that is being surrounded by 
> the <field-*> tags?
>

The problem of marking an area that is not relative to the XML structure 
can be solved in different ways, I see two simple approaches:


1) As Florian suggested, using an empty start and end tag as marker:

Florian's approach (a little more complicated example, by adding a 
further span)
<p><span/><field-start/><span/></p>
<p><span/><field-end/><span/></p>


Pro - The size:
Only two XML elements for marking the area

Con - The new complexity for XML based applications:
 From the view of a XML element it is very hard to find out if part of a 
certain field/area or a field/area at all



2) By a 'concatenation' of elements using the same attribute:

Let's call it the XML friendly approach:
<p><span/><span meta:class="foo"/></p>
<p><span meta:class="foo"><span/></p>


Pro - Easy to handle for XML based applications:
e.g. XSLT uses xsl:key

Con - The Size:
Often more than two XML attributes for marking an area


Weighting the pro/con I see currently no reason to use the first 
approach and neglect the second, have I overseen something?

Best regards,
Svante