[odf-discuss] Round tripping

[Lars Noodén]

Some of us have apparently spent a fair amount of time looking into the
current problems in today's applications when it comes to round trip
fidelity of OpenDocument files.

I have two questions, the answers to which are unclear to me:

1) how it is proposed to sort foreign elements (aka garbage) needed for
interoperability from those designed to enforce vendor lock-in from
those that are truly optional from those that are errors?

Before proposing a change to the specification to allow foreign
elements, explain how to overcome the problem in #1 above or
provide a reference to a short explanation.

Also, what quantity and type of foreign elements would be proposed?
All, no-holds-barred, or just some kinds, or just a specific set?

Currently, the spec is very good, since it requires that *applications*
to not choke on broken documents and MAY choose to preserve the foreign
elements, or MAY choose to drop them.


2) how it is proposed that requiring preservation of foreign elements
(aka garbage) would be engineered into the spec in such a way that abuse
is prevented?

In addition to the theoretical risk (see #1 above), we have a great many
major real-life examples of abuse in other specifications as a result of
added garbage (aka foreign elements) used by MS to prevent
interoperability with standard compliant applications and systems:

	Kerberos
	Java
	HTML
	HTTP

Regards,
-Lars