A head contains zero or more optional element. All the sub-elements of head may be ignored by the processor. If an outline is opened within another outline, the processor must ignore the windowXxx elements, those elements only control the size and position of outlines that are opened in their own windows. If you load an OPML document into your client, you may choose to respect expansionState, or not. We're not in any way trying to dictate user experience. The expansionState info is there because it's needed in certain contexts. It's easy to imagine contexts where it would make sense to completely ignore it. Taken verbatim from http://www.opml.org/spec