OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC

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  • 1.  Metadata Charter

    Posted 03-06-2006 10:40
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    Subject: Metadata Charter


    Greetings!
    
    A couple of quick comments for the discussion later today:
    
    1. From the comments I have seen, I think there is a general feeling 
    that the requirements and use case deliverables should be combined into 
    one deliverable:
    
    > 1. A list of meta data use cases for OpenDocument documents and 
    > OpenDocument
    > enabled applications, together with a classification of the use cases.
    > 2. A list of meta data related requirements for future versions of
    > OpenDocument, which will be prioritized by the OpenDocument TC. 
    
    With just a little judicious editing those can be arranged in such a way 
    as to allow the OpenDocument TC to set priorities for further deliverables.
    
    2. On the "main" editing tool portion of the charter:
    
    > The proposed enhancements further must consider office applications as 
    > the
    > main editing tool for OpenDocument documents, which means, they must not
    > conflict with the processing model of OpenDocument documents for office
    > applications.
    
    a. I don't think that not being in "conflict with the processing model 
    of OpenDocument documents for office applications" has any relationship 
    to "consider[ing] office applications as the main editing tool for 
    OpenDocument documents...."
    
    Further, I think the suggestion has been made that levels of 
    conformance, the default I suppose being the "ignore but preserve" 
    strategy of the current standard, be specified for any metadata additions.
    
    I rather like the idea of conformance levels for metadata support.
    
    **A use case/example of non-office application editing an OpenDocument 
    document follows, feel free to ignore as the main points are above.**
    
    Background: Bankruptcy courts in the US are used by individuals and 
    corporations who are unable to pay their debts as they come due. The 
    filing of a bankruptcy petition (a highly stylized form) triggers 
    certain legal consequences for others, even if they are unaware of the 
    bankruptcy filing. The following senario is based on my memory of 
    bankruptcy procedure which is almost 20 years out of date but should be 
    generally valid in terms of the steps.
    
    A bankruptcy petition is electronically filed in ODF format with the 
    clerk of the bankruptcy court. That transmission is accepted by the 
    Durusau-Bankruptcy module which does a number of things. It validates 
    the petition according to the local rules, such as verifying that the 
    attorney of record has been admitted to the local bar and more 
    importantly, initiates a transfer of funds to the clerk's office to pay 
    the filing fee. Assuming the petition is accepted, the petition is 
    accepted and electronically signed by the module.
    
    As a consequence of filing, bankruptcy notices have to be generated and 
    delivered to all the creditors listed in the petition, any banks where 
    accounts are held, etc. Those notices are automatically generated, in 
    ODF format, and electronically delivered to all the creditors, banks, 
    local law enforcement (who are often in charge of selling property 
    seized in court proceedings), etc. As electronic acknowledgements arrive 
    concerning that notice, both the delivery and acknowledgement 
    information is written to the ODF doucment from the debtor that lists 
    those parties.
    
    Creditors file their claims in ODF format and the metadata in those 
    documents is used to write further information to the documents 
    submitted by the debtor concerning the claim of that particular 
    creditor. (This is not required by ODF but suggested so that any 
    creditor can obtain a copy of the appropriate document and have all the 
    current information on claims and the basis for them, with links to the 
    original documents.)
    
    Note that none of the writing to the file has been done with anything 
    that could be considered a traditional office application. Nor is it 
    necessary that the application in question be able to engage in 
    processing of the OpenDocument in any traditional sense of the word. It 
    need only be able to process the portion of the metadata necessary to do 
    its task and no more. Whatever processing model it uses for that task 
    should be irrelevant, so long as it results in a comformant ODF document.
    
    Actually, for security purposes, I suspect that none of the process 
    could be invoked other than by the automated process.
    
    Apologies for going on at such length but I think it is important to 
    realize that ODF has the potential to enable this sort of automated and 
    collaborative processing without everyone having to adopt a single 
    vendor solution.
    
    Hope everyone is at the start of a great day!
    
    Patrick
    
    -- 
    Patrick Durusau
    Patrick@Durusau.net
    Chair, V1 - Text Processing: Office and Publishing Systems Interface
    Co-Editor, ISO 13250, Topic Maps -- Reference Model
    Member, Text Encoding Initiative Board of Directors, 2003-2005
    
    Topic Maps: Human, not artificial, intelligence at work! 
    
    
    


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