ODF 1.0 metadata notes

[Bruce D'Arcus <bruce.darcus@OpenDocument.us>]

As I was just looking at the existing ODF metadata support again, some 
quick notes on how it lines up with RDF, and with my argument on 
requirements ...

Taking an ODF document, I made the following changes, which validated 
as RDF:

1)  moved the "office:version" property attribute on the root to a 
child element of "office:document-meta"
2)  changed the "office:document-meta" root to "rdf:RDF"
3)  added an "rdf:about" attribute to the "office:meta" element

That's it. It's valid.

An alternative would be:

1)  change the "office:document-meta" root to "meta:Document"
2)  add an "rdf:about" attribute to the root
3)  removed the "office:meta" child
3)  add "office:version" as child of root

Also valid. Looks like so:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<meta:Document 
xmlns:office="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:office:1.0"
	xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink";
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/";
	xmlns:meta="urn:oasis:names:tc:opendocument:xmlns:meta:1.0"
	xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#";
	xmlns:ooo="http://openoffice.org/2004/office";
	rdf:about="x">
     <office:version>2.0</office:version>
     <meta:generator>OpenOffice.org/2.0$Unix 
OpenOffice.org_project/680m3$Build-8968</meta:generator>
     <meta:initial-creator>Bruce D&apos;Arcus</meta:initial-creator>
     <meta:creation-date>2005-11-27T09:38:52</meta:creation-date>
     <dc:creator>Bruce D&apos;Arcus</dc:creator>
     <dc:date>2005-12-04T23:18:58</dc:date>
     <dc:language>en-US</dc:language>
     <meta:editing-cycles>5</meta:editing-cycles>
     <meta:editing-duration>PT37M28S</meta:editing-duration>
     <meta:user-defined meta:name="Info 1"/>
     <meta:user-defined meta:name="Info 2"/>
     <meta:user-defined meta:name="Info 3"/>
     <meta:user-defined meta:name="Info 4"/>
     <meta:document-statistic meta:table-count="0" meta:image-count="0" 
meta:object-count="0"
       meta:page-count="1" meta:paragraph-count="5" meta:word-count="32" 
meta:character-count="156"/>
</meta:Document>

To find a document title, then, the xpaths (assuming the document as 
root) are:

	original: "office:document-meta/office:meta/dc:title"
	RDF option 1 above: "rdf:RDF/meta:Document/dc:title"
	RDF option 2: "meta:Document/dc:title"

In fact, the first two could be represented with a generic xpath that 
covered both:

	"/*/*/dc:title"

Instant compatibility at the xpath level between ODF 1.0 and 1.2 
metadata.

The xpath to a grab a title for the bibliographic data I am imagining? 
The same!

(though of course one would be grabbing a different sub-document, and 
accessing it by URI value)

This is just to emphasize what I've been saying all along: that adding 
RDF support to ODF could be -- from the perspective of backward 
compatibility -- an absolutely trivial change, but also add tremendous 
power going forward.

The existing metadata support is already almost-RDF, the metadata 
contents already are stored apart from the document and registered 
using the manifest, and they already have some expectations about 
extension.

My requirements thus build on this.

More on Thursday of course ...

Bruce