OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC

  • 1.  A few of specific examples

    Posted 02-04-2009 00:49
    Some specific examples of how and why arbitrary proprietary extensions are 
    evil.
    
    Two common concerns with users is the need for privacy and security.  The 
    issue of personally-identifying meta-data is increasingly in the news. 
    Some products, like Microsoft Office, have a built-in operation that will 
    remove such information from a Word document.  There are also third-party 
    application that will strip such metadata from a document.
    
    So, suppose you want to write such an operation for an ODF document.. What 
    do you do?  Simple enough, look to meta.xml scrub extension elements under 
    


  • 2.  RE: [office] A few of specific examples

    Posted 02-04-2009 04:47
    An interesting topic.
    
    I will say that we are not talking about necessarily arbitrary nor
    proprietary extensions (and the proposed requirement to document deviations
    sounds like an interesting gate).  I am not otherwise going to address the
    good-vs-evil argument.  
    
    In existing language, there is the requirement that after the described
    process of elimination occurs, there be a strictly-conforming document
    underneath.  I think that is strong guidance to implementers about playing
    safe and also wanting to maintain interoperability (if they so desire) with
    conforming consumers that will not interpret the extension.  Also, adding
    strictly-compliant documents should assuage those concerns that very
    communities of practice and interoperability might have about the damage to
    interoperability that foreign-elements and attributes might represent.
    
    I can see a variety of useful ways to make use of such a thing with the
    understanding of what the likely foreign-element treatment will be.  I can
    also see how such provisions help with down-level use of up-level documents
    and even with first-step ODF 1.2 implementations that, say, haven't figured
    out how to support