Re: [office] ODF 1.2 Single-Level Conformance and Law of UnintendedConsequences

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

Patrick,

On 01/19/09 19:57, Patrick Durusau wrote:
> Rob,
> 
> robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
> <snip>
>>> I do puzzle and hesitate over the second one. If I create an 
>>> application     
>>
>>  
>>> that does everything required of it by ODF 1.2 and at the same time 
>>> allows a user photo editing capabilities for images that are then 
>>> stored     
>>
>>  
>>> in a conforming ODF 1.2 document. That is the resulting file is fully 
>>> ODF 1.2 conformant. So, in what way is my application not conforming 
>>> to ODF 1.2?
>>>
>>> Or to put it another way, doesn't the greater include the lesser?
>>>
>>> Or is there some other issue that I am overlooking?
>>>
>>>     
>>
>> With the proposed conformance clause, the application would be 
>> conformant, or at least that is my reading.  A consumer or producer is 
>> conformant based on its _ability_ to consume or produce conformant 
>> ODF.  But it is not required to be exclusively capable of only that 
>> task.  All we can speak to is the ODF Producer -> ODF Document -> ODF 
>> Consumer relationship, without denying that there may be other 
>> concurrent relationships.  And within that relationship, the medium of 
>> exchange (the ODF Document) is distinguished from the endpoints of the 
>> exchange.  If we were exchanging ODF Producers among different parties 
>> and expected ODF Producers to be substitutable and interoperable, then 
>> we might limit their extensions as well.  But going in that direction 
>> is beyond what this TC has previously discussed and I am not pushing 
>> for it.  But constraining the properties of the exchanged document 
>> itself, where users do expect interoperability, that is something a 
>> bit more achievable.
>>   
> OK, with that understanding, then I lean more towards the alternative 
> that takes out "loosely conforming," assuming that we don't run into 
> other issues as we try to do so.

Rob's reading is correct. In addition to an ODF 1.2 document a 
conforming application may consume and produce any other document 
format, including format that are ODF 1.2 + extension. ODF 1.2 documents 
that contain extensions, or document saved in other formats, must only 
not called "ODF" documents.

So, the only difference between the two proposals is that in the one 
proposal, an ODF document that contains elements and attributes that are 
not defined by the ODF schema may be called a "loosely conforming ODF 
document", while it in the other proposal must not be called an "ODF 
document".

Best regards

Michael

> 
> Constraining documents that we define for interchange seems like 
> reachable ground to me.
> 
> Hope you are having a great day!
> 
> Patrick
> 


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