2. Fundamental Principles

The principles behind Repaired Change-Tracking (RCT) are not limited to change-tracking and apply whether or not change-tracking is relied upon.  Namely,

In the absence of an envelope within which document fidelity is preserved in collaborative interchange of word-processing document files, employment of tracked-changes in those document files is meaningless to the same degree that interoperability is meaningless.  

The key principle, described in the publication, is that the achievement and preservation of document fidelity is a consequence of engineered alignment between software operation and the human-perceived document.  This is termed manifestation fidelity.

Manifestation fidelity is an empirical notion. It is about the perceived document:  what the user sees, understands, and experiences themselves manipulating.  It is not about document files the coding and formats of which are incomprehensible to the community of intended users.

To have engineered an alignment between how a document-file format is interpreted by software and the manifest document, there must be some form of testing by which manifest fidelity can be inspected for and confirmed.  This testing is necessarily empirical.  It can be specified.

A prerequisite to interoperable change-tracking is confirmation of manifestation-preserving interchange as part of collaborative interchange, including after edits.. 

3. RCT Approach

The RCT specification is produced as a hypertext on the web.

RCT extensions are technical additions to the document files that signal the producer's honoring of RCT principles. There will be an RCT profile specification that identifies the extensions and how the compliant production of them invites verification by empirical assessment.

At the foundation of the assessment process are document files and empirically-repeatable tests by which manifestation-preservation is confirmable for processors that produce and  consume such files. 

RCT has levels of manifestation-fidelity preservation that are amenable to independent, empirical assessment.  For the interchange interoperability level, document files produced under the requisite conditions carry the producer's declaration that an RCT profile holds and an RCT-aware consuming processor can rely on that. 

Although tracked changes are expressed entirely in terms of changes to the document file, not any manifestation, there is confidence that the changes can be manifest properly wherever the RCT profiled interoperability and change-tracking conditions are satisfied.

4. Work in Progress

This is the early entry point to the work on development of the RCT profile scheme.

 Supporting analysis and exploratory work is captured on-line.  Precursor material can found and viewed in additional areas of the nfoWorks site.

• RCT ODF 1.2 Change-Tracking Repair Development
  This is the hub for materials captured as part of analysis and development of the RCT extension profile.
    
• RCT Profile Organization
  with master outline and cross-referencing between the evolving specification hypertext and development of separate content elements.
    
• The ODF Interoperability Assessment Helix
  project applies the testing methodology and RCT principles for profiling interoperability of existing implementations.  Introduction of basic RCT extensions will be atop the identified envelopes of existing products, supplementing the basic compliance and conformance provisions of the International Standards for OpenDocument Format.
    
• The DocInteroperability Bootstrap Project
  on GitHub, provides experimentation and accumulation of tests and materials required to achieve the ODF Interoperability Assessment Helix.
   
• nfoNotes Catalog
  listing mini-notebook hypertexts produced for nfoWorks.   Ones listed as about ODF, RCT, or BSO may be useful.
    
• devNotes Catalog
  mainly listing developer-oriented technical material, there is related development content here, such as definitions of namespaces and production of test cases, along with development of the profile content.