OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC

On Monday 11 December 2006 14:42, Oliver-Rainer Wittmann - Software Engineer - Sun Microsystems wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Thomas Zander wrote:
> > I read the mailing list archives and wanted to comment on this post from 
> > Oliver.
> > http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200611/msg00108.html
> > 
> > Oliver wrote Thu, 30 Nov 2006 13:50:34:
> >> The text:style-override approach seems to more natural to me. I've got
> >> some numbered paragraphs in a certain list and wants to apply another
> >> label format to a part of these paragraphs.
> > 
> > There is a big assumption in this paragraph that I'd like to address.
> > You state that you start out with 'numbered paragraphs in a certain list'. And 
> > go from there.
> > In reality there is no way to explicitly say that a number of paragraphs 
> > belong to a list in the examples given (using text:numbered-paragraph). The 
> > assumption seems to be that all numbered paragraphs that belong to a certain 
> > style belong to the same list.
> > 
> Yes, that's my interpretation of the list style. All paragraphs, which 
> apply list style "L1" belong to the same list.

This is the current spec, but this interpretation would in fact make very little sense to the end user.
Imagine you have a very large document, with many headings, and at page 3 under 1.1.2 you have a simple
a/b/c/d list, and at page 100 under heading 18.5.6 you have another simple a/b/c/d list.
How is that "the same list"? Conceptually those are certainly very distinct lists, despite the fact
that they use the same a/b/c/d style.

One could certainly define two styles L1 and L2 that both use a/b/c/d, but this isn't about style
anymore then, it's about identifying lists, and this is what I propose to separate out into list-id.

Styles are supposed to be reuseable, to avoid having to define two styles with the exact
same properties. For e.g. text properties this is exactly the case already. But for styles,
if reusing a given style for two lists isn't possible, then it's inconsistent and messy.

> That's already the case for the headings in the text document, which all 
> by default apply the outline style - the default list style for outline 
> numbering.

Outline numbering is a bit different since it is by definition scattered across the
whole document, and there's only one list (although it would be useful to be able
to switch styles on it, for the case of 1 / 2 / 3 / A / B annexes).

> > Now, this means that having 5 lists, and I want to structure my ODF document 
> > to make it clear there are 5 lists, that I would need 5 different styles.
> > That completely breaks the concept of separating content from markup.
> > 
> I didn't understand your conclusion here.
> Why does the usage of different list styles for different lists breaks 
> the concept of separating content from markup?

Because the style ends up defining the structure of the document (which paragraphs
belong to which lists). Even 

On Dec 11, 2006, at 9:53 AM, David Faure wrote:

> One could certainly define two styles L1 and L2 that both use a/b/c/d, 
> but this isn't about style anymore then, it's about identifying lists,

Exactly right, and I want to underline this conceptual point, even if I 
don't have a lot to say about the specifics.

> and this is what I propose to separate out into list-id.

As I mentioned before, this is a general issue it seems to me, and I'd 
want any solution here to at least recognize that.

Consider the fact that one cannot now include lists or blockquotes or 
whatever within a paragraph, despite the fact they are almost always 
conceptually connected (in the sense that a user typically understands 
them to be).

The business of list numbering and its relation to the identity of 
lists is the same underlying issue.

I''d also like to point out that I'm increasingly seeing the impulse to 
stretch the style concept beyond what I'd call it's proper role. So 
before we do that, can someone define exactly what styles are and ought 
to be in ODF?

I'd say they define a class of content type, to which presentational 
information may -- and typically is -- attached.

They DO NOT identify any particular instance of a such a class.

Bruce

Hi,

The original ODF list concept is that we have 

On Monday 11 December 2006 17:22, Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> The original ODF list concept is that we have 

On Dec 11, 2006, at 12:04 PM, David Faure wrote:

> However the notion of a list-id for a bit more structure sounds  
> nice, and from what I recall,
> MSWord lists also have the equivalent of a list-id, this is where  
> this idea mostly comes from.

My question about the generic identity issue goes back to the xml:id  
discussion. Do we want to converge the myriad of different equivalent  
attributes (but which XML tools of course do not understand as such)  
towards xml:id? If yes, should we be introducing still new id  
attributes?

Just asking ...

Bruce

On Monday 11 December 2006 18:10, Bruce D'Arcus wrote:
> 
> On Dec 11, 2006, at 12:04 PM, David Faure wrote:
> 
> > However the notion of a list-id for a bit more structure sounds  
> > nice, and from what I recall,
> > MSWord lists also have the equivalent of a list-id, this is where  
> > this idea mostly comes from.
> 
> My question about the generic identity issue goes back to the xml:id  
> discussion. Do we want to converge the myriad of different equivalent  
> attributes (but which XML tools of course do not understand as such)  
> towards xml:id? If yes, should we be introducing still new id  
> attributes?

Well that's very different ;) xml-id is supposed to be unique, right?
list-id, on the other hand, is about referring to a list from multiple numbered paragraphs,
so it's definitely NOT unique (the same value would be found multiple times in a given
xml document).

-- 
David Faure, faure@kde.org, sponsored by Trolltech to work on KDE,
Konqueror (http://www.konqueror.org), and KOffice (http://www.koffice.org).

On Dec 11, 2006, at 12:45 PM, David Faure wrote:

> Well that's very different ;) xml-id is supposed to be unique, right?
> list-id, on the other hand, is about referring to a list from  
> multiple numbered paragraphs,
> so it's definitely NOT unique (the same value would be found  
> multiple times in a given
> xml document).

Oops, sorry; yes, you're right. :-)

It does relate to our metadata discussions, though.

For example, we're discussing proposing a few new attributes (drawn  
from RDFa) that would allow stuff something like (e.g. don't hold me  
to the details just yet):



That identifies that object with a local URI of "list-1".

Perhaps there's value in having the specific list-id attribute  
though; am not sure. Just wanted to mention that we're discussing  
some related issues.

Bruce

David Faure wrote:
> On Monday 11 December 2006 17:22, Michael Brauer - Sun Germany - ham02 - Hamburg wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> The original ODF list concept is that we have