Re: [odf-adoption] OpenDocument compliance/conformance

[Daniel Carrera <daniel.carrera@zmsl.com>]

Erwin Tenhumberg wrote:
> In order to create credibility for ODF we should set pretty high
> (but reasonable) standards for a logo program. A logo program could
> hurt more than help if everybody can get the logo.
> 
> When my cell phone displays the Java logo I expect it to run all
> (or at least the majority) of the available Java Mobile Edition
> applications. Users and ISV's will have similar expectations for
> an ODF logo.

I didn't get the email you are replying to, so there might be some 
context that I'm missing. Conformance is a complicated beast. You want 
it to be rigid enough to be meaningful, but not so rigid that almost no 
one meets the requirement.

I should point out that the Java example is not the best one. Java and 
OpenDocument are very different beasts. Java is a programming language 
and you expect any Java complier or interpreter to correctly manage any 
Java program. But if you require an ODF-compliant app to support all of 
OpenDocument you'll find that not a single app will be compliant, or 
only apps that are 300MB in size will be compliant.

Consider the case with PDF. There are PDF readers and writers around and 
not all of them support all of the advanced PDF features. For example, 
OpenOffice doesn't.

So, we need to pick a reasonable balance, and this balance is fabulously 
difficult to find.

I suggest we start by talking about how we'll deal with products that 
are not a full office suite (e.g. AbiWord, Gnumeric, Writely, iRows). 
Any suggestions? I think we should allow these products to be compliant 
as long as they provide an appropriate set of functionality in their 
respective areas.

Best,
Daniel.
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