RE: [office] Public Comment #217 - Authoritative Version of Specification

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

"Dennis E. Hamilton" <dennis.hamilton@acm.org> wrote on 03/30/2009 
12:23:57 PM:

> 
> RE: [office] Public Comment #217 - Authoritative Version of 
Specification
> 
> I think, as a practical matter, the defects that occur when one uses an 
ODF
> implementation that is not the one used for the authoring are far more
> disturbing than the blemishes you remark about concerning disparities in
> PDFs derived from the as-authored ODF documents.  There is a problem 
with
> the current state of interoperability for ODF consumers in comparison 
with
> the ubiquity and stability of PDF at this point. 
> 

The issue of course is not whether PDF is rendered more consistently than 
ODF is.  The question is whether the PDF that is initially generated is 
accurate.   For example, during the OOXML review in ISO we found many 
examples, usually involving mathematical equations, where the generated 
PDF varied significantly from the Word original.  These introduced real 
technical errors into the draft, in some cases changing the meaning of 
spreadsheet formulas.  A good amount of JTC1 NB time was chewed up 
correcting such problems.  This problem would not have happened with an 
ODF or OOXML original, regardless of the rendering engine, since once 
could always look at the XML source to resolve the intent. 

-Rob