@@ -10,10 +10,10 @@ The intention is to demonstrate that a complex specification such as 38.331 can
## Figures and Embedded Objects
One major change I had to do is related to figures. As of today, 38.331 (and indeed all other specifications) include figures as embedded objects (in whatever format, which can be Visio, MSCgen, etc). Such objects are embedded using OLE, which is a Microsoft Windows technology not available on other platforms. Therefore, to make it truly cross-platform, I've converted all the drawable objects to .PNG images (it doesn't have to be PNG, in fact SVG would be better, however there is no easy way to convert a raster image to a vetor image in SVG).
One major change I had to do is related to figures. As of today, 38.331 (and indeed all other specifications) include figures as embedded objects (in whatever format, which can be Visio, MSCgen, etc). Such objects are embedded using OLE, which is a Microsoft Windows technology not available on other platforms. Therefore, to make it truly cross-platform, I've converted all the drawable objects to .PNG images (it doesn't have to be PNG, in fact SVG would be better, however there is no easy way to convert a raster image to a vector image in SVG).
Furthermore, as we are likely to want to maintain our images not in SVG (at least not in all cases), but in some sort of editable format (e.g. MSCgen, PlantUML, Mermaid, etc), this probably implies that the "source code" (e.g. PlantUML) would need to be maintained in separate files, from which images (e.g. PNG or SVG) would be generated automatically. To make use of those generated images in an .ODT document, the best way is to "link" them as opposed to embedding them in the ODT document. To demonstrate how this is done, all the images are stored in a folder and linked to from ODT.
> **Note:** We will have to do something similar with DOCX too, if we chose to keep it.
> **Note:** We will have to do something similar with DOCX too to ensure cross platform compatibility, if we chose to keep it.
## Math
@@ -23,12 +23,12 @@ All the equations have been converted into OpenFormula and these are the only em
As one of the goals is to improve loading and editing speed, we've done some cleanup, specifically:
- Removed non-essential boilterplate (e.g. generic hooters and headers)
- Removed non-essential boilterplate (e.g. generic footers and headers)
- Removed bookmarks (NOT table of contents, ToC is there) which were added for no good reason
- Removed "weird metadata" which the document had quite a bit (including a reference to one company's Sharepoint!)
- Removed most (but not all) custom styles - the document had hundreds
> **Note:** Unfortunately, it is quite hard to clean up everything and also to do it properly. The result is an illustration, not necedssarly a proposal of how exactly it should look like. Ideally, a new specification should be created by following (and enforcing) ODT restrictions to prevent bloat (we ended up with in DOCX).
> **Note:** Unfortunately, it is quite hard to clean up everything and also to do it properly. The result is an illustration, not necessarly a proposal of how exactly it should look like. Ideally, a new specification should be created by following (and enforcing) ODT restrictions to prevent bloat (we ended up with in DOCX).
