Re: RFP: CompoundStorage document

[Martin Sevior <msevior mccubbin ph unimelb edu au>]

On Mon, 15 Apr 2002, Jody Goldberg wrote:

> On Tue, Apr 16, 2002 at 02:40:46AM +1000, Martin Sevior wrote:
> > 
> > Ok I can see this argument but I can easily imagine an abiword compound
> > document consisting of XML encoded data items with mime-type labelling
> > each item. So for example an embedded gnumeric spreadhsheet is just a
> > another image type with a data item that labels it as a gnumeric object
> > and the actual description of the spreadsheet in ordinary gnumeric XML
> > being the cone=tents of the data item. 
> > 
> > How do subfolders help us?
> 
> XML is quite useful in many ways but it has limitations.
> 1) Some types of content, specificly binary data. (think images or
>    attached blobs) do not map nicely.
> 
> 2) Encryption is extremely ugly.
> 
> 3) It is difficult to avoid parsing uninteresting parts of a
>    document given the linear nature of a SAX basd parser (don't even
>    think of using DOM in the real world)

Ok I get this now. I just ask that this new file format be closely based
on existing formats. I've spent a lot of time trying to  get 100%
compatibility between abiword and rtf (import and export) with just our
current feature set. Adding an extra format that must be 100% supported is
just lots of work and I wanted to be sure there was a strong motivation to
do it.

My experience import/exporters was that it's "easy" get basic stuff right,
it's really, really hard to get all the little bits right.

Cheers

Martin