Re: [office] review ODF 1.2 specification draft - chapter 18, attributesin fo namespace

[Jirka Kosek <jirka@kosek.cz>]

Oliver-Rainer Wittmann - Software Engineer - Sun Microsystems wrote:

> -- I am not sure, if it is good to have only the reference to XSL for
> attributes in fo namespace. Below, you will find some comments to
> include some sentence about the attribute's purpose. After given such
> comments to the first reviewed attributes I omit them for the rest and
> write down this general comment. I think we should decide, if a
> reference to XSL is enough for such attributes or if some text about the
> purpose of such attributes for ODF should be added.

I think that references to XSL are generally not enough. Reason is that
XSL-FO properties as defined in XSL spec are operating on area tree
formatting model. But this formatting model is not used by ODF. This
leads to situation where one understands to attributes in FO namespace
only by applying common sense, but formally and logically such excerpts
of XSL spec doesn't make sense solely in ODF context.

The solution would be to copy'n'paste XSL-FO properties definitions from
XSL spec into ODF spec and modify definitions to use ODF terminology and
model. But of course this would make ODF spec much larger and it will
have usual cons of not referencing already existing specification. But
IMHO ODF uses XSL-FO properties in a way which is not allowed by XSL
spec (this is reason why those attributes use shadow namespace instead
of real XSL-FO namespaces) and thus referencing XSL spec is at least
questionable.

Personally I would prefer ODF specification saying that attributes in
"FO" namespace are behaving similarly to corresponding XSL-FO properties
but then all FO attributes should be precisely defined in ODF spec text
including any deviations from their original XSL counterparts.

			Jirka

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