[odf-discuss] Metadata issues in ODF

[Soren Roug]

I apologize for not talking about OOXML in this mail...

I've been writing a script that can convert the 20,000 Gutenberg texts 
(www.gutenberg.org) to ODT, and I've discovered that ODF is not quite 
adequate for simple *published* texts. First problem is that there is no 
Publisher metadata field in meta.xml. The second more significant 
problem is that there is no metadata field for the copyright information.

You can say, just put it in the text body. But there are now search 
engines that look for *Creative Commons* licensed documents 
(http://search.yahoo.com/web/advanced), and these search engines won't 
have a chance to find the license, unless there is a metadata field for 
it. Yes, you can say; just stick it in meta.xml anyway. But the spec 
only says implementations *should* preserve unknown elements. OOo does 
not, and the copyright is information you don't want to loose.

Finally, I converted Herodotus' Histories to ODT. You know him from the 
movie The English Patient. He published his book in 430 BC, and 
OpenDocument simply doesn't understand negative years.

I'm thinking of writing my issues up as use-cases and submit them to 
OASIS, but I found out that just a week ago the metadata subcommittee 
released a file called 07-08-22-ODF-Metadata-Proposal.odt for ODF 1.2. I 
would like to read it to see if they have already seen the issues, but 
it is password protected, and I don't want to pay the membership fee for 
what could be a one-off. Does anyone have the file? And would you send 
it to me (without breaking copyright laws and bylaws etc.)?

Sincerely yours,
Søren Roug