Re: [oiic-formation-discuss] Caution and Disclaimer on Interoperability

["Stuart A. Yeates" <syeates@gmail.com>]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 10:32 AM, jose lorenzo <hozelda@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I just joined today, so please excuse if I am
> repeating material or am a bit off topic.
>
> "Interoperability" and similar terms should be defined
> precisely and conspicuously.
>
> In particular, I think a note should be made that
> interoperability does NOT mean that what an office
> suite user visually sees and then saves using one
> "interoperable" or "conformant" application can be
> rendered faithfully on another such conformant
> application.

Stances that say "document Y should look like X" have a real place in
this discussion, because that's the everyday interoperability that the
person-on-the-street sees. An ODF document should _just_work_ across
all conforming platforms and for the majority of people looking
essentially the same is a core part of that.

The problem is that we don't really have a definition for what ODF
documents should actually look like. [Or if we do, I'm unaware of it]

What we do have, however, is a group of fellow ISO standards, the PDF
standards, which define in detail what things should look like. Maybe
the path forward is to define a mapping from ODF to the PDF standards,
thus specifying what ODF files look like without having to go into
detail?

Is there someone with enough experience of the PDF standards (as
opposed to the PDF implementations) to know whether this is likely to
be workable?

cheers
staurt