[odf-discuss] Mass may endorse OXML.

[marbux]

On 7/4/07, Daniel Carrera <daniel.carrera at zmsl.com> wrote:
>
> marbux wrote:
> > And of course the majority never makes a mistake.
>
> Everyone who has a product in the market voted unanimously for the new
> proposal.
>
> Marbux, how much programming experience do you have? Have you ever
> written an ODF (or any XML) application? Everyone who has (and has
> chosen to speak) disagrees with your proposal. For example, I have said
> before that your expectation that all applications preserve unknown data
> "needed for interoperability" is technically infeasible. Patrick said as
> much on the TC list recently.


Another mischaracterization. He said it couldn't be done without specifying
how documents should be processed and he doesn't believe the standard should
specify how apps process data.

Thomas has also replied to you at length.


Thomas has evaded my questions at length.

> several people agreed with
> > me on that, including Bruce, Patrick, and Michael Brauer.
>
> None of whom agree with the substance of your proposals:


Yup. But none of whom are actually working on MS Office-ODF app
high-fidelity round-tripping, which our team is doing. I'll also note that
Patrick is taking the position that the only way to achieve round-trip
interoperability among ODF apps is by 1:1 feature match and mapping.

"If you send your file to my ODF application which doesn't understand
> your content, how is that interoperability? ... It is not possible to
> have interoperability based upon the premise that all ODF applications
> must accept unknown content." - Patrick


Which I responded to by pointing out that I was talking about round-tripping
documents, not identical rendering.

"There never has been any requirement in ODF that foreign elements and
> attributes be preserved and the authors of such methods knew that when
> writing their converter. The authors of other software are under no
> obligation to make changes in their software to work with such a
> solution.


To which I responded, IIRC, unless they are required to do so by conformance
requirements.


> And using standards to force others to adapt to a particular
> conversion strategy is extremely poor standards making. " - Patrick


That's a mere opinion that totally ignores the fact that the standard
already provides tools for a particular conversion strategy in the form of
the foreign elements and attributes. The question I've raised is whether
conforming apps should be allowed to destroy foreign elements and
attributes. As I noted in another post, the standard already says that
conforming apps "may" preserve them and says that in some cirumstances they
"should." But "should" has obviously not proved strong enough to persuade
Sun to follow the guidance.

As I said previously on the TC list, I've seen no sign that anyone on the TC
other than Gary, Florian, and me understand what the foreign elements and
attributes are for. I've also seen no sign that you understand their
purpose. You might consider doing a bit of research on that subject.
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