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ODF Editor Says ODF Loses If OOXML Does
An anonymous reader writes "The editor of the Open Document Format standard has written a letter (PDF) that strongly supports recognizing Microsoft's OOXML file format as a standard, arguing that if it fails, ODF will suffer. 'As the editor of OpenDocument, I want to promote OpenDocument, extol its features, urge the widest use of it as possible, none of which is accomplished by the anti-OpenXML position in ISO,' Patrick Durusau wrote. 'The bottom line is that OpenDocument, among others, will lose if OpenXML loses... Passage of OpenXML in ISO is going to benefit OpenDocument as much as anyone else.'"
No. His point seems to be that some features are not in ODF yet, so we might as well accept Microsoft's, and that way we have to support fewer different implementations of features. He's approaching this thing with a naivete that is stunning in an adult who has watched Microsoft's behavior with standards.
From the letter:
More importantly, what if ISO and Microsoft reach different definitions for the same OpenXML functions? After watching Java and Kerberos and CSS... We already have indications that Microsoft would ignore ISO on OOXML, too.
Have a nice time.
I do not support any "standard" that is bad enough that its own promoters have to buy votes to get it in.
It might even be true that OOXML as an ISO standard would be beneficial to ODF. However, there are the following problems:
* There are some serious technical issues with the current proposal that have to be resolved
* There are some very serious problems with the way the process has evolved
* There is no guarantee that Microsoft will follow their own standards -- since, if there are big changes to the standard, it would require them to change their current file format.
The first two problems indicate that, perhaps, the fast-track-to-ISO was not a good idea for this standard, and that some more time and work is required before the standard is approved, no matter how beneficial an eventual approval would be for anyone.
Not necessarily. If anything, PDF is a great choice for distributing final copies of documents - it has exactly the right number of features, ts specs are published, and there are plenty of good tools (both open-source and commercial) for creating and reading it.
Acrobat, on the other hand, is a bloated pile of garbage.
MS will follow the OOXML spec in the same way IE followed HTML. Documents will then be written with coding changes just to work around the rendering issues in Word, and all the other implementations of OOXML will appear broken no matter how closely they follow the spec. Hopefully there will be something similar to the ACID test for .docx rendering. I just wish there was for .odt too.
I completely agree with you, the Kerberos, Java and CSS arguments grate against my intellectual honesty sensors too.
That being said, I don't think people want ODF to be a magic bullet, and everyone knows that ODF is feature thin compared to OOXML. However, I think after decades of shifting vendor to vendor as corporate interests take turns in the gang-raping that has been the software industry for as long as I can remember, people have realised that open standards are better than extra features, provided that the basics are covered. That, to me sums up the ODF vs OOXML debate; format stability vs edge case features.
I hate printers.