[office] Metadata options

Hi

I thought I'd start the ball 
rolling on metadata in advance of Monday's call. Please forgive the "schema by 
example" nature of my examples. I would have presented the suggestions in a 
schema language (DTD, XSD, RelaxNG) but I'm not sure we've decided on one 
yet.

General thoughts
The 
metadata model presented in OpenOffice.org XML File Format 1.0 (OpenOffice) is 
somewhat specific to the OpenOffice applications and should probably be made 
more generic and flexible.

Option 
1
Leave it 
alone.

Option 
2
Leave the existing 
predefined metadata (meta:generator, dc:creator, etc.) as they are but extend 
meta:user-defined so it can contain more than just text types. This might be 
done by typing the element name like this (Note: This example is 
not intended to be my suggestions for the actual tags and attributes we would 
use but rather to illustrate the concept): 

<meta:user-defined-date 
name="checkin-date">2003-01-24T13:47:12</meta:user-defined-date>
<meta:user-defined-text 
name="foo">Some text</meta:user-defined-text>
etc.

Doing this 
would also require type extending text:user_defined to allow formatting of typed 
user-defined fields like this:

<text:user-defined-date 
text:name="checkin-date" text:date-adjust="123" text:fixed="true" 
style:data-style-name="ABC">01/24/03</text:user-defined-date 
>
<text:user-defined-text text:name="foo" text:fixed="true">Some 
text</text:user-defined-text>
etc.

There are probably other good ways to do this depending on 
which schema language we go with.

Option 
3
Same as Option 2 but 
with the predefined metadata elements limited to only things we think EVERY 
document needs. For example meta:template is very specific to the OpenOffice 
application and should probably not exist in a more generic specification. The 
OpenOffice application could then add its template metadata it using 
meta:user-defined-text or meta:user-defined-url.

Option 4
Same as Option 2 but extend the predefined metadata elements 
to an exhaustive set that fits almost every user's needs. This would leave 
meta:user-defined as a very last resort. 

 

Option 5
Move away from predefined metadata completely to a model 
like in Option 2 but for all metadata elements. This has the downside of moving 
us away from the Dublin core. On the positive side we would not have to 
deal with the difference between predefined metadata elements and user defined 
metadata elements, the schema would be more compact and tools to process 
instances of the schema would be simplified. 

 

Doing this would also greatly impact how we deal 
with section 3.7.16 of the OpenOffice specification.

 

 

Flame away!

-Phil Boutros
VP, Technology
Stellent 
Corporation