RE: [office] Re: Spreadsheet Formula Conformance - Please Not Now

["Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org>]

Here's the thing Rob,

This is the statement that was made on Thursday about wanting review and
possible voting on #9 in document version 8
<http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200902/msg00058.html>:

    The update proposal can be found here:

 
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/31052/conformance-definiti
on-proposal-v8.odt

    The version I'm referring to is the first one in the document.

    I have made a few non substantial corrections and clarifications,
    most of them have been suggested by Rob (Rob, thanks for having 
    a close look at the proposal). A list of these changes can be 
    found in the proposal itself. 

In the document itself, in the summary of changes for the ninth iteration,
it says

    - A reference to the formula specification has been added, though not in
the 
      conformance clauses itself, but for the table:formula attribute.

A bit more than that has been added, hasn't it?  Not exactly non-substantial
in my book.  Certainly not a comma out of place.

Now, since this is all work in progress, rather than have us notice all of
these things and have to review them quickly before a vote to submit a
completed draft to public review, why not 

   - leave it out at this point in the progress, 
   - leave a prominent editorial placeholder to that effect, especially if
it remains in the committee draft we are working toward
   - make a point of addressing the reconciliation of conformance language
as specific issue to address with focused attention?

If the baggage in the current proposal is so non-committal and
non-precedential, why are you so attached to putting it in at this point?

 - Dennis

PS: Putting in JIRA that we need to come up with a reconciled table:formula
statement that connects to OpenFormula and introduces anything normative we
want to say now that OpenFormula is available sounds like a great place to
add a placeholder.  Do you want proposals in JIRA too, or should we use the
standing rules for proposals still?  I do not think this is a
non-substantial matter.

PPS: As a point of information for me:  Do you consider that the explicit
ODF 1.1 permission of foreign namespaces on prefixes in table:formula values
to be instances of foreign attributes?

-----Original Message-----
From: robert_weir@us.ibm.com [mailto:robert_weir@us.ibm.com] 
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200902/msg00098.html
Sent: Sunday, February 08, 2009 13:57
To: office@lists.oasis-open.org
Subject: RE: [office] Re: Spreadsheet Formula Conformance - Please Not Now

"Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org> wrote on 02/08/2009 
03:03:26 PM:
http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/200902/msg00097.html

> of the parts of the ODF 1.2 specification.  I dispute the need to do 
that
> now using normative pretend language appealing to other normative 
pretend
> language that has not been written yet.  I find this particular approach 
to
> "bootstrapping" makes us appear to be careless (or worse), leaving us 
with
> defects that we have to remember to watch over and deal with in future
> stages.  I would rather not do that.
> 

Dennis, this is a pre-draft.  Drafts are incomplete and subject to change. 
 Nothing here is normative until the ODF TC approves the draft, we further 
send it out for public comment, we further vote to approve it as a 
Committee Specification, further vote to send it out for an OASIS ballot 
and finally until OASIS approves it.  We don't have a standard until all 
of these steps are completed.  One of these steps(sending for an OASIS 
ballot) will require that 2/3 of the voting members in this TC approve the 
Committee Specification and that no more than 1/4 of the voting members 
disapprove it.  So there will be ample opportunity for you and others to 
cry "Halt" if you believe that something is not quite right in the final 
product.

In particular I'd note that intra-part, inter-part as well as external 
normative references will likely continue to be refined until ODF 1.2 is 
ready for final approval.  But that should not prevent us from moving 
forward on the text of ODF 1.2, not even the parts of ODF 1.2 that depend 
on these references. We're working asynchronously in the three parts.  We 
can't expect that they will always be in synch day-to-day.  Obviously they 
need to end up in synch at the end, but they won't always be that way 
while we're working on a pre-draft.

Because of that, I'm not going to hold back a change to a pre-draft every 
time someone notices a comma out of places.  The possibility of things 
getting out of whack between two parts is not cause for holding back 
changes to those parts. My recommendation would be to start up a page on 
the wiki, or maybe in JIRI, and make a reminder check list of things we 
need to check for consistency at the end.  I think Michael's list from 
last week (external references, contributors, etc.) was a good start.  We 
could also put in additional items.

-Rob

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