"One of the central requirements for interoperability is independence from any particular type of source content."
This claim is dubious, and relies on the absence of a clear definition of "interoperability" in the specification. The UK assumes that one of the meanings of interoperability involves the ability for Application A to produce an OOXML file, that can be consumed by Application B, presented to the user with 100 fidelity, edited and saved, then consumed by Application N, still with 100 fidelity of representation.
If this is the case, it seems logical that a central requirement would be for clear standards-based specification of source content, such that a future consuming application, unknown to the producer, has clear expectations of the valid range of content found within a conforming OOXML file. Interoperability between applications requires rules that impose constraints, whereas "independence from any particular type of source content" implies a lack of determining structure. If a conformant OOXML file can contain any type of source content, conforming consumers will have to support any type of source content - which is clearly impossible
This claim is dubious, and relies on the absence of a clear definition of "interoperability" in the specification. The UK assumes that one of the meanings of interoperability involves the ability for Application A to produce an OOXML file, that can be consumed by Application B, presented to the user with 100 fidelity, edited and saved, then consumed by Application N, still with 100 fidelity of representation.
If this is the case, it seems logical that a central requirement would be for clear standards-based specification of source content, such that a future consuming application, unknown to the producer, has clear expectations of the valid range of content found within a conforming OOXML file. Interoperability between applications requires rules that impose constraints, whereas "independence from any particular type of source content" implies a lack of determining structure. If a conformant OOXML file can contain any type of source content, conforming consumers will have to support any type of source content - which is clearly impossible
Proposed change: The standard must supply a precise definition of "interoperability", and relate it to a definition of conformance as per the comment on conformance above.
4.1 INTEROPERABILITY [p4]
te
Proposed Disposition of DIS 29500 Comment GB-0006 (Modified: 2007-10-27) The document “Office Open XML Overview” was intended to provide some background and contextual information about OOXML for reviewers during both the Ecma adoption stage and the 5-month Ballot stage of the Fast-Track process. (Such a document is often referred to as a white paper.) As such, this document will not be included in the published standard. Similar Comments: CA-0002 , DE-0140 , DK-0043 , GB-0004 , GB-0007 , GB-0008 , GB-0009 , GB-0010 , GB-0011 , GB-0015 , IN- 0050 , JP-0018 , PT-0002 , US-0004
