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I just posted an update to the previous post where I puzzled over the republication of the 5 separate parts of the ECMA-376 specification on the ECMA site.  I was particularly baffled about the agitation about them because those parts are closely related to the original October Final Draft parts that were submitted for ECMA approval.  There appear to be no changes of substance or even of observable form, other than making them into the official December 2006 ECMA-376 documents.

{tags: orcmid OOX ODF ISO ECMA OASIS open document standards}

What I didn’t realize is that a different form of this material appears to have been used in the submission to ISO.  Here’s what I found, for the benefit of those who won’t see any RSS feed for the updated earlier post:

update 2007-02-12T01:50Z: I got it!  update 2007-02-12T01:59Z tweaking the prose a little more; and 2007-02-12T07:32T for smoothing between this and the previous post:

First, there is no question in my mind that the current downloads constitute the official December 2006 ECMA-376 documents, with all of the October 2006 Final Draft title pages corrected and an official, overall cover (two sheets) attached to the front of Part 1.   I am satisfied that this is precisely the same content that was approved by ECMA and also used to form the ISO submission.

• Thanks to a cache page provided by Stephen G. Johnson, I see that there was apparently a special ISO-submission document prepared from the 5-part Final Draft that was balloted and approved at ECMA (and preserved in the current 5-part download, with the kind of modifications I identified in the previous post). 
     
• That’s unfortunate.  It seems that the document that was reviewed by Rob Weir and others as the submission to ISO is a single 6,039 page, 46.9MB PDF.  It has the five parts (without the other useful attachments, such as versions of the schemas) simply pasted together consecutively.  Each part has its original table of content and separate on-the-page numberings (and sections starting with 1 each time).  
      
• The only differences that I have observed in the single PDF are the addition of the ECMA cover pages (also now on the front of the current Part 1 download), along with the omission of the title page for Part 1, and no other changes:  The titles of parts 2-6 are still identified as being Final Draft.  
    
• As a document to review, the single-file PDF document is very unsatisfactory.  First, there is no overall table of contents.  Each part still has its own table of contents and page numbers, but you have to find the parts on your own.  In addition, none of the extremely-valuable hyperlinking that works in the .docx versions and the corresponding PDFs are preserved in the single-PDF version. 

Since I had been downloading the drafts as they were announced as available from ECMA TC45, I was not particularly concerned about obtaining replacements for my copies of the final drafts.  I lucked out: I had no idea they were ever in any final form but the five parts, each in two formats (.docx and .pdf).  When I submitted comments to ECMA, I was able to use those far-more-manageable drafts from October and earlier. 

Although Stephen Johnson has provided a similar collation of the official December 2006 downloads, I don’t recommend using it.   The five separate parts are superior in every respect.  They are far more suitable for review, analysis, and exchange of comments.  And if you identify the part you are referring to, using section numbers or the printed page numbers, it won’t matter whether you are using the mother-of-all-documents or its five handier constituents. 

I have no idea what procedural requirements led to the submission of a single PDF file.  I hope that people were advised of the availability of the separated parts in their easier-to-review form.  I can certainly understand how relying on the PDF-provided page-count positions would be confusing if used instead of the printed page numbers.

posted by orcmid at 2/11/2007 06:03:02 PM