Rewriting the scope of Part 3

[MURATA Makoto]

Folks,

The scope of Part 3 (MCE) is now:

    This Part of ISO/IEC 29500 describes a set of conventions that are
    used by Office Open XML documents to clearly mark elements and
    attributes introduced by future versions or extensions of Office Open
    XML documents, while providing a method by which consumers can obtain
    a baseline version of the Office Open XML document (a version without
    extensions) for interoperability.

I proposed a rewrite, which  is intended to make Part 3 generic:

    This Part of ISO/IEC 29500 describes a set of conventions to clearly
    mark elements and attributes that do not exist in an XML-based markup
    language but are introduced by extensions of the markup language,
    while providing a method by which consumers can obtain an XML document
    that are free from extensions for interoperability.

Alex wrote:

>     Murata-san, all,
>
>     I think there's a problem stating that MCE's scope covers "clearly
>     [marking] elements and attributes that do not exist in an XML-based
>     markup language" - as
>
>     (1) The elements/attributes may exist in other, non-OOXML, languages
>     (e.g. SVG).
>
>     (2) Although "namespace subsumption" might be read to preclude the use
>     of existing OOXML markup in MCE, the implementation cat is out of the
>     bag, and so I think MCE needs to be able to specify the
>     extension/re-contextualization of OOXML markup if it's to mirror
>     implementation practice ...

Doug then wrote:

>     Good point, that's a potential are of confusion for those new to MCE.
>
>     Perhaps the best solution is to not attempt to define what MCE's
>     alternate content blocks might contain, but rather address the
>     purpose/application of ACBs in general. That would eliminate the need
>     to talk about "elements and attributes that do not exist ..." and then
>     we could describe the processed document in terms of what it contains,
>     rather than what it does not contain. In other words, instead of this:
>
>     "This Part of ISO/IEC 29500 describes a set of conventions to clearly
>     mark elements and attributes that do not exist in an XML-based markup
>     language but are introduced by extensions of the markup language,
>     while providing a method by which consumers can obtain an XML document
>     that are free from extensions for interoperability."
>
>     Something more like this:
>
>     "This Part of ISO/IEC 29500 describes a set of conventions to identify
>     alternative representations of XML markup and character data that a
>     markup consumer may choose from based on the namespaces understood by
>     that consumer, while providing a method by which consumers can obtain
>     an XML document that only contains elements and attributes that exist
>     within the namespaces of a single markup language, for
>     interoperability purposes."
>
>     "A single markup language" ... "a markup language within which MCE is
>     being used?" They both sound awkward to me, although that's the core
>     concept involved. Thoughts?
>
>     Do we need to state that the namespaces may or may not be part of the
>     markup language within which MCE is used? Simply not constraining
>     "namespace" in any way seems sufficient to me.


-- 

Praying for the victims of the Japan Tohoku earthquake

Makoto