RE: [oic] FW: [office] Moving forward on Conformance - OIC Role

Title: RE: [oic] FW: [office] Moving forward on Conformance - OIC Role

Dennis,

oh, no need to apologize.

I just interpreted the meaning slightly different than you intended it,

so apparently we had interoperability on the technical level but not

entirely on the semantic level :)

But it raises an interesting point on cross-TC efforts, possible overlaps

and I-thought-they-were-doing-that moments, now that we have the ODF TC,

Adoption TC and OIC TC

Best regards,

Bart

-----Original Message-----

From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:]

Sent: Mon 2/9/2009 6:00 PM

To: Hanssens Bart; 'OIC TC List'

Subject: RE: [oic] FW: [office] Moving forward on Conformance - OIC Role

My apologies.

I meant having looked at it with regard to what we can and cannot do that is

appropriate to our scope versus that of the ODF TC and what it is we might

be able to produce a standard for.

I did not mean to indicate that exploratory work on conformance, profiles,

and analysis is not underway, but that we haven't related our work to the

work of ODF TC and the ODF Standard(s) in some way similar to the structure

that I made up.

Sorry,

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----

From: Hanssens Bart [mailto:]

Sent: Monday, February 09, 2009 00:54

To: OIC TC List

Subject: RE: [oic] FW: [office] Moving forward on Conformance - OIC Role

Dennis,

Thanks for the note, although I slightly disagree with the "hasn't look

into it" part of 3.4 (at least when applied to 3.1 - 3.3) :-)

For instance:

- http://wiki.oasis-open.org/oic/SpecAnalysis/1.1/17/2

- http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/oic/200901/msg00060.html

- http://wiki.oasis-open.org/oic/ODFProfiles

- http://wiki.oasis-open.org/oic/ODFRemarks

Granted, it isn't much, but a start nevertheless. I am, however, a

little worried about the progress of it.

Although it's great to see that the OIC has a few very active

participants (thanks !), I must admit that I was hoping for others to

jump on the bandwagon...

So once again, I'd like to pose the question whether this is due to:

- the direction/focus of the OIC being perhaps unclear ?

- too much emphasis on theory instead of the practical aspects ?

- resource issues, perhaps because most members are also heavily

involved in ODF 1.2, holidays etc ?

- efforts simply not being visible ? (that is, there could be lots of

work going on under the radar)

- other factors ?

(Note that I'm not looking for blaming people, merely looking for a

solution where we can all benefit from our hard work)

Best regards,

Bart

-----Original Message-----

From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:]

Sent: maandag 9 februari 2009 7:21

To: OIC TC List

Subject: [oic] FW: [office] Moving forward on Conformance - OIC Role

There is occasional mention on the ODF TC list of how the OIC TC might

help

with ODF Conformance.  I am not clear on exactly how that works and I am

a

little concerned that we are expected to provide something that only the

ODF

TC can really do. 

However that sorts out, I thought exactly what we can provide and in

what

forms is worth kicking around.  Here are my thoughts from

<http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200902/msg00100.html>.

 - Denis

-----Original Message-----

From: Dennis E. Hamilton [mailto:]

Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2009 20:23

To: ''; ''

Cc: ''

Subject: RE: [office] Moving forward on Conformance - OIC Role

I saw these mentions of what OIC might do with regard to conformance and

I

wanted to clarify my still-learning understanding of that. 

 1. The OIC cannot do anything about the conformance levels and the

normative statements of the ODF specification.  It also can't (well,

shouldn't) do anything that results in contradiction of the conformance

levels and normative statements of the ODF specification.

 2. In determining how to assess conformance, the OIC may discover areas

where the ODF specification is underspecified or inconsistent and report

those finding to the ODF TC.  There may also be discoveries of

misunderstandings and disagreements about the requirements among

implementers, and that can be reported to the ODF TC as well.  (My

guess,

and only a guess, is that none of this is likely to coincide with

current

ODF 1.2 development, based on the desired movement of ODF 1.2 toward

OASIS

Standard and the early stage that OIC effort is in.)

 3. Where the OIC may be valuable is in the area of optional normative

statements, where there are MAY, NEED NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT.  Also,

there

may be something to do in regard to other optionality and discretionary

matters (maximum table dimensions, for example).  And, it may be

valuable to

notice what implementations are doing, if anything, around places where

the

ODF specification is silent or underspecified or apparently has left

matters

to be determined by implementations. 

    3.1 In this case (with great caution where there is no explicit

guidance

in the ODF Standard), the OIC might promulgate a profile that defines a

level of document, consumer, and producer for successful interoperable

usage.  Such a profile would presumably limit some optionality in order

to

achieve the interoperability and might specify more about how

interpretation

of unsupported provisions are to be handled under the profile. 

    3.2 I don't know that ODF TC concurrence would be required in this

case.

Perhaps such a profile could move to OASIS Standard in its own right,

even

though it is based on and completely dependent on a specific ODF

standard. 

    3.3 Perhaps something that would be valuable for the establishment

of a

profile is provision in the ODF specification of an agreed way to amend

MIME

types and office:version values, or other metadata, to indicate the

additional protocol agreement that a document conforms to and should be

employed in its processing.

    3.4 I am making this all up.  The OIC has not looked at this,

although I

am going to forward this note to that list also.

 4. I'm not sure about extensions.  I think that is not the business of

the

OIC except to perhaps recognize the possible existence of any extensions

in

common use among multiple implementations.  This strikes me as not

something

for OIC to have its attention on in the near term. 

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----

From:  [mailto:]

http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200902/msg00034.html

Sent: Tuesday, February 03, 2009 08:30

To: 

Cc: 

Subject: Re: [office] Moving forward on Conformance

Hi Rob,

thank you for this summary. I think it very well describes the

situation.

What I would like to add here is what you said in another mail, that is,

that we must also consider that some more work regarding conformance is

done in the OIC TC.

[ ... ]

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