Re: [office] Re: [office-metadata] Suggested Changes on the Metadataproposal

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

Hi Bruce,

Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
> 
> On Jul 2, 2007, at 7:45 AM, Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - 
> Hamburg wrote:
> 
>> The accessibility SC also has defined some new features for ODF. They 
>> have been added to ODF. They are all optional from the specification 
>> point of view, and the specification itself does not say anything how 
>> these features are implemented by applications. It only states what 
>> information they encode. But the accessibility SC is also working on 
>> guidelines for authors and implementors. And these guidelines are 
>> exactly the place where it is said how these features should be used 
>> in implemented in order to achieve that documents get accessible.
>>
>> So, maybe the solution is to work on such guidelines for metadata, too?
> 
> It seems to me the question of preservation for accessibility is the 
> same as that for metadata. If an application strips accessibility 
> attributes silently, it's the same problem as if they do so with an 
> xml:id attribute.

I of cause can't speak for the a11y SC as well, but I believe the reason 
the current solutions works for them is because they assume that all 
vendors are interested in allowing to create accessible documents with 
their applications, and that therefore no application will silently 
remove the a11y information. And if it would, the resulting document 
wouldn't be accessible.

As for metadata: Metadata are cool feature, and the SC has created a 
very good specification. I therefore believe that vendors are really 
interested in implementing that part of the specification. So, I don't 
think that we in practice really have an issue.

> 
> Therefore, while I can't speak for the accessibility group, I tend to 
> believe that dealing with this issue piecemeal is rather inadequate. It 
> should be done in a general conformance section.

In my mail I have provided some concerns regarding formal conformance 
rules that are related to editing documents. Do you think these concerns 
are justified?

Michael


-- 
Michael Brauer, Technical Architect Software Engineering
StarOffice/OpenOffice.org
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