MINUTES OF THE OASIS OPEN OFFICE XML FORMAT TC MEETING
FEBRUARY, THE 18TH/19TH, 2003, MENLO PARK, CA
corrected 26-Mar-03, original version:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200302/msg00023.html
Attendees
=========
Doug Alberg <doug.alberg@boeing.com>, Boeing
Phil Boutros <pboutros@stellent.com>, Stellent
Michael Brauer <michael.brauer@sun.com>, Sun Microsystems
Patrick Durusau <pdurusau@emory.edu>, Society of Biblical Literature
Gary Edwards <garyedwards@yahoo.com>
Paul Grosso <pgrosso@arbortext.com>, Arbortext
Jason Harrop <jharrop@speedlegal.com>, SpeedLegal
Tom Magliery <Tom.Magliery@corel.com>, Corel
Daniel Vogelheim <daniel.vogelheim@sun.com>, Sun Microsystems
Hartti Suomela <hartti.suomela@nokia.com>, Nokia (as an Observer)
Acceptance of Minutes of the February, the 10th meeting
=======================================================
- Jason Harrop is mentioned in the minutes, but did not attend to the
meeting. Beside that, the attending TC members unanimously accepted the
minutes.
Action Items
============
none
Discussion of Work Package 1.2 First Level Elements
===================================================
- The TC unanimously accepted to add an additional "genre" element for
images within the "office:body" element.
- The TC unanimously accepted to replace the former class "text-global"
with the genre element for "text" and an additional attribute that
specifies that the document should behave like a master document rather
than a normal text document.
Discussion of Extensibility
---------------------------
The TC discussed the extensibility of the OASIS Open Office XML schema.
It identified the following possible requirements that have been
discussed further:
A) The definition of custom properties, i.e. an arbitrary number of
name/value pairs that can be added to a document.
B) The preservation of the custom properties defined in A).
C) A method to add attributes not specified by the Open Office XML
schema to paragraphs and character runs that are preserved.
D) A method to allow character runs across paragraph boundaries.
E) Forward compatible processing of documents, namely processing of
styles and unknown elements.
F) A specification how to deal with processing instructions.
The TC decided to use the term "_should_", "_may_", "_must_", etc. for
specifying application behavior following the IETF Best Practice
document "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels" at:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2119.txt
Discussion details:
A)+B) Custom properties
-----------------------
The TC unanimously agreed to add custom properties by adding "typed"
meta data elements. These elements are similar to the already existing
"meta:user-defined" elements, except that they have an additional
attribute specifying the type of the custom property value (f.i. string,
number, date, etc.). These custom properties _should_ be editable by
conforming applications and _should_ be preserved when editing documents
with conforming applications.
The TC unanimously agreed to add fields for referencing custom properties.
C) Attributes for paragraphs/character runs
-------------------------------------------
The TC agreed that styles are suitable and sufficient to further markup
paragraphs and character runs (but also other object types like drawing
objects), provided that
- attributes and elements that are contained in a style but are not
specified in the Open Office XML schema are preserved, and
- multiple styles can be assigned to a paragraph, character run, etc.
Since current office suite implementations support only single styles,
and since supporting multiple styles seems not to be easy to implement,
the TC unanimously agreed to the following:
- A "class" attribute will be added to all elements that reference a
style already. The value of this class attribute is of XML type IDREF (
http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml#idref) and contains a
list of styles that are applied to the object additionally to the style
referenced by the "style-name" attribute. Formatting attributes
contained in styles referenced by the "class" attribute are evaluated in
the order the style names appear in the list. The style referenced by
the "style-name" attribute is treated like being the first style in the
list. Conforming application _should_ support this new attribute and
also _should_ preserve it while editing.
- Attributes and elements that are contained in the "properties" element
of a style but are not specified by the Open Office XML schema _should_
be preserved by conforming applications.
- To be usable in a list, styles referenced by a "class" attribute must
not contain space characters. For this reason, a "display-name" has to
be added to styles. A description is also considered to be useful by the
TC. The schema details of classes will be discussed by e-mail on the
TC's mailing list.
D) Character runs across paragraph boundaries
---------------------------------------------
The TC unanimously agreed that the extensions mechanism defined in C)
can be used to support character runs across paragraph boundaries. Such
runs can be split at the paragraph boundaries, and an (user defined)
"id" attribute can be added to the style referenced by the two new runs
to specify that both runs actually are a single one.
E) Forward compatibility
------------------------
As stated above, the TC unanimously agreed that conforming applications
should preserve all attributes and elements contained in the
"properties" element of styles and are not specified in the Open Office
XML schema.
For all other attributes and elements that appear in a document but are
not specified in the Open Office XML schema, the TC unanimously agreed
that conforming applications _may_ preserve them. Additionally, the TC
unanimously agreed to add a new attribute that specifies whether a
conforming application should process the child elements of unknown
elements or should ignore them. The attribute's default is to process
them. If they should be processed, the document has to valid against
the Open Office XML schema if the unknown element is replaced with its
content only.
F) Processing instructions
--------------------------
The TC unanimously agreed that conforming applications must read
documents that contain processing instructions, and that they _should_
be preserved.
Discussion of Work Package 2 Meta information
=============================================
Additionally to the custom properties specified above, the TC
unanimously agreed that the "office:meta" element can contain arbitrary
elements. These elements _should_ be preserved while editing a document
with conforming applications, but these application need not to support
editing these elements.
The TC also unanimously agreed that all elements in the "office:meta"
element might appear multiple times, but that the Open Office XML format
specification does not specify how a conforming application handles this
case when saving a document. It might keep the elements (seems to be
appropriate for keywords), save only one (seems to be appropriate for
editing duration), modify the first one (seems to be one possibility for
author), etc.
The TC unanimously agreed to remove the "meta:keywords" element and
instead allow multiple "meta:keyword" elements within "office:meta".
Discussion of Work Package 3 Text content
=========================================
- The TC clarified that tables bound as a character are covered by the
more general concept of a text box that is bound as a character and
contains a table.
- The TC started a discussion about the representation of lists,
especially whether the list (container) elements are required. This
discussion has been postponed until the next phone meeting.
- The TC unanimously agreed to rename the "tab-stop" element to "tab",
and to add the an optional attribute to the "tab" element that specifies
the number the tab stop in the paragraph's tab stop definition (contain
in its style) the "tab" actually jumps to. The position "0" is reserved
for the left (or start) paragraph margin, "1" for the the first tab stop
in the tab stop definition. This feature should simplify transformations
into XSL-FO.
Misc
====
- Daniel Vogelheim will chair the phone meeting on March, the 3rd.
New Action Items
================
- Daniel: Send link to updated TC spec/schemes maintained on OpenOffice.org
- Daniel: Suggest names for genre elements and attribute for master docs
- Editors: suggest Relax-NG schema changes according to the meeting
decisions
Michael Brauer
OASIS Open Office XML format TC chair