Re: [office] Question regarding user expectance.

[Thomas Zander <zander@kde.org>]

On Monday 26 March 2007 19:41, marbux wrote:
> I agree. But as I understand it, it's a bit more complicated when it
> comes to compatibility with ODF 1.0 and 1.1 documents because of the
> differences in implementation Florian has pointed to. I agree with his
> point that at the very least the numeration should be preserved, even
> if there's no work-around for the form of numbers switching, e.g.,
> from 4 to IV.

Hi Marbux,

backwards compatibility  to ODF1.0 and 1.1 is a funny thing for lists.
The thing is; lists in older ODF versions are not very well specified; so 
there is no real thing to be backwards compatible with.  Its like saying the 
new railroads have to be able to let old trains run on them. Even if those 
old trains have different distances between their wheels because that was 
never made standard before.

The solution there is to not be hand waving but be specific and say trains 
from model X and models Y will run on it as well as all trains which conform 
to the new wheel-base size.  You can look at those older models X and Y and 
make sure they run.

There are two major ODF-writing applications. And those applications have sent 
representatives for writing(/clarifying) the specs in ODF1.2. You can be sure 
that the old documents written by them will actually work in ODF1.2 without 
such problems as missing numbering. I know it will work without problems for 
KWord at least.

So, Florian has been trying to throw sand in peoples eyes; he states that _if_ 
there was another implementation of ODF1.0 that behaved differently from the 
big two, we'd get into trouble.
Which is much like saying that if there was a midget train our new railroad 
tracks would not be able to handle them.
Which is true, but not something we can fix in a consistent manner. I'd 
personally go as far as stating that this hypothesis is irrelevant.
-- 
Thomas Zander

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