RFC: ideas for a simple OpenDocument API

[Cornelius Schumacher]

On Friday 22 December 2006 21:16, Kevin Krammer wrote:
>
> having a (very) simple API for creating basic documents and retrieving some
> information from documents.
>
> Simple in the sense that a developer should not have to know about format
> internals. The API can be limited to a subset of features the format would
> be capable off, e.g. creation of a spread sheet document could just support
> tables with simple cell types, not support cell borders, etc

I also thought it would be nice to have such a library at several occasions. 
There are a couple of use cases where it really would be nice to have it. I'm 
mainly thinking about import/export, but there certainly are some more use 
cases.

> Simple also in the sense that it does not have to be roundtrip capable,
> i.e. reading and writing the document might loose more advanced stuff

Not being roundtrip capable is a severe limitation, but it would make the 
library much more simple of course. I'm not sure how many use cases you would 
lose by that. Maybe it would be possible to implement limited roundtrip 
capabilities, so that at least no information is lost and e.g. data can be 
updated in a spread sheet even after t has been edited by a program 
supporting the full format.

All in all, if somebody would write such an API, I would welcome and use it.

-- 
Cornelius Schumacher <schumacher at kde.org>