Re: [oiic-formation-discuss] MARBUX POINT OF ORDER, OBJECTION, AND SUGGESTIONS No. 1

[Alexander Wright <alexander@silverfish-design.co.uk>]

Paul,

I'm somewhat confused.

On Sunday 15 June 2008 13:28:02 marbux wrote:
> The fact
> that *different* IT systems cannot interoperate using ODF means it is
> not a legal standard. Both create "unnecessary obstacles to
> international trade" within the meaning of the Agreement on Technical
> Barriers to Trade.

My father recently sent me an ODF file created with iWorks (on a Mac), I 
edited it in Open Office (on MS Windows), then sent it to my wife, who opened 
it in KOffice on Linux.

As far as I know, those three systems use different code to create, edit and 
display the ODF document. How is this not interoperable using different IT 
systems? 

> Sure. But no one can create an implementation of ODF capable of
> interoperating with another without cloning an existing
> implementation. ODF even bestows conformant status on app-specific
> extensions to the standard and OOo 2.x alone generates some 150
> app-specific extensions whose functionality is documented nowhere in
> public. For example, see
> <http://lxr.go-oo.org/source/sw/sw/source/ui/uno/SwXDocumentSettings.cxx>
> lines 169-211 (OpenOffice.org source code app-specific document
> setting extensions to ODF for compatibility with the StarOffice/OOo
> legacy word processing format.)  Do you want to spend enough time with
> the OOo source code to figure out the functionality invoked by those
> extensions so you can add the same features to your app and then use
> the same markup?

At least it is possible, and the code is there in the public domain. Not the 
best documentation, sure, but it is at least visible! And, since its GPL 
code, free to use by anybody else.

Elsewhere (another message, I think, I can't find it now) you state that ODF 
was created to be incompatible with MS Office. Since Microsoft don't release 
their specification, I don't see how *any* other office format can be created 
that *is* compatible with MS Office. And that is without taking into account 
the huge number of inconsistencies that have emerged in the OOXML spec. You 
know, the one that MS Office is not compatible with...

-- 

Alexander Wright
Silverfish Design
Phone: 07970 633952