Re: [office-comment] Unacceptable presentation of content models (ODF1.2CD01r5)

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

Alex,

On 04/14/09 22:10, Alex Brown wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> I have just taken a quick look at the new (rev5) draft of 1.2.
> 
> The presentation of content models (text on a peach background) is still
> completely unacceptable, and this draft is consequently still mostly one
> enormous defect.
> 
> For the spec say (as it does) "the element [x] is usable used with the
> following elements" makes no sense. And assuming you delete the spurious
> word 'usable' the statement is still way too loose and casual for a
> normative statement of an element's "upward" content model, since there
> will be constraints upon how that element's parent may come to contain
> the element in question as a child.

Yes, there are additional constrains. These can be found in the schema. 
And because these cannot be expressed reasonably in a natural language, 
we are not using any normative words here.

The natural language we are using here has the purpose of providing 
cross references. The purpose is neither to normatively define any 
constrains, nor to duplicate what is said already in the schema.

> 
> The draft also states throughout that "The [x] element has the following
> child element(s)". But in *reality* your content models allow choice,
> sequencing, grouping, etc. But you have invented a prose schema language
> which loses all this vital information and lossily dumbs it down.
> 
> This is a serious systematic fault in this draft and fiddling around
> with the wording is not going to cure it: you need to find an accurate
> and lossless way to represent the content models of elements you are
> normatively describing - and just such a thing already exists in RNG
> compact syntax.

This does also exist in the RNG schema that belongs to the specification 
and will become part of the standard. One may embed the schema into the 
specification document as we did in ODF 1.0/1.1, but this has some 
disadvantages, too. The most serious one is that the structure of the 
specification has to follow the schema, or vice versa.

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