OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC

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  • 1.  data cache, field name and source field id for data pilot table

    Posted 11-23-2008 15:57

    Dear TC members,

    I have created the proposal on the wiki: http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/data_cache%2C_field_name_and_source_field_id_for_data_pilot_tables
    Thanks.

    Best Regards,

    Mingfei Jia(贾明飞)
    IBM Lotus Symphony Development
    IBM China Software Development LAB, Beijing
    Tel: 86-10-82452493 Fax: 86-10-82452887
    NOTES:Ming Fei Jia/China/IBM E-mail: jiamingf@cn.ibm.com
    Address: No.28 Building, Zhong Guan Cun Software Park, No.8 Dong Bei Wang West Road, ShangDi, Haidian District, Beijing 100193, P.R.China



  • 2.  Re: [office] data cache, field name and source field id for datapilot table

    Posted 11-24-2008 22:31
    On Sun, 2008-11-23 at 23:52 +0800, Ming Fei Jia wrote:
    > Dear TC members,
    > 
    > I have created the proposal on the wiki:
    > http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/data_cache%
    > 2C_field_name_and_source_field_id_for_data_pilot_tables
    > Thanks.
    
    I have two comments regarding this proposal.
    
    1) An additional attribute to allow an alternative name to a data pilot
    field is a great idea.  I think we should extend that to field members
    as well, to allow alternative names to individual field members since
    that is also something that the users desire to do.
    
    For that reason, how about changing the name of the attribute from
    "table:field-name" to "table:display-name"?  That way the same attribute
    name can be used for the 


  • 3.  Re: [office] data cache, field name and source field id for data pilottable

    Posted 12-02-2008 05:19

    Hi Kohei,

    Sorry to be late response, I have accumulated hundreds of mails during these days since I am busy in other dev work. My comments are below.Thanks very much for your suggestions.

    Kohei Yoshida <kyoshida@novell.com> wrote on 11/25/2008 06:30:28 AM:

    > Re: [office] data cache, field name and source field id for data pilot table

    >
    > On Sun, 2008-11-23 at 23:52 +0800, Ming Fei Jia wrote:
    > > Dear TC members,
    > >
    > > I have created the proposal on the wiki:
    > > http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/data_cache%
    > > 2C_field_name_and_source_field_id_for_data_pilot_tables
    > > Thanks.
    >
    > I have two comments regarding this proposal.
    >
    > 1) An additional attribute to allow an alternative name to a data pilot
    > field is a great idea.  I think we should extend that to field members
    > as well, to allow alternative names to individual field members since
    > that is also something that the users desire to do.

    Besides the more human readable, I propose the field name to be allowed to rename is mainly from the consideration that in field reference operation, allow different data view for the same source field. For example, for the same source field "count", which records the product count of each person in one sales report, we can have 2 fields "absolute count" and "relative count" that bind to the same source field "count". And "absolute count" is the normal value view of the source field, the "relative count" is the reference view of the count relative to some specific person's count.

    As I understand, field member name specifies the value of data pilot member,currently using the attribute <table:member-name> to represent. What I can see the benefit of allowing member name to rename is the more human readable. For example, for a field "Country", which has 2 values: "China" and "USA". The "China" and "USA" will be 2 field members. In order to be more human readable for Chinese people, we can allow users to rename the member name to the corresponding Chinese string "中国". Of course, this rename shall be unique at least in the current data pilot table scope, otherwise, will cause confusing. But I think only human readable the requirement seems not strong enough, could you have any function requirement for renaming member name? That will be better.

    >
    > For that reason, how about changing the name of the attribute from
    > "table:field-name" to "table:display-name"?  That way the same attribute
    > name can be used for the <table:data-pilot-member> element as well.  Or
    > any other name that can be used both for <table:data-pilot-field> and
    > <table:data-pilot-member> would do.

    Yes, the table:display-name is more appropriate for this case. When I originally propose, I just used the table:display-name. But then I saw "table:field-name" is already used in the element <table:data-pilot-field-reference>, which has the same meaning with the one in this case. So I use "table:field-name" as the attribute instead of inventing other new attribute name. Of course, I also prefer the table:display-name if no one disagree.
    >
    > 2) Regarding the assignment of unique IDs to each field in the data
    > source, you propose to use the sheet name plus the column label as the
    > unique ID.  Why not simply use 0-based numerical IDs?  When the data
    > source is loaded, I can imagine internally the data are structured in a
    > single tabular form anyway.  So, I would imagine using the column (or
    > field) indices of that internal table would make the implementation a
    > little simpler.  Doing that would also allow it to be used when the data
    > source is not on a local spreadsheet but in an external data source,
    > and/or the data source is cached (as in your proposal).

    Sure, I just take an example for the ID, not definately a sheet name plus column label. What I propose is only a unique ID that can represent the location of the source field in the data source. As to how this ID is comprised of, I originally do not care much. But now as you said, I think using an index value of the source table as the source field id is better. I've changed the source field id definition in the wiki(http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/data_cache%2C_field_name_and_source_field_id_for_data_pilot_tables). I checked MS Excel, which uses an index from 1, so I define this ID as postiveInteger in oder to keep good interoperability with Excel.
    >
    > Kohei
    >
    >
    > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
    > To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that
    > generates this mail.  Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at:
    > https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php
    >



  • 4.  Re: [office] data cache, field name and source field id fordata pilot table

    Posted 12-12-2008 15:38
    Hi Ming,
    
    On Tue, 2008-12-02 at 13:18 +0800, Ming Fei Jia wrote:
    
    > Kohei Yoshida 


  • 5.  Re: [office] data cache, field name and source field id for data pilottable

    Posted 12-15-2008 15:02

    Kohei Yoshida <kyoshida@novell.com> wrote on 12/12/2008 11:38:15 PM:

    > Re: [office] data cache, field name and source field id for data pilot table

    >
    > Hi Ming,
    >
    > On Tue, 2008-12-02 at 13:18 +0800, Ming Fei Jia wrote:
    >
    > > Kohei Yoshida <kyoshida@novell.com> wrote on 11/25/2008 06:30:28 AM:
    > >
    > > > Re: [office] data cache, field name and source field id for data
    > > pilot table

    > > As I understand, field member name specifies the value of data pilot
    > > member,currently using the attribute <table:member-name> to represent.
    > > What I can see the benefit of allowing member name to rename is the
    > > more human readable. For example, for a field "Country", which has 2
    > > values: "China" and "USA". The "China" and "USA" will be 2 field
    > > members. In order to be more human readable for Chinese people, we can
    > > allow users to rename the member name to the corresponding Chinese
    > > string "中国".
    >
    > >  Of course, this rename shall be unique at least in the current data
    > > pilot table scope, otherwise, will cause confusing.
    >
    > Agreed.  We will probably need to working on including some sort of
    > unique name requirement in the specification.
    >
    > > But I think only human readable the requirement seems not strong
    > > enough, could you have any function requirement for renaming member
    > > name? That will be better.
    >
    > How about interoperability with Excel?  Excel supports this at least for
    > the past few versions (and probably more versions before that), and we
    > frequently receive customer documents making use of this feature.  Not
    > supporting this in ODF means that we'll lose that information once such
    > document is saved in ODF.  To me that is a strong case in favor of
    > supporting this enhancement in ODF.

    Make sense.
    >
    > Additionally, I can think of a case where the user of data pilot does
    > not have the ability to change member names because he/she does not have
    > access to the source data (e.g. external database or cached data).  Even
    > if the user has access to the source data, changing the name of one
    > member may require modifying a large number of cells if that member
    > occurs frequently in the associated field.  Providing a quick way to
    > temporarily rename a member name in one location should be a worthwhile
    > convenience.

    Yes, a case for functional requirement. thanks for explanation.
    >
    > BTW, this proposal of mine:
    > http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/display_names_in_data_pilot
    >
    > which proposes a super-set of the field display name part of your
    > proposal (and includes other attributes such as grand-total-name and
    > data-pilot-subtotal-name), was originally inspired by the
    > interoperability requirement, and later reinforced by user requests.  To
    > me, that is a strong enough requirement to make this enhancement
    > worthwhile for inclusion in the ODF standard.

    I saw your proposal. A few comments here:
    (1)table:grand-total is enumeration type, and can choose none,row,column or both. So if you want to define display names for grand total, at least define 2 names: one is for row, the other is for column. right?
    (2)table:data-pilot-sub-total is already defined as an element. Why not just add an attribute table:display-name to the element itself?
    (3)I do not very understand the table:data-pilot-field-member-marker you proposed.

    Additionally, I find <table:data-field> in <table:data-pilot-display-info> and <table:data-pilot-sort-info> may also need a display name. Currently <table:data-field> only specifies the source data field name. But here <table:data-field> is an attribute name, and can not contain attribute. So maybe add a new attribute <table:data-field-name> to the element <table:data-pilot-display-info> and <table:data-pilot-sort-info>. Or alternative solutions? Maybe your proposal need to include the 2 places so that we can provide a relative complete solution.

    >
    > To me the name table:display-name is more indicative of the purpose of
    > this attribute, since its value is used for display purposes only.  The
    > name field-name, on the other hand, sounds a little ambiguous for what
    > the attribute is used for.
    >
    > (I'm aware that later you changed this to field-display-name, which IMO
    > is better in terms of explicit naming.  But I still prefer a more
    > neutral display-name for the reason I outline below.)
    >
    > And when other elements need an alternative name for display purposes,
    > we could re-use this name without conditionalizing its semantics based
    > on the parent element.  As my proposal indicates, the data-pilot-member
    > element is one such element that could use this attribute.
    Make sense. A similar case is <draw:display-name>, totally 9 elements re-use the same <draw:display-name>, pls refer to 18.233 in OpenDocument-v1.2-draft7-11.odt. Of course, this re-use has its condition that the display name attribute is just for the element that contains it. Otherwise, we have to specify the explict object name. For example, <table:display-name> is not


    > Having said this, I'm open to alternative suggestions.
    >
    > > >
    > > > 2) Regarding the assignment of unique IDs to each field in the data
    > > > source, you propose to use the sheet name plus the column label as
    > > the
    > > > unique ID.  Why not simply use 0-based numerical IDs?  When the data
    > > > source is loaded, I can imagine internally the data are structured
    > > in a
    > > > single tabular form anyway.  So, I would imagine using the column
    > > (or
    > > > field) indices of that internal table would make the implementation
    > > a
    > > > little simpler.  Doing that would also allow it to be used when the
    > > data
    > > > source is not on a local spreadsheet but in an external data source,
    > > > and/or the data source is cached (as in your proposal).
    > > Sure, I just take an example for the ID, not definately a sheet name
    > > plus column label. What I propose is only a unique ID that can
    > > represent the location of the source field in the data source. As to
    > > how this ID is comprised of, I originally do not care much. But now as
    > > you said, I think using an index value of the source table as the
    > > source field id is better. I've changed the source field id definition
    > > in the wiki(http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/data_cache%
    > > 2C_field_name_and_source_field_id_for_data_pilot_tables). I checked MS
    > > Excel, which uses an index from 1, so I define this ID as
    > > postiveInteger in oder to keep good interoperability with Excel.
    >
    > I personally don't see any strong case favoring either 0-based or
    > 1-based.  So, your suggestion sounds reasonable to me.  I just
    > personally prefer 0-based numbering for everything unless there is a
    > specific reason to pick 1-based numbering.  But that's just my personal
    > taste. ;-)
    >
    > But like I said, 1-based numbering is fine with me (although it would be
    > nice to know why Excel chooses 1-based numbering here).

    MS Excel just uses 1-based IDs. So interoperability makes me incline to 1 instead of 0, :-)
    As to why Excel uses 1, maybe Doug or Eric can answer. But seems no explicit meaning here, maybe only a taste.
    >
    > Best regards,
    >
    > Kohei
    > --
    > Kohei Yoshida - OpenOffice.org Engineer - Novell, Inc.
    > <kyoshida@novell.com>
    >
    >
    > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
    > To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that
    > generates this mail.  Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at:
    > https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php
    >



  • 6.  Re: [office] data cache, field name and source field id for data pilottable

    Posted 12-15-2008 16:24

    Hi Kohei,

    Some words are truncated in the previous mail, send again. Thanks for your comments.
    Ming Fei Jia---12/15/2008 11:02:38 PM---Kohei Yoshida <kyoshida@novell.com> wrote on 12/12/2008 11:38:15 PM:


    From:

    Ming Fei Jia/China/IBM@IBMCN

    To:

    office@lists.oasis-open.org

    Date:

    12/15/2008 11:02 PM

    Subject:

    Re: [office] data cache, field name and source field id for data pilot table




    Kohei Yoshida <kyoshida@novell.com> wrote on 12/12/2008 11:38:15 PM:

    > Re: [office] data cache, field name and source field id for data pilot table
    >
    > Hi Ming,
    >
    > On Tue, 2008-12-02 at 13:18 +0800, Ming Fei Jia wrote:
    >
    > > Kohei Yoshida <kyoshida@novell.com> wrote on 11/25/2008 06:30:28 AM:
    > >
    > > > Re: [office] data cache, field name and source field id for data
    > > pilot table

    > > As I understand, field member name specifies the value of data pilot
    > > member,currently using the attribute <table:member-name> to represent.
    > > What I can see the benefit of allowing member name to rename is the
    > > more human readable. For example, for a field "Country", which has 2
    > > values: "China" and "USA". The "China" and "USA" will be 2 field
    > > members. In order to be more human readable for Chinese people, we can
    > > allow users to rename the member name to the corresponding Chinese
    > > string "中国".
    >
    > >  Of course, this rename shall be unique at least in the current data
    > > pilot table scope, otherwise, will cause confusing.
    >
    > Agreed.  We will probably need to working on including some sort of
    > unique name requirement in the specification.
    >
    > > But I think only human readable the requirement seems not strong
    > > enough, could you have any function requirement for renaming member
    > > name? That will be better.
    >
    > How about interoperability with Excel?  Excel supports this at least for
    > the past few versions (and probably more versions before that), and we
    > frequently receive customer documents making use of this feature.  Not
    > supporting this in ODF means that we'll lose that information once such
    > document is saved in ODF.  To me that is a strong case in favor of
    > supporting this enhancement in ODF.
    Make sense.
    >
    > Additionally, I can think of a case where the user of data pilot does
    > not have the ability to change member names because he/she does not have
    > access to the source data (e.g. external database or cached data).  Even
    > if the user has access to the source data, changing the name of one
    > member may require modifying a large number of cells if that member
    > occurs frequently in the associated field.  Providing a quick way to
    > temporarily rename a member name in one location should be a worthwhile
    > convenience.
    Yes, a case for functional requirement. thanks for explanation.
    >
    > BTW, this proposal of mine:
    >
    http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/display_names_in_data_pilot
    >
    > which proposes a super-set of the field display name part of your
    > proposal (and includes other attributes such as grand-total-name and
    > data-pilot-subtotal-name), was originally inspired by the
    > interoperability requirement, and later reinforced by user requests.  To
    > me, that is a strong enough requirement to make this enhancement
    > worthwhile for inclusion in the ODF standard.
    I saw your proposal. A few comments here:
    (1)table:grand-total is enumeration type, and can choose none,row,column or both. So if you want to define display names for grand total, at least define 2 names: one is for row, the other is for column. right?
    (2)table:data-pilot-sub-total is already defined as an element. Why not just add an attribute table:display-name to the element itself?
    (3)I do not very understand
    the table:data-pilot-field-member-marker you proposed.

    Additionally, I find <table:data-field> in <table:data-pilot-display-info> and <table:data-pilot-sort-info> may also need a display name. Currently <table:data-field> only specifies the source data field name. But here <table:data-field> is an attribute name, and can not contain attribute. So maybe add a new attribute <table:data-field-name> to the element <table:data-pilot-display-info> and <table:data-pilot-sort-info>. Or alternative solutions? Maybe your proposal need to include the 2 places so that we can provide a relative complete solution.


    >
    > To me the name table:display-name is more indicative of the purpose of
    > this attribute, since its value is used for display purposes only.  The
    > name field-name, on the other hand, sounds a little ambiguous for what
    > the attribute is used for.
    >
    > (I'm aware that later you changed this to field-display-name, which IMO
    > is better in terms of explicit naming.  But I still prefer a more
    > neutral display-name for the reason I outline below.)
    >
    > And when other elements need an alternative name for display purposes,
    > we could re-use this name without conditionalizing its semantics based
    > on the parent element.  As my proposal indicates, the data-pilot-member
    > element is one such element that could use this attribute.
    Make sense. A similar case is <draw:display-name>, totally 9 elements re-use the same <draw:display-name>, pls refer to 18.233 in OpenDocument-v1.2-draft7-11.odt. Of course, this re-use has its condition that the display name attribute is just for the element that contains it. Otherwise, we have to specify the explict object name. For example, <table:display-name> is not appropriate for <table:data-field> in the element <table:data-pilot-sort-info>.

    > Having said this, I'm open to alternative suggestions.
    >
    > > >
    > > > 2) Regarding the assignment of unique IDs to each field in the data
    > > > source, you propose to use the sheet name plus the column label as
    > > the
    > > > unique ID.  Why not simply use 0-based numerical IDs?  When the data
    > > > source is loaded, I can imagine internally the data are structured
    > > in a
    > > > single tabular form anyway.  So, I would imagine using the column
    > > (or
    > > > field) indices of that internal table would make the implementation
    > > a
    > > > little simpler.  Doing that would also allow it to be used when the
    > > data
    > > > source is not on a local spreadsheet but in an external data source,
    > > > and/or the data source is cached (as in your proposal).
    > > Sure, I just take an example for the ID, not definately a sheet name
    > > plus column label. What I propose is only a unique ID that can
    > > represent the location of the source field in the data source. As to
    > > how this ID is comprised of, I originally do not care much. But now as
    > > you said, I think using an index value of the source table as the
    > > source field id is better. I've changed the source field id definition
    > > in the wiki(
    http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/data_cache%
    > > 2C_field_name_and_source_field_id_for_data_pilot_tables). I checked MS
    > > Excel, which uses an index from 1, so I define this ID as
    > > postiveInteger in oder to keep good interoperability with Excel.
    >
    > I personally don't see any strong case favoring either 0-based or
    > 1-based.  So, your suggestion sounds reasonable to me.  I just
    > personally prefer 0-based numbering for everything unless there is a
    > specific reason to pick 1-based numbering.  But that's just my personal
    > taste. ;-)
    >
    > But like I said, 1-based numbering is fine with me (although it would be
    > nice to know why Excel chooses 1-based numbering here).
    MS Excel just uses 1-based IDs. So interoperability makes me incline to 1 instead of 0, :-)
    As to why Excel uses 1, maybe Doug or Eric can answer. But seems no explicit meaning here, maybe only a taste.
    >
    > Best regards,
    >
    > Kohei
    > --
    > Kohei Yoshida - OpenOffice.org Engineer - Novell, Inc.
    > <kyoshida@novell.com>
    >
    >
    > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
    > To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that
    > generates this mail.  Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at:
    >
    https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php 
    >



  • 7.  Re: [office] data cache, field name and source field idfor data pilot table

    Posted 12-15-2008 21:32
    On Tue, 2008-12-16 at 00:22 +0800, Ming Fei Jia wrote:
    
    > I saw your proposal. A few comments here: 
    > (1)table:grand-total is enumeration type, and can choose
    > none,row,column or both. So if you want to define display names for
    > grand total, at least define 2 names: one is for row, the other is for
    > column. right?
    
    Well, for interoperability point of view, having one custom name for
    the grand total would be sufficient.  In Excel, for instance, the custom
    grand total name is shared between the column and row grand total names,
    and its file format stores only one name for both types.
    
    OTOH, if we decide that defining different display names for column and
    row grand total names is useful, we could do that.  Having this in mind,
    I would like to propose the following alternative.
    
    Instead of storing the grand-total-name as an attribute of the