Re: [office] Proposal to amend TC charter, re interoperability withnon-conformant applications

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

Cool.  I've been hoping that we
would finally reach the point were we agree to change the charter so we
guarantee compatibility and full-fidelity conversions with our glorious
1-2-3, WordPro and Freelance file formats.

Just kidding.

Remember, even OOXML doesn't make this
guarantee.  Using Office 2007, when you load a DOC file and save it
into OOXML format, you get the warning message, "You are about to
save your document to one of the new file formats.  This action will
allow you to use all of the new features in Word 2007, but may cause changes
in the layout of the document.  Click Ok to continue."

So, if Microsoft, knowing the full details
of their binary formats and the internals of Word, is not able to achieve
"full fidelity conversions", then I wonder how this would be
accomplished in a standards committee that does not have access to this
binary format specification.

Another practical problem is that there
are many binary formats out there and they may not all be reconcilable.
 What if, hypothetically speaking, Wordperfect does lists according
to Oliver's proposal and Word does it according to Florian's, and WordPro
does it a 3rd way.  Then what?

If you really mean MS Office and only
MS Office, then we have a different problem.  IBM has voted against
charter requirements requiring compatibility with a single vendor's formats
before, and no doubt would do so again if the need arose.

In any case, I am pleased to see us
take the list proposals through process and let both sides fully make their
argument.  Sure, one side one and the other side lost.  But no
one can say that they didn't have a full opportunity to make their points.
 Now we need to move on.  We have a lot of work needing our attention
in ODF 1.2.

-Rob


marbux <marbux@gmail.com> wrote on 05/03/2007
02:36:26 PM:

> I am reposting my proposal here in a separate thread for purposes
of
> discussion.
> 
> I propose the following changes in the TC charter.
> 
> Presently, the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee's charter,
> <http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/charter.php>, contains
> the following statement of purpose:
> 
> >>>
> 
> Statement of Purpose
> 
> The purpose of this TC is to create an open, XML-based file format
> specification for office applications.
> 
> The resulting file format must meet the following requirements:
> 
>   1. it must be suitable for office documents containing text,
> spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents,
>   2. it must be compatible with the W3C Extensible Markup Language
> (XML) v1.0 and W3C Namespaces in XML v1.0 specifications,
>   3. it must retain high-level information suitable for editing
the document,
>   4. it must be friendly to transformations using XSLT or similar
> XML-based languages or tools,
>   5. it should keep the document's content and layout information
> separate such that they can be processed independently of each other,
> and
>   6. it should 'borrow' from similar, existing standards wherever
> possible and permitted.
> 
> <<<
> 
> I propose that we move requirement 4 to the end of the list, renumber
> the requirements accordingly, and add a new requirement 7 so the
> section reads:
> 
> >>>
> 
> Statement of Purpose
> 
> The purpose of this TC is to create an open, XML-based file format
> specification for office applications.
> 
> The resulting file format must meet the following requirements:
> 
>   1. it must be suitable for office documents containing text,
> spreadsheets, charts, and graphical documents,
>   2. it must be compatible with the W3C Extensible Markup Language
> (XML) v1.0 and W3C Namespaces in XML v1.0 specifications,
>   3. it must retain high-level information suitable for editing
the document,
>   4. it should keep the document's content and layout information
> separate such that they can be processed independently of each other,
>   5. it should 'borrow' from similar, existing standards wherever
> possible and permitted,
>   6. it must be friendly to transformations using XSLT or similar
> XML-based languages or tools, and
>   7. it must provide all feasible functionality required to suppport
> full fidelity conversions from and to existing office document binary
> file formats.
> 
> <<<
> 
> I believe an up and down vote on this proposed amendment would be
> highly useful to end users such as the governments that have announced
> their intent to migrate to OpenDocument.
> 
> I am of course open to refinement of the proposal.
> 
> Best regards,