Re: [office] A few thoughts on ODF change tracking

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Rob,

On Tue, 2010-09-21 at 15:59 -0400, robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
> Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net> wrote on 09/21/2010 03:34:29 PM:
> 

<snip>

> It is a non-goal for me to make everyone happy.  It is clear that for 
> every person who will say, "Why did you approve ODF 1.2 without X?" there 
> is another person already asking, "Why is taking you so long to complete 
> ODF 1.2 so we can have Y?"
> 
> 

True, but "we don't have to please everyone" isn't a mantra that is
going to win many friends. 

Maybe what we do in practice but better to appear gracious and
interested in feature requests. 

And having a future schedule when features will appear would not be a
bad thing. 


> > Before any implementors work on "complete" change tracking, I would
> > really like to see RDF based metadata support.
> > 
> 
> Have you seen the work in KOffice and Freoffice?  We're starting to see 
> implementations.
> 

No, but I will take a look. Thanks!

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick

> Regards,
> 
> -Rob
> 
> > Bringing intelligence to "dumb" documents is like buying foreign
> > language dictionaries in hopes a class will learn a foreign language. A
> > few may, but very few. 
> > 
> > A smarter web needs to start with smarter documents. ODF/RDF metadata is
> > a step in that direction. 
> > 
> > Hope you are having a great day!
> > 
> > Patrick
> > 
> > On Tue, 2010-09-21 at 13:29 -0400, robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
> > > A few thoughts on change tracking.
> > > 
> > > What would make this feature "complete"?  I think change tracking is 
> > > complete if an application can record any change to the end-user 
> semantics 
> > > of the document.  This includes things like changing the visible 
> content 
> > > of the document, but also changing the metadata.  It does not include 
> > > changes that have no end-user semantic value, e.g., changing an xml:id 
> or 
> > > automatic style name to a different value, provided the referential 
> > > integrity is maintained. 
> > > 
> > > I should be able to take two arbitrary ODF documents of the same type, 
> say 
> > > text documents A and B, generate a diff of them and encoded that diff 
> of A 
> > > to B as change tracks on A, such that when I accept all tracked 
> changes in 
> > > A I get something semantically equivalent to B.
> > > 
> > > Given that as a goal, I think we need to get it out of our heads that 
> any 
> > > standard or implementation does change tracking completely today. 
> > > Everything I can find has some notable areas of missing functionality.
> > > 
> > > Aside from the issues already noted in JIRA, consider:
> > > 
> > > - It is possible for a named style to change its definition, without 
> > > changing anything in content.xml.  For example, I could have a style 
> > > called "hidden" that is defined as white text on a white background, 
> and 
> > > then unhide it later by merely redefining the definition in 
> styles.xml. 
> > > How is that tracked?  MS Word does this, and in the UI appears to hint 
> 
> > > that it is a change to the document as-a-whole rather than any 
> particular 
> > > content.  This seems reasonable.
> > > 
> > > - It is possible to replace an image file with an identically named 
> image 
> > > file but with different content.  How is that tracked? 
> > > 
> > > - Similarly, for any object embedding, OLE or whatever, how are 
> changes 
> > > tracked? (MS Word doesn't seem to track these changes)
> > > 
> > > - And what about MathML, a special kind of object in ODF?
> > > 
> > > - And what about sub-documents?
> > > 
> > > - Or RDF XML metadata?
> > > 
> > > - Or Changes to the manifest, such as adding a new resource, not 
> > > necessarily references from content.xml
> > > 
> > > - And what about presentation files, which appears to lack support 
> even in 
> > >  OOXML? 
> > > 
> > > So change tracking, if you want to be complete, needs to deal with 
> changes 
> > > at the packaging level, in all of the defined XML's, as well as 
> changes in 
> > > linked resources, such as jpeg images and RDF XML.  As far as I can 
> tell, 
> > > no application and no standard does complete change tracking.  So I 
> > > suggest we don't take it as a last-minute goal for ODF 1.2 to achieve 
> > > completeness there. 
> > > 
> > > However, inability to do everything is not an excuse not to do 
> nothing. If 
> > > we can extend the current change tracking approach to some of the more 
> 
> > > commonly-reported pain points, like change tracking if table row 
> > > deletions, etc., then this would be good.  But I'd propose that before 
> we 
> > > move to a new and incompatible representation of change tracking that 
> we 
> > > sit down and work through the entire semantic content of an ODF 
> document 
> > > and ensure that we're using an approach that is capable of recording 
> > > changes across the entire range of possible document edits.  This is 
> > > important, and worth doing, but worth doing right.  The proposal 
> submitted 
> > > via the comment list appears to be an excellent start, but we need to 
> > > expand it to cover some of these other use cases, if we want to claim 
> > > completeness. 
> > > 
> > > Regards,
> > > 
> > > -Rob
> > > 
> > > 
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