[ODFPlugtest] MSO does not read LO files

[Dennis E. Hamilton]

Andreas, so if we fix it, validators can change their behavior.  

The question is, what is the easiest way to repair the damage.  If it is by raising an issue in the current Candidate OASIS Standard Public Review, I will reluctantly do that.  If we can instead offer guidance for implementers and reconcile the specification later, I would be happier to do that.

The standard is too brittle in this place, with no added value and the downside of making documents that are so "valid" rejected by down-level consumers that will likely process the document just fine once it is "corrected."

I do not believe this was a well-considered change (even though it is there because I opened my big mouth).

Originally, manifest:version was defined only for use on a <manifest:file-entry> to indicate the version of the artifact that the file entry corresponds to.  

I know I commented somewhere that when I first saw manifest:version in a draft of Part 3, it naturally occurred to me that it was about the version of the manifest and so foolishly went to the next step: why not?

Showing how confusing my confusion can be, we had these two JIRA issues:

OFFICE-2243:
<http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/OFFICE-2243>
  manifest:version ill-specified and misleading

This is where the new conformance clause to require <manifest:file-entry> manifest:version="1.2" showed up when the document or subdocument is meant to be an ODF 1.2 one.  This is not about <manifest:manifest> manifest:version.  Note that the proposal here was to remove manifest:version altogether.  Instead, we made things more brittle.  I doubt this was discussed by the TC and no one remarked on it in any Public Review when it appeared in this form.

OFFICE-2244:
<http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/OFFICE-2244>
 Provide Package-Level manifest:package-version attribute
 *THIS IS ENTIRELY MY ERROR* 
 ****How many times must I say this was a blunder?****

Here we made things even more brittle.  Nice idea in a self-evident sort of way. Terrible idea considering that it breaks down-level compatibility whether or not the document in hand will be processable just fine by an ODF 1.1 consumer were the attribute simply not used.  This is not about what an ODF 1.2 consumer should do, but about the havoc introduced for no gain with respect to some ODF 1.1 consumers who take the ODF 1.1 manifest.xml schema as gospel.

 I doubt that this was ever discussed on the TC or noticed by a reviewer after it was introduced and first appeared in this form in a Public Review.

 The description in the issue states my concern.  I did not consider the down-level impact.

 (I don't know if anything happened about Michael's comment concerning the <dsig:document>.  I'm afraid to look.

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: plugtest-bounces at opendocsociety.org [mailto:plugtest-bounces at opendocsociety.org] On Behalf Of Andreas Guelzow
Sent: Tuesday, June 28, 2011 11:40
To: ODF Plugfest mailinglist
Subject: Re: [ODFPlugtest] MSO does not read LO files

On Tue, 2011-06-28 at 08:58 -0700, Dennis E. Hamilton wrote:

> I suspect a validator won't mind, unless it cross-checks for a
> manifest:version="1.2" when it finds an office:version="1.2" attribute
> in the actual XML content.  If it were my validator, that would be a
> warning.  (It just falls into one of the various conformance crevasses
> in ODF 1.2.)

Every validator I know first determines whether the document claims to
be an ODF 1.0, 1.1 or 1.2 document and then validates based on that
determination. Every one of those validators will then consider the
absence of the metafest:version attribute in the metafest of an ODF 1.2
document an error.

Andreas

-- 
Andreas Guelzow <aguelzow at pyrshep.ca>

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