discussion on stable xml:id in odf implementations

[Boudewijn Rempt]

Thanks for the update! I think that for Calligra, we should probably try to move to stable xml:id's. The current regenerating solution has given us problems more than once and is, code-wise, counter-intuitive, I feel. However, it's not going to be something really simple to fix, and it's in a part of our codebase that only sporadically receives maintenance.

On Monday 04 March 2013 Mar, Jos van den Oever wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> A number of elements in ODF documents can have an attribute xml:id. This 
> attribute is taken from the W3C xml:id recommendation [1]. It can be 
> used on 32 different types of ODF 1.2 elements like text:p and 
> text:meta. Each occurrance of xml:id within one XML document should have 
> a unique value. Other parts of the ODF document can refer to the 
> elements that have an xml:id. Examples are text:continue-list and 
> text:change-id and many shape related attributes. In addition, RDF 
> statements are linked to document parts by xml:id. Calligra is using 
> xml:id in many places.
> 
> A discussion in the ODF Technical Committee has been started [2] to see 
> if the ODF specification should recommend ODF editors to use stable 
> xml:id values. A stable xml:id would mean that when a document is 
> loaded, edited and saved, the xml:id values in the changed document 
> should be the same as in the original document, where possible.
> 
> OpenOffice has a wiki page where a number of Writer editing scenarios 
> are discussed.
> http://wiki.openoffice.org/wiki/Writer/Metadata_Support
> 
> The discussion in the ODF TC is quite subtle. At the moment there are 
> very few requirements in the specification about loading and saving 
> behaviour. The specification gives meaning to the different parts of a 
> documents but makes no relation between the document before loading and 
> the document after saving (except for the case of change tracking).
> 
> There are a number of options [3] on how this goes forward. It is not 
> likely that ODF 1.3 will require stable xml:id values, but having stable 
> xml:id values will give an application an advantageous feature.
> 
> Cheers,
> Jos
> 
> [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-id/
> [2] https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/201302/msg00013.html
> [3] https://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office/201302/msg00050.html
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-- 
Boudewijn Rempt
http://www.valdyas.org, http://www.krita.org, http://www.boudewijnrempt.nl