Slashdot Mirror
Aussie Government Proposes OpenDocument As the Standard Format
Bismillah writes "The Australian government chief technical officer wants some views on proposals for the official standard operating environment, which features OpenDocument as the proposed document format. Otherwise, the Aussie government is pretty much a Microsoft shop, with Windows 7 x64 and IE10 as the standard platform. 'Interoperability and support for several versions of Microsoft Office is cited by the AGCTO as reasons to go with ODF, along with flexibility and the fact that the format is continously updated and developed. Spreadsheet formulae are now included in the ODF 1.2 specification as well and the AGTO believes that this, along with Microsoft Office 2013 supporting the format, will help to reliably transfer formulae between applications.' According to the CTO's call for opinions, 'Standardizing on a format supported by a wide range of office suites provides for the greatest possible degree of interoperability without mandating the use of a specific product, as well as providing the best basis for reliable interchange of information between agencies deploying differing office productivity suites.'"
The idea of separating format and content is beyond most users of word processing software. That is why the fight is MS Office vs. OpenOffice instead of talking about what Latex interface everyone uses.
Styles have the same sort of issue. I know how to use them, and the style toolbar introduced in Word 2003 was a major improvement to how I interact with a word processor. Sadly, I almost never come across another document where styles have been applied thoughtfully. I wrote my last book with careful style-oriented formatting, and every editor and reviewer it passed through destroyed some portion of that while collecting up feedback. Made me feel like the only person on earth who actually pays attention to rogue style additions.