Re: [oiic-formation-discuss] My perspective. Extensions

2008/6/29 Thomas Zander <>:

> This brings up an important problem; when an implementation does not support a
> certain feature at all, does that mean loading a document and saving it out
> again will loose those features?  I think this is an important part of our
> interoperability question.
> To answer this question we have to make an important distinction between known
> ODF features and unknown ODF features.  A known feature is something that is
> detailed in the specification, but this implementation does not support.  For
> instance because its text rendering engine is not powerful enough.
> Completely separate from this is unknown metadata or plain foreign tags.  For
> example an ODf implementation may add some new feature that is not (yet)
> supported by ODF and it saves it in its own namespace. This new feature is
> not possible to support for most other applications, but it may save the tag
> out again.
>
> So, if anyone asks if an ODF application has round-trip preservation of
> properties I want the first counter question to be if this is about known or
> foreign properties ;)


I'd prefer a simple definition.
A known feature is define in the spec.
An unknown one is not defined in the spec. Other name, an extension.

Lets say vendor A doesn't implement/support  SVG?
Is that a known feature or unknown, to that vendor?
I'd define that as unimplemented. A test should reveal that.


regards

-- 
Dave Pawson
XSLT XSL-FO FAQ.
http://www.dpawson.co.uk