[ODP-dev] Current design goals in the thrunk(aka branch 0.5) and branch 0.6.

[Norman M. <no...@se...>]

Hi folks,

as you all know, there are currently two development branches in our 
repository. And I feel, that I need to explain why.

The design goal of the 0.5 branch (a.k.a trunk) is to get rid of the 
ElementFragment and Fragment classes witch currently make the basic 
work, and use the new ODPElement class instead. ODPElement extends 
DOMElement, and has some new methods, which makes a lot of standard work 
easier. The namespaces, which where defined in ElementFragment and 
Fragment, where moved to the Namespace interface. This should make the 
classes a lot handier.

The purpose of the 0.6 branch is to start new Writer classes. So the 
work with ODP will get a lot easier. We start here with a 
re-implementation of PEAR_Spreadsheet_Excel_Writer classes. After that 
has settled, we should start with a Writer class for text document, may 
be in a 0.7 branch or in 0.6. - We should discuss that later...

The next upcoming release will be 0.5.3 (and maybe 0.5.4...) which 
should remove as much of the ElementFragment and Fragment classes as 
possible. After these changes are made, the 0.6 branch will 
resynchronize with 0.5.(3?) and become the new trunk.

If you got any questions about the design goals, the code or the 
strategy ... please ask.

Yours
Norman Markgraf