RE: [oic] deliverable "state of interoperability"

["Hanssens Bart" <Bart.Hanssens@fedict.be>]

Title: RE: [oic] deliverable "state of interoperability"

> In Belgium, has there been an attempt to ensure that there are
> particular documents and forms that need to be usable interoperably in
> civil government, for example?


Specifically, we advice people:

- not to use ODF 1.2 yet
- not to use tables-in-tables in text documents
- to avoid certain types of charts (bar-of-pie, line/bar combinations)
- to use styles as much as possible
- to correctly use (outline) numbering
- be aware that slide transitions may get stripped
- not to get to creative with pivot tables
- be aware that macros may not work across platforms
- be aware that digital signatures aren't part of ODF 1.1
- to avoid background images with tables
- pay attention with forms (data validation/non-text fields might not
work)
- not to use multi-color gradients/shades


This is no guarantee for a issue-free document of course, but it helps.

If you pay close attention, you can sometimes see issues with
- non-text user defined metadata
- wrong meta:generator
- rotated shapes and connectors in presentations
- shapes/graphs/callouts (or how do you call them) in text documents
- ...

(but users normally don't notice these glitches)



Then there are quite a few other issues I've encountered that may or may
not be due to converting from another format to ODF, or are document
specific, for which I haven't had the time to precisely determine the
cause (I just toss them to vendors and ask them to fix it, sorry guys :-)


Luckily, formulas and templates are better supported / interoperable
nowadays than they used to be


Best regards,

Bart