Update from the ODF TC

[todd rme]

On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 4:45 PM, Jos van den Oever
<jos.van.den.oever at kogmbh.com> wrote:
> Hello Calligra-ers,
>
> As you may or may not know, I represent KDE in the committee that specifies the
> OpenDocument Format. We have a weekly telephone call for the core TC in which
> I and Thorsten Zachmann participate. In addition there is a weekly call for
> the work group on change tracking and a biweekly call on interoperablility.
>
> This is the overview page:
>  http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/
> Apart from telephone discussions topics are discussed on the mailing lists
>  http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/
> Proposals for the specification are recorded and discussed here:
>  http://tools.oasis-open.org/issues/browse/OFFICE
>
> ODF 1.2 is mostly done and will become a standard in the near future. This
> means we want people to suggest new ideas, improvements and enhancements to
> put in the next ODF standard. If there are things you would like to see
> changed in ODF now is the time to speak up. As TC contact, Thorsten and I can
> put your proposals in the 'specification changes' system, but everyone can also
> mail the public list:
>  http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office-comment/
>
> I would like first to let people in Calligra brainstorm about what is feasible
> and desirable. Ideas can be put as a reply to this mail. Changes do not have
> to be features, they can also be clarifications or simplifications.

A few ideas (my knowledge of the technical side of the format is very
limited so these are mostly based on features, so I apologize if these
suggestions are nonsensical or already implemented):

1. As you are probably aware, there is currently a GSOC project for a
Calligra-based single-canvas presentation system.  However, it is not
based on any ODF format.  Either creating such a format, or including
the components needed to support it in an existing format, would be
nice.  These are getting increasingly popular online, there was one at
a conference I went to last year, and several at the same conference
this year.

2. Support for embedding fonts, if this isn't there already.  I have
had problems with missing fonts severely messing up document
formating.

3. Minimum required image format support, with proper default values.
Ideally SVG and PNG.

4. Support for an "invisible line break" [1].  Currently, at least in
LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org, styles end at a line break.  Other things
depend on line breaks as well, such as what parts of a captain are
included in figure lists.  This makes it impossible to finely control
where styles begin and end or what is displayed in a table of contents
or figure list.  This mark would be interpeted by styles, tables of
contents, and figure lists as a line break, but would not trigger a
real line break in the text as far as the user can see.  This may be
an issue with the LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org implementation, though.

5. Support for aligning text vertically within a document, header,
footer, frame, and so on.  This may already exist and it just isn't
implemented in LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org.

6. When tracking changes, track replacements as something separate
from insertions and deletions.  Once again, this may already exist but
isn't implemented in LibreOffice/OpenOffice.org.

[1] http://www.mail-archive.com/users@libreoffice.org/msg05286.html