Re: [office] "document template"

[Patrick Durusau <patrick@durusau.net>]

Jomar,

On 7/14/2011 4:09 PM, Jomar Silva wrote:
> Hi Dennis
>
> On Thu, Jul 14, 2011 at 4:45 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton
> <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>  wrote:
>> A case that interests me is what happens if the template is changed after a document that depended on it is produced?  What if a template of the same name exists at the consumer who opens a document that was produced from a template of the same name (the famous normal.dot comes to mind)?
> As far as I remember, a template is only used to format the document
> during it's initial creation, and to provide for users a special set
> of pre-defined styles that they can use on the document. I never heard
> (or saw) an office document use case as you present here.
>
The problem is that we define "pointing" at a template from inside an 
ODF document.

Question: What is the "thing" being pointed at?

Is it an ODF document?

If so, we have an ODF document pointing at an ODF document.

Recalling that we define the contents of templates, which seems to me to 
point towards a template being an ODF document.

I don't think there is an answer in the current text, hence the reason I 
started this line of questions before formulating a proposal.

> The way you're explaining here looks like the .css usage on HTML
> files, but I don't think that we have something similar to that in the
> real world of office documents.
>
>> None of these behaviors or anything else is addressed in the specification, and I'm not sure that it can be.
> I have serious doubts if this is something that we may address in the
> specification:
>
> 1. Do we need really to explain to people how-to use templates ?
>
> 2. If we do so, how big is the risk of halting innovation on this area ?
>

Well, if we aren't going to define templates and at least how they are 
invoked by ODF documents, why mention them at all?

You can have all the "innovation" you want by simply saying nothing.

That does create interoperability problems.

Just off the top of my head, I was thinking of proposing that that a 
template be defined as styles, content, forms, etc., prior to the entry 
of user created content. Once a document has user created content, 
unless saved as a template, it is simply an ODF document, etc. OK, would 
have to define ODF document to exclude templates.

 From my perspective, templates involved assumptions about application 
behavior that are not defined in the standard. What I want to do is put 
everyone on an explicit and even footing with regard to those 
assumptions. That involves making them explicit.

We could abandon templates entirely to the realm of application 
behavior, although I think that would be a bad solution. But it would be 
an explicit solution.

Hope you are having a great day!

Patrick




> Best,
>
> Jomar
>
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-- 
Patrick Durusau
patrick@durusau.net
Chair, V1 - US TAG to JTC 1/SC 34
Convener, JTC 1/SC 34/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)

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