Dear Doug,
Le 3 févr. 09 à 17:15, Doug Mahugh a écrit :
> It's worth noting that the ODF metadata mechanisms don't allow for
> the use of a private/custom schema to tag content within a
> document. And that use case has value to many users. So if we
> decide that ODF won't be able to support those types of scenarios,
> for whatever reason, we should not be surprised to find that users
> who need such capabilities will look elsewhere.
From a purely commercial point of view, I have both customers and
prospects who consider the ability to use custom schemas as an
unwelcome feature. Customers (but again, mine may not be yours) wants
predictability, and they also want one file format to be used for what
it's best. Custom schemas are therefore not so much a must have
feature for ODF, but rather is a disctinctive capability of XML. By
taking a look at most of the other TCs inside the OASIS consortium,
you will see that XML is all about that: creating new kinds of
specialized markup languages, and it ultimately amounts to design a
custom schema that will be agreed by the rest of the standard
development stakeholders.
>
>
> Consider the trivial example of a pre-existing document, created
> years ago, which needs to be logged in to a content management
> system that requires an abstract to be identified for each
> document. If the format of the document is HTML, then a div with
> class="abstract" can be used to tag the appropriate paragraph(s) as
> the abstract. If the format of the document is DOCX, a customXml
> element with element="abstract" can be used for the same purposes.
> In both cases the document content remains valid HTML or
> WordprocessingML, while the user adds the custom semantics required
> for their purpose. The custom semantics can be (and should be)
> ignored by others. The user is free to innovate quickly, and does
> not have to think in terms of a tradeoff between strict compliance
> and flexibility/business value. They can, and do, have the best of
> both worlds in such scenarios: strict compliance to a standard, and
> freedom to innovate quickly for their own specialized purposes.
I would argue this to be a "dangerous" feature for a number of reasons:
- on the level of the usage scenarios, you cannot strictly
circumscribe the actual distribution and editing of documents.
Therefore, you could end up by having issues resulting of concurrent
modifications and clutter created by the documents circulation (aka
the network effect).
- what about safety?
- if you really need a custom schema, you are essentially breaking the
interoperability. If you have the need to create a custom schema, then
you have the need to spread it around, wether in your organisation or
outside your organisation. And this is just a simple binary scenario:
inside your org, outside it. I'm not talking about real collaboration
here.
- precisely because you need to spread your document with your custom
schema, then you may want to agree with other stakeholders (your
suppliers, for instance) on exactly what your schema is. And then you
end up with two questions: why not simplify the file format to include
only what you need and last but not least, what applications will be
able to process your custom schema and / or your new file format?
All this looks a bit far-fetched to me...
>
>
> I think ODF would benefit from being as supportive of such scenarios
> as HTML, IS29500 and other formats already are. No committee can
> anticipate every possible class of extension that users might find
> useful, so I think the format itself should allow for clean, simple
> tagging of content according to schemas that may never be
> standardized, and may never be widely known or used. Done
> correctly, such tagging puts no burden on simple interoperability
> between word processors (which typically ignore it), but can enable
> other types of interoperability that many people find valuable.
See the points above: I'd rather say that there are not many users who
have this need and when they do, they usually end up using an ad-hoc
or industrially designed file format based on XML that does one thing
well: to describe, encapsulate and represent their data in their own,
specific way. By then you won't need ODF. You need to change to
something else, in my humble opinion.
Best,
Charles-H. Schulz.
>
>
> - Doug
>
>
>
Original Message-----
> From: Patrick Durusau [mailto:patrick@durusau.net]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 7:38 AM
> To: office@lists.oasis-open.org
> Subject: Re: [office] One strictly conforming document?
>
> Rob,
>
> robert_weir@us.ibm.com wrote:
>> Patrick Durusau