RE: [office] Do we really have that many options in ODF?

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

Michael,

I would say that everywhere there is a "SHOULD," "MAY,"
"implementation-defined," and especially "implementation-dependent"
(including when implicit in the omission of sufficient detail for it to be
anything but implementation-dependent) that is PERMISSION TO CONFORMING
PRODUCERS, we need to consider the unnatural acts and barriers that this
imposes on consumers.  

In particular, a consumer that is intended to be interoperable must either
provide for every permitted case or else do the obvious thing and find out
what particular alternatives significant producers actually implement,
supporting those specific cases.  And, for the sake of interoperability, the
sibling producer, if any, that is intended to be interoperable with
significant producers would adopt only those cases too.  Those who rely on a
primary producer's code base have a reliable way of doing that, including
perpetuation of what, in accordance with the ratified standards, is probably
a bug or an even worse defect.  But now a de facto defect.  So the danger is
that the only practical solution is a mono-culture of implementations that
are the only ones the user community can trust to provide some modicum of
interoperability.

If that is the best we do, it is not clear why we would bother to put all
this effort in the name of an interoperable, independently implementable
(sort-of) specification for an international standard.

Thanks for asking.


  - Dennis
  - - - - - - - - - - - - -
   Standards are arbitrary solutions to recurring problems (R. W. Bemer)
   Although not by becoming the recurring problem (orcmid).
  When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.


-----Original Message-----
From: Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM [mailto:Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM] 
Sent: Friday, May 07, 2010 00:52
To: Hanssens Bart
Cc: David LeBlanc; 'ODF TC List'
Subject: [office] Re: certificate chain and XAdes, was Re: [office] RE:
Digital Signatures

[ ... ]

I do agree that too many options may lead to interoperability issues, 
but do we really have that many options in ODF?

[ ... ]