Tabulator (TAB) questions to implementors

[Svante Schubert <svante.schubert@gmail.com>]

Are tabulators being inherited in ODF XML similar as style properties are?
Perhaps the first question should be: Are all other style properties
being inherited in all circumstances?

Regarding Tabs:
Within a content (or styles) XML file within a package a TAB declaration
may look like:
<style:style style:name="Heading_20_1" style:display-name="Heading 1"
style:family="paragraph">
    <style:paragraph-properties>
        <style:tab-stops>
            <style:tab-stop style:position="2cm"/>
            <style:tab-stop style:position="3cm"/>
            <style:tab-stop style:position="5.001cm"/>

Explained by ODF 1.2 via
http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/os/OpenDocument-v1.2-os-part1.html#element-style_tab-stops
http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/os/OpenDocument-v1.2-os-part1.html#element-style_tab-stop

and inheritance is mentioned for <style:style>
http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/os/OpenDocument-v1.2-os-part1.html#element-style_style

From a simple test in one ODF application it seems TABs are NOT being
inherited, which seems wrong at the first sight, but when taking a look
OOXML, where TABs are being inherited, but can be ignored on paragraph
level via a 'clear' attribute, the absolute writing of TABs would
guarantee interoperability.

Please note, the inheritance within the XML, does not say anything about
about the inheritance during run-time. Even without inheritance, full
absolute TAB positioning for every paragraph there would be run-time
inheritance possible.

If we want to inherit TABS during run-time, we would on the other hand
require something similar to 'clear' to guarantee interoperability among
the ISO Office format standards.

PS: In addition we might want to define the following attribute for TABs
as well
http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.2/os/OpenDocument-v1.2-os-part1.html#attribute-text_relative-tab-stop-position
as currently the position dependent on the following settings.xml flag:

<config:config-item config:name="TabsRelativeToIndent"
config:type="boolean">false</config:config-item>

It defines, if the left-margin have to be added to the tab position.

I will write JIRA issues for the problems, as soon we agree that there
is a problem.

Regards,
Svante