Re: [office] OFFICE-3311 - Identifiers - review and consolidateidentifiers and references to identifiers

["Andreas J. Guelzow" <andreas.guelzow@concordia.ab.ca>]

On Tue, 2011-01-18 at 17:12 -0700, Patrick Durusau wrote:
> Andreas,
> 
> On Tue, 2011-01-18 at 14:39 -0700, Andreas J. Guelzow wrote:
> > On Tue, 2011-01-18 at 13:05 -0700, Patrick Durusau wrote:
> > > Greetings!
> > > 
> > > For identifiers we use text:name, style:name and other various
> > > mechanisms.
> > > 
> > > http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/OFFICE-3311
> > > 
> > > Since names are sometimes displayed
> > 
> > These names should really not be displayed. For display purposes we have
> > attributes such as style:display-name.
> > 
> 
> So are you suggesting we drop display of such name and replace the
> display name with style:display-name?

I don't know what you mean. We already have "style:display-name". Only
in the absence of that attribute style:name is used for display
purposes.

> 
> > >  and yet must also server as
> > > identifiers, that means some names are subject to restrictions, such as
> > > no spaces, that other names are not. 

I see style:name as an internal identifier and style:display-name as the
user visible name. 

> > > 
> > > I propose that we use xml:id as the universal identifier for ODF
> > > elements. All pointing is made to an xml:id.
> > > 
> > > Where necessary for other purposes, such as display to users, the
> > > various *:name attributes can be retained but for use as names.
> > > 
> > > I see three advantages to this change:
> > > 
> > > 1) Implementors have to implement one pointing mechanism, not several.
> > 
> > This reason would have worked for 1.0. To make this change requires
> > implementors to support both mechanisms plus to handle possible
> > conflicts.
> > 
> 
> You mean legacy files?

Most implementations are trying to read files from future versions of
ODF as well as from older ODF versions. 

> 
> Not really, depends on the application. 
> 
> If you mean a full-featured, supports every draft or version of ODF ever
> published for all capabilities, yes. 

If we want to have full interoperability that should be the normal
situation.

> 
> If you mean a "lite" application that only supports meta entry for
> document that are surrounded by frames, possibly not. It is only
> generating ODF documents and need not know or care what other generators
> of ODF documents may or may not do. 

Of course things are always easy for generator-only applications. 
> 

> I should have observed that where users supply names that are used as
> targets (as in display), then the application has to preserve the name
> *as given.*

In that case the name should be stored in something like
"style:display-name".

Andreas