OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC

Hi Rob,

On 03/15/09 22:49, robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 1.4.2.3 Conforming OpenDocument Text Document
> 
> (D3) A conforming OpenDocument Text Document shall meet all requirements 
> of a Conforming OpenDocument Document, as well as the following additional 
> requirements:
> 
> (D3.1) The 

Michael.Brauer@Sun.COM wrote on 03/16/2009 05:52:47 AM:


>  From a pure technical perspective, I would say that the name of a file 
> is a property of the file system rather than of the file itself, and 
> that we in a definition of a file format can only set up requirements 
> for properties or content of the files.
> 

OK.  I can see that.


> My suggestion therefore is that we include the recommendation to use odt 

> as extension (or ott in case of a template), but turn this into a 
> informal note.
> 

Informal note or a "should"? 

On the TC we already see the problem in practice.  Kavi does not seem to 
be aware of the ODF mimetypes, and if we do not set the file name 
correctly, when we download from our own document repository some 
documents come down as *.bin files which Windows does not associate with 
any editor.  Sure, I can figure it out -- save, rename, etc.  But to the 
average user this is very confusing. The point of having consistent file 
extensions is it works well whether your server is configured properly or 
not.

-Rob

robert_weir:
> On the TC we already see the problem in practice.  Kavi does not seem to 
> be aware of the ODF mimetypes, and if we do not set the file name 
> correctly, when we download from our own document repository some 
> documents come down as *.bin files which Windows does not associate with 
> any editor.  Sure, I can figure it out -- save, rename, etc.  But to the 
> average user this is very confusing. The point of having consistent file 
> extensions is it works well whether your server is configured properly or 
> not.

I think suggesting certain file extensions is important, and SHOULD be 
included in the document.  Many systems (including web servers and most 
operating systems) use file extensions to make decisions on what to do 
with a file - so let's make it easy for people who get them!  Raising 
such suggestions to a "should" is defensible, too, as it has the 
potential to greatly aid interoperability.

But we do _not_ want to make this a shall/must (I'm not sure anyone 
wants it one, but I just wanted to clarify this).  In particular, I 
think the approach of "hiding" editable ODF files inside PDF files is a 
clever/wonderful one.  It means that when you want to create a file 
that's _intended_ for reading, but you want it to be _possible_ to 
write, you can do that.  But these would end usually end in ".pdf". 
Also, since ODF is XML, it can be sliced and diced into all sorts of 
formats; we want to _encourage_ that.

--- David A. Wheeler