I
would like to reiterate that writing test applications may be out of scope for
the TC. They can certainly specify what goes into a test or test app, but
they shouldn't be tasked with writing one.
Garry L. Hurley Jr.
Application Developer 2
Office of Information Technology - Bureau of
Application Development
PA Department
of Labor & Industry
651 Boas
Street, Harrisburg, PA 17121
Phone:
717.506.9373 (UCMS) or 717.346.9799 (Harrisburg) Fax: 717.506.0798
Mobile: 717.649.0597
www.dli.state.pa.us <http://www.dli.state.pa.us>
My comments do not reflect those of the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, its various agencies and departments, or its
citizens. They are my own, and may or may not be shared by those in
positions of authority over me.
-----Original Message-----
From:
[mailto:]
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2008 3:01
PM
To:
Subject: Re:
[oiic-formation-discuss] Deliverable:
odf-diff?
Sander Marechal
<> wrote on 06/20/2008 01:55:23
PM:
>
> At one point we were also discussing various interop
issues and possible
> testing tools. One of the things that came out of
there is that we'd
> really like a tool that can compare/diff two ODF
documents. Unzipping
> the ODF file and using an XML diff tool is
insufficient. For example: I
> could change the name of a style on a
paragraph and also change that
> name in the styles.xml and
functionally, the two documents should still
> be the same even though
an XML diff tool says they're different. You
> could probably
reorganise large parts of the styles.xml and still have
> the same
document.
>
> You could even do basic application testing with
such a tool. Load an
> ODF in some application. Save it. Compare the
original with the saved
> version. They should be functionally
identical.
>
> Could such a tool be put on the list of
deliverables? Or is such a thing
> way too specific to put in
there?
>
I think the thing to look
at is the W3C's Canonical XML Recommendation: http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-c14n
This standard solves the equivalent problem for XML by defining a
standardized way of expressing an XML instance, for which things like
whitespace, attribute ordering, etc., are fully specified rather than allowing
of variation.
Similarly, we could specify
"Canonical ODF" as an extension of the W3C's Canonical XML. Then all you
need is a canonical ODF processor and then any text diff tool will
work.
-Rob
