On Fri, 2006-07-07 at 15:22 +0200, Charles Schulz wrote:
> Hi,
> >
> > There is only one answer: "Together, all parties need to set up
> > independent conformance testing to guarantee software products do work
> > with the standard." - our press release today
> >
> >   
> Here comes my shameless plug on the topic:
> http://www.libervis.com/blogs/5/charles/the_dark_side_of_the_plugin


If we move outside the Microsoft phobia for a minute, its almost
inevitable that as soon as ODF was first proposed, it could end up being
the universal document standard evolving into something that is operated
on by a plethora of applications. But it takes time to get from a to b
and these are relatively early days. There is going to be a lot of
compromises, politics and probably some broken stuff along the way. From
what I can ascertain, the plug-in design is technically sound so far.
Its open source so if anyone deliberately breaks or compromises
something it can be seen and fixed. If it doesn't make export and import
better than the current .doc filters in OOo it probably won't get used
much. If it makes such data transfer more reliable then it must have
some advantage to OOo or why would Sun be spending engineering time on
improving the filters?

Whatever the case, the demand is for open file formats so its going to
happen. MS realise that and they are always going to make judgement
calls on making the best of what is for them a bad job. Why expect
anything different? I'm sure MS wished ODF had never happened because it
transfers confidence in the standard from the application to the format.
Wordperfect is left completely isolated and OOo will have to compete in
the longer term with other applications that adopt ODF. That is good for
OOo as it prevents complacency.


Ian
-- 
www.theINGOTS.org
www.schoolforge.org.uk
www.opendocumentfellowship.org

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