Requirement: page and line break indicators

+NAME
Sean McGrath

+CONTACT


+CATEGORY (select one or more from below)
import-export

+SCOPE (select one or more from below)
text

+USE CASE
I have a set of ODT documents to batch process into a report. The report needs to cite locations in the ODT documents
using page and line number.

+DESCRIPTION
Unlike some "high end" wordprocessor/DTP packages such as FrameMaker, ODT
provides no way to access hard/soft page breaks or hard/soft line breaks.

Obviously, the soft line/page break information is volatile - opening up the same
ODT in another ODT processor will most likely result in new soft line/page breaks.

However, there are many high-volume usage scenarios where having access to line/page
number information of the last rendering is very useful. Examples include citation of line/page info
in reports, back-linking from HTML to PDF on a page-by-page basis, pre-flight checks etc.

This problem of page/line view on one side and content-oriented object flow view is as old as the hills.
I'm a big fan of designing around the latter but facilitating the former. I.e. allowing
ODT implementations to optionally record soft page/line break information in point elements
or perhaps processing instructions.

Sean