Re: [office] The Rule of Least Power

[Dave Pawson <dave.pawson@gmail.com>]

2009/2/16 Thomas Zander <T.Zander@nokia.com>:

> I think this looks good at first, but thinking a bit more about it, I get the
> strong impression its a bit too simplistic. Too much black/white.
> Lets use the usecase of koffice:nodeTypes again, which is an attribute saved
> in a path.
> The property is saved to allow the user to edit the path and the path will
> remember the type of node. If you ever edited a vector path you know that it
> is build up from 'nodes' that have one or more control points. The way you
> interact with this depends on the node-type.
>
> The suggestion to make koffice save 'strict conforming' data then basically
> means that you will always loose the information of which type of control you
> are editing. Making re-editing rather annoying, but not much more.
>
> Therefor I think having this information saved even in an 'strict conformance'
> mode does not harm anyone and only helps the user not loose part of his work,
> which is really critical for using ODF as a native format for professional
> vector editors.

So make one exception? Not reasonable for any app that doesn't use this data?
If the data is that critical it should be part of the document, not an
extension.


>
> In conclusion this one example falls between the two usecases.  No government
> will care at all that this extension is there and forcing KOffice to not save
> it will just harm the user that uses the same app for re-editing.

What makes this one use case for one application so special?



> The more I read this thread and ask questions, the more I get the impression
> that the only reason this proposal is made is out of unfounded fear.

No, just conformance to a 'standard'. Not a standard with a couple
of extensions just for application X


>
> In reality applications will be chosen based on which subset of the features
> of ODF they support, both loading+displaying and saving them.


If your app saves the extension data and it's re-opened in the same app,
then nothing is lost. Only if it goes via a  couple of other ODF
processors.  That's the price of standardization.


regards



-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
Docbook FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk