Conformance Clause proposal, Version 8

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

Dear TC members,

when I look over the discussions regarding the conformance clauses, it
seems to me that there is actually a very large area of consensus, and
that there are only a few, but essential items where the opinions
differ. These are:

- Should there be a loose conformance level for documents that allows
foreign elements everywhere?
- Can we remove that level, that we had in ODF 1.1, without prior notice?
- Should/Can we demand that a conforming producer must be able to create
(strictly) conforming documents?

In addition to this, there seems to be a strong demand for a conformance
level which does not allow foreign elements, and also for having a very 
limited number of conformance level. My impression is that we agree all 
agree on this.

The requirements are to some degree conflicting, but I anyway tried to
find a solution that may be acceptable to all of you. The key points of
it are:

- There will be two conformance levels for documents. One does not
support foreign elements and is called "OpenDocument document
conformance". The other one does support foreign elements without
restrictions and is called "OpenDocument Host Language Conformance".
- There will be two conformance modes for producers. A conforming
OpenDocument document producer must be able to produce conforming
OpenDocument documents. A conforming OpenDocument Host Language Producer
must be able to produce OpenDocument Host Language Documents, but there
is no requirement that it must be able to produce conforming
OpenDocument documents.

This proposals meets the requirement to have a strict OpenDocument
conformance, but it also provides a conformance mode for application
that wish to extend OpenDocument. This means that we have two
conformance levels rather than one, but the new name of what I called
"loose" conformance in prior proposals better reflects the
characteristics of this mode. And it lowers the risk of confusion. The
proposal also provides a conformance mode for ODF 1.1 documents that
contain foreign elements and shall be adapted to ODF 1.2.

The new name "OpenDocument host language conformance" is actually a name
I have adopted from the XHTML 1.1 specification, which provides a "XHTML
host language document" conformance level. It describes XHTML documents
that make use of extensions modules. In so far, we would be very close 
to XHTML in this regard.

The update proposal can be found here:

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/31052/conformance-definition-proposal-v8.odt

The version I'm referring to is the first one in the document.

I have made a few non substantial corrections and clarifications, most 
of them have been suggested by Rob (Rob, thanks for having a close look 
at the proposal). A list of these changes can be found in the proposal 
itself.

I would be glad if this proposal is acceptable for all of you and would
like to discuss and maybe vote on it on Monday.

Best regards

Michael



-- 
Michael Brauer, Technical Architect Software Engineering
StarOffice/OpenOffice.org
Sun Microsystems GmbH             Nagelsweg 55
D-20097 Hamburg, Germany          michael.brauer@sun.com
http://sun.com/staroffice         +49 40 23646 500
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS

Sitz der Gesellschaft: Sun Microsystems GmbH, Sonnenallee 1,
	   D-85551 Kirchheim-Heimstetten
Amtsgericht Muenchen: HRB 161028
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Thomas Schroeder, Wolfgang Engels, Dr. Roland Boemer
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrates: Martin Haering