Re: [oiic-formation-discuss] Caution and Disclaimer on Interoperability

["Dave Pawson" <dave.pawson@gmail.com>]

Having just finished Pauls ... novel | post. Two things.


1. I'm a geek, not a lawyer. I want this groups output to be
(correctly) interpreted
by other geeks for implementation. On which basis I'd prefer a definition of
interop that's workable rather than legally correct.

2. Re pixel perfect.
Nice on Paul.

>> Paul.
>> I know that many on this discussion list are interested in the visual kind
>> of interoperability, and there is indeed progress that can be made here.

Hopefully.


> To the extent that accessibility or programmatic parsing, extraction,
> and transformations to other formats might be impaired by ODF visual
> interop features, the foregone advantages far outweigh visual interop
> on my set of scales. Flexible recycling of information is a far more
> critical market requirement to be fulfilled by ODF than visual
> interop, with PDF the relevant international standard for the latter.
> I have no issues with improving the ODF presentation layer until it it
> gets in the way of flexible content recycling.

Mmmm. Flexible content recycling aside, proposal.
That 'pixel perfect' (lousy term but gets across the idea) will be subsumed
under one or another profile, i.e. won't even be considered until
a scoping definition is in place.
At which time:
  for pixel perfect for an accessible (I'll use the non-print user as
usual) profile
the definition will be interpreted as identical audio wise (what's the
English for that!).
Same caveats as earlier, I'll discount your American accent when I play it in
my ... Canadian/UK synthetic voice.

[[Declaration of interest. I used to work for and with blind people, I get
quite twitchy on accessibility issues.]]

<visualFormatting>
============================================================
</


The nasty one that Paul brings up that should be addressed IMHO, even
if only to dismiss it.

Example.
I take a 'conforming' instance into my Vendor X application.
In order to read it I mess with it severely. Presents OK to
my user. No problem.
My user builds on the document, I (my software) adds all sorts of
extension stuff
to do what I think the user wants.
When I save it to ODF XML I (do something) to write compliant ODF XML.

1. Are we interested?
2. Should we care?
3. Is this an instance of application level interoperability?

I haven't a clue. I guess I could argue it both ways.

regards




-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk