Re: [office] Discussion Requested: ODF <dc:creator> conflicts

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

Hi Dennis,

On 04/02/09 02:49, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:
> Wonderful!
> 
> We need to refer to that.  It is very important that we refer to that and
> not other DCMI documents, because DCMI has removed the XML provision from
> its latest DCMI Namespace policy.

Well, this document does describe how DCMI should be used within XML, 
and therefore explains why ODF is using DCMI in the way it is using it. 
But is this what we should refer to in the ODF specification? Isn't the 
specification we have to cite here the one that describes the semantics 
of elements, and isn't this

http://www.dublincore.org/documents/dces/

that is, the one we are citing right now?

> OK, good.  Now we're simply back to discussion on whether the inconsistent
> specializations of <dc:creator> are enough of a problem to require remedy in
> the ODF specification.

DCMI here says that the creator is "An entity primarily responsible for 
making the resource."

ODF 1.2 normatively states

"The <dc:creator> element specifies the name of the person who last 
modified a document (<office:meta>), who created an annotation 
(<office:annotation>), who authored a change (<office:change-info>)"

and we have this note:

"Note: The name of this element was chosen for compatibility with Dublin 
Core metadata, but this definition of "creator" used here differs from 
Dublin Core, which defines creator as "An entity primarily responsible 
for making the content of the resource."  In OpenDocument terminology, 
the last person to modify the document is primarily responsible for 
making the content of the document."

First of all, the note is informative only. It states something, but is 
does not alter any definition we make in the normative text. And it 
refers only to the first usage of the <dc:creator> element. And it is 
badly worded, because it suggests that the semantics of dc:creator in 
ODF differ from the semantics defined by DCMI.

The purpose of the note actually is to provide a interpretation of the 
terms "primarily responsible" and "resource", etc. that fits into the 
world of editing applications. These applications, regardless whether it 
is a simple text editor or a complex office applications, just store 
whole files on a disk or other media. There is no real differentiation 
between creating a file, modifying it and so on. All these things 
include a save operation that stores the whole file as last step.

Anyway, if we want to provide a clarification, then my suggestion would 
be to remove the note entirely, and to change the normative text to:

"The <dc:creator> element specifies the name of the person who *created 
the current document instance* (<office:meta>), who created an 
annotation (<office:annotation>), who authored a change 
(<office:change-info>)"

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
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