Statement of Purpose

Many ODF documents do not involve collaboration. They are created by a single user, edited by a single user, and then perhaps presented or shared with multiple users, or maybe even just converted to PDF for distribution.

However, collaboration-based document scenarios are also common, including review and comment, change tracking as well as emerging work in real-time collaborative editing, in-context document collaboration, persistence of structured document fragments, and so on.

In order to bring together technical experts in these areas, and for them to evaluate trends, investigate opportunities and draft enhancements to ODF in these areas, we are proposing a dedicated subcommittee for this
topic.

The initial and highest priority for the Subcommittee will be change tracking. Reliable and user friendly revision management is critical for
professional document workflows in corporate and public sector environments, and as such an important feature of Open Document Format.

The SC is asked to prepare a draft specification of a markup vocabulary that can accurately describe any incremental change to the content and structure of documents - typically made in multiple editing sessions by different authors.

Deliverables

1. A draft specification for change tracking, including Relax NG schema


2. A description on how to apply change tracking markup to the various
   versions of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) as a host format.


3. A set of test documents that will allow implementers to validate their
   change tracking implementations.


4. A document that describes in detail how the existing change tracking
   mechanism in ODF can be converted to the new markup.


5. Other proposals, draft specifications and in-scope work related to the subcommittee's Purpose.

Svante Schubert, Chair

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