[ODFPlugtest] writing implementation specific defaults

[Thomas Zander]

On Thursday 18. June 2009 10.26.02 Wouter van Vugt wrote:
> It must be me, but shouldn't default values be part of the spec instead
> of the application?

Yes, you are right.

Not to be mistaken with default document settings, which I think Jan is 
confusing this with.

The bottom line here is that if you intend to create a document and that has 
user-specified-values like positioning or size, then the only reason to not 
write those into the odf doc is because they are the same as the default 
value.
So you can imagine that a margin of zero is not written out.
But then we need to make clear in the ODF spec that the default margin is 
zero; and not 2.5cm or something.
Or, more technical;  <foo margin="0"/> is equal to <foo/>.

The problem we have right now is that for not so trivial variables, like the 
default numbering value of list items, the default is different per app. 
Sometimes well researched, sometimes just arbitrarily chosen. Please refer 
to Rob's links for those details.

This should indeed be added to the ODF spec, but the worst we can do now is 
to just arbitrarily choose any value. Much better is to let different 
implementations come up with de-facto default values based on proper 
research and market experience and then put that in the spec.
As you all will hopefully agree, design by committee is doomed to fail ;)

I would hope thats something that will be addressed on future plugfests.

ps. for those that don't know me; I'm the KWord guy ;)
-- 
Thomas Zander