DR-08-0012 Namespace Mapping Table v2

[Shawn Villaron]

Sorry, my mapping table doesn't tell the full story.  I believe we're scoping the namespace change to only STRICT documents; does that change your view on this?

-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Jelliffe [mailto:rjelliffe at allette.com.au] 
Sent: Thursday, May 21, 2009 10:07 PM
To: SC 34 WG4
Subject: Re: DR-08-0012 Namespace Mapping Table v2

I am probably too late, and I am sure this has been well thrashed out.

Changing the namespaces means that it would be inconsistent for us to also make any other changes in order to cover existing OOXML documents' 
syntax better.  In particular, unrestricting the value of  booleans to also allow yes|no, one of the changes made at the BRM that effectively ruined OOXML Transitional, would be impossible to justify, since that change would not make any existing documents valid: they would be invalid because of using the old namespace.  In fact, it would mean that all discussions on OOXML Transitional could not include discussion of validity of existing documents  (i.e. discussion of how to make existing Office 2007 documents accord to the standard), but only to describing 
shared functionality.   

Already IS29500 was criticized because it was not a description of any significant collection of documents, such as the binary formats, and that it was aimed at representing the information in the legacy formats not their notation. Changing the namespace of OOXML does exactly the same thing to the now large collection of Office 2007 documents.

Changing the namespace has other bad effects:

  * All previous examples published become erroneous
  * Software needs to be rewritten so that every use of the namespace must be altered, not just places where there are changes relating to different functional requirements.

Tidyness in using a PURL is not an adequate reason, in itself, to cause this kind of disruption. No other standard has  changed its namespace after being published. But I understand if this is a decision already made.

If the idea is to make a clean break, then the first thing WG4 should do is to put out a warning for people not to implement IS28500:2008 since their implementation will immediately be obsolete. Or, at least, to detail the expected change.

Cheers
Rick Jelliffe