Re: [office] Muting and unmuting

[Nathaniel S Borenstein <nborenst@us.ibm.com>]

Thomas Zander <zander@kde.org> wrote on 02/12/2007
01:37:05 PM:

> Really, are there people that refuse to switch to ODF because their
list item 
> is positioned 2 mm to the left of where Word placed it? And if so,
do we 
> care? ;)

I think it's important to see this as a two-sided
question -- do we have a real technical requirement, and do we have a real
political vulnerability?

I find that most people understand the notion that
100% Office compatibility is an elusive dream, but they feel better if
they think that the ODF committee tried to get as close as possible to
that goal.  So I'm reluctant to ever see us turn down something like
this because it "isn't important."  By doing so, we would
be implicitly downgrading the importance of Office compatibility, which
I think is the wrong message to send.

So, I don't know if we have to support those last
2 mm any time soon, but I'm not sure that means we want to formally decide
that we never will.  I could easily see us deciding that it just isn't
a high priority at this time.  But then I could see us changing our
minds if we found out, for example, that EU documents are required by Brussels
to position their lists 2 mm to the left.  

If we table the question now, we're not wasting time
on a dubious need, but we're also not officially ruling out eventual six-sigma
fidelity for MS Office documents.  -- Nathaniel