[odf-discuss] .ott file format

[Damon Anderson]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2007 16:13:23 +0700, Thomas Zander <zander at kde.org> wrote:

> On Wednesday 21 February 2007 06:08, Damon Anderson wrote:
>> Certainly .ott is simply an alternate extension on an .odt that defines  
>> it
>>   as being a template rather than a document, but in a corporate
>> environment Template Files are extremely important, and I assure 95% of  
>> all
>> documentation my company produces starts from an .ott file. I agree  
>> with  
>> Mirko, why take out an extremely useful tool. Every office suite I have  
>>  
>> ever used has document templates, to not include them in a  
>> specification  
>> for an office suite would be wrong.
>
> Nobody is arguing against templates.
> Templates are good, KOffice has had them for as long as it exists (~10  
> years)
> and incidentally never needed an extra filetype for them.
>
>> In point of of fact my major complaint with OOo is that I don't have a  
>> simple and easy way of configuring all of my OOo installs for all of my  
>>  
>> staff with my document standards, like the corporate font, proper page  
>> sizes (A4 and not Letter) etc. The only real way to enforce a document  
>> standard with OOo (unless I sit down and reconfigure the application  
>> for  
>> every user login on every machine) is to require all staff to use the  
>> .ott
>>   templates on the server.
>
> This kind of proves my point that OOo has chosen the wrong solution for  
> the
> problem of templates. You have to register templates with the  
> application (in
> a generic manner) instead of with the file-system. As otherwise you'll  
> just
> see people invent new templates and email them to each other or some  
> such and
> the idea behind templates just lost its meaning.
> When you register a bunch of documents as templates, or just a network
> directory or whatever you don't need the extention and you solve the  
> problem
> better for corporate use.
>

I agree that for corporate use OOo has a lot of failings (which I will not  
enumerate here) but addressing the file extension point... doesn't it  
exactly fulfill the function you mention, e.g. since it really isn't a  
different file type, only a naming convention to define it as a template  
how is the folder or document registering any different? Further if I do  
it by a folder am I not now doing it by Filesystem? If I do it by  
"registering" the document don't I again fall into the issue of having to  
configure every user's application? Has this some how been generalized in  
KOffice?

-Damon


-- 
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/mail/