Re: [odf-adoption] ODF and UOF

[robert_weir@us.ibm.com]

Thanks for the update.

If they move UOF into OASIS or ISO, then we have ways of coordinating with 
then at a technical level.  Otherwise, it will end up being done in China 
by those companies that have staff there.

As for harmonization, I think the approach to harmonize requirements, but 
not necessarily try to merge things at the markup level.  The goal of ODF 
is to be suitable for office productivity applications anywhere in the 
world, not just the West.  So if we're missing something, we should add 
that feature to ODF.  But in doing so we'll do it in a way that harmonizes 
with the rest of ODF.  Otherwise we'd end up with some Frankenstein 
monster format, with pieces from different bodies stapled together.

But I think we're heading on the right path here.  For example, Peter 
Junge has contributed a proposal to the ODF TC regarding diagonal table 
headers, a key requirement for Chinese documents.  Maybe we make better 
Asian document support a theme of ODF-Next?

-Rob

Louis.Suarez-Potts@Sun.COM wrote on 07/07/2009 10:44:53 AM:

> 
> I was just in China and discussed ODF and UOF harmonization as well as 
> improved support for and implementation of UOF by OOo. At present, OOo 
> supports it and since 3.x can save in UOF but evidently only 
> imperfectly. The idea would be to improve this, in particular for 
> ideographical scripts.
> UOF, of course, is the government-mandated format for its documents.
> 
> So, this raises the set of questions below:
> 
> * Status of UOF as a specification?
> 
>    From conversations with the RedOffice team and with Peter in 
> particular, UOF seems to be charging ahead and reaching 2.0. However, 
> there seems to be little movement to relocate it to Oasis or to drive 
> it to ISO standardization. Neither would directly enhance 
> interoperability with ODF but either would likely raise the 
> consciousness of the format among stakeholders.
> 
> * Status of ODF UOF harmonization?
> 
>    And, how desirable is this? At our meetings, we discussed the 
> possibility of effectively merging the specifications, so that the 
> elements missing in ODF but present in UOF and vice versa would be 
> completed. Problem is, the basic layout of the page differs from 
> format to format, so a simple cut and paste effort is not likely. My 
> guess is that a native-code (C++) conversion might be required for this.
> 
> This effort might also have some other consequences, as it seems as if 
> UOF is closer in its formatting logic to OOXML than ODF is. Thus, 
> compatibility with OOXML might be--I have not checked this--improved 
> by this work, providing it's reasonable.
> 
> * Logistics of any related work?
> 
>    That is, do we (stakeholders) have a good sense of how much work 
> would be required to produce results that satisfy demanding enterprise 
> users of UOF so that they are happy (or reasonable facsimile thereof) 
> when they use OOo or its derivatives?
> 
> Thanks
> louis
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.robweir.com/blog/labels/UOF.html
> 
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