From: Paul Rohr (paul@abisource.com)
Date: Fri May 10 2002 - 11:50:20 EDT
As mentioned in the previous note, I like the idea of creating inheritable
document-level PROPS:
http://www.abisource.com/mailinglists/abiword-dev/02/May/0384.html
Note, however, that we're also going to need a parallel mechanism for
*user-visible* document-level metadata (as displayed in those infamous
tabbed dialogs.) Unlike the css-like PROPS we already have, these tend
to be:
- much more verbose,
- localized, and
- can even include line and paragraph breaks.
Thus, this metadata will need more verbose XML markup than PROPS just to
accomodate the more complex content model. Since this stuff gets edited
using a separate mechanism anyhow (the dialog), it makes sense to store them
separately too. For example, just before/after the <styles> block, we could
add something like:
<metadata>
<m label="Summary">Secret plans for world domination</m>
<m label="Pages">273</m>
<m label="Author">Abi the Ant</m>
<m label="Role">Evangelist</m>
<m label="Organization">AbiSource</m>
...
</metadata>
In short then, we need *two* orthogonal sets of document-level attributes:
- PROPS for the formatter
- METADATA for the user and/or indexing software
Hopefully no developers will get too confused by the fact that that the
latter may well be accessed via a "File / Properties..." menu item. ;-)
Paul,
still thinking about file formats
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