RE: [office] Regarding Conformance Clauses

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

Thanks for this summary.

The language I would like to see retained, even if there is no
loosely-conforming category, is a definition of foreign elements with the
agreed rules on how they MAY be accepted, and what SHOULD be done when they
are accepted and not understood by a conformant processor.

In addition, I would like to see a clause that suggests that conformant
processors SHOULD treat those conformant-document elements and attributes
that are not supported by a conformant implementation as foreign.  (At the
moment, we simply say nothing about this case.)

I have no problem with there being a single schema that is the same as what
the strict schema is intended to accomplish.  I think that is a good idea.
It would be much cleaner and understandable.

 - Dennis

  

-----Original Message-----
From: Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM [mailto:Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM] 
Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 2009 07:09
To: OpenDocument Mailing List
Subject: [office] Regarding Conformance Clauses

[ ... ]

1. The only extension point that ODF 1.1 has that is effected by my 
conformance clause proposals are foreign elements and attributes, that 
is, elements and attributes that are not defined by the ODF 
specification, and that may be mixed with ODF elements. Other extension 
points are not covered by the proposal.

2. Both proposals define a conforming document as one that does not 
contain any foreign elements and attributes. Both proposal require that 
a conforming ODF producer is able to produce conforming documents, and 
both proposals say that a conforming consumer should able to parse 
documents that contain foreign elements (The last should could be turned 
into a shall if this is the concern). So, the only (intended) 
differences between the two proposals are that in the first one, a 
document that contains foreign elements or attributes may be called a 
"loosely conforming ODF document", and that a conforming producer may 
create loosely conforming document in addition to conforming ones.

[ ... ]

3. ODF 1.1 defines two schemas, a strict schema and a non-strict schema. 
The difference between the two schemas is that the non-strict schema 
allows arbitrary elements and attributes within <office:meta> and the 
<style:*-properties> elements, while the strict schema does not. This 
means that an ODF 1.1 document that validates against the strict schema 
does not contain any foreign elements, while one that does validate 
against the non-strict schema may contain foreign elements within 
<office:meta> and  the <style:*-properties> elements. Since ODF 1.1 
allows foreign elements and attributes anywhere, the non-strict schema 
actually would not have been required. To make things simpler, I would 
suggest that we define a single schema for ODF 1.2.

[ ... ]