Talk:Development/ODF Implementer Notes

Validity of LibreOffice Documents
Some notes on ODF 1.2, etc..

Relevant bugreports:

Example:

The ODF Validator will give an error on even the most basic ODT file, saved using default settings in LibreOffice Writer v4.1.2.3. The error is:

Error: unexpected attribute "style:contextual-spacing"

The devs have, providing the following explanation: "Contextual spacing is proposed to be part of the next ODF version, till then we just write it in extended ODF mode, so should be OK."

The authors of the ODF Validator have indicated that

"It seems this problem is a LibreOffice problem (or a general problem  of the slowness of standards and the requirements of applications to   deal with customers)...If any XML is not within the ODF spec it is not ODF."

It would be beneficial for us to determine what needs to be done to make our documents pass the validator. Some ideas:
 * Write valid ODF by default
 * Update the validator (is there a bug?) to recognize ODF extensions as permissible (assuming they are allowed by the spec)
 * Update the spec for ODF 1.3 to allow extensions (etc...)
 * (NOTE: the particular  issue has already been proposed for ODF 1.3, but I'm suggesting a more general clause that would allow extended-ODF documents (such as what LibreOffice currently writes) to validate in some fashion.)