Dave,
Yes, getting non-technical people to collaborate is good. I am simply
pointing out that there would also be somewhat inevitable claims that we are
promoting the use of Open Office, and its formats, by forcing anyone wanting
to collaborate to acquire that product, rather than be able to use the
editor of their choice. Whether or not that is considered important is
another matter. But you might want to have answered lined up.
There is a certain ironic chicken and egg issue. If there were plenty of
free tools and lots of traction for ODF, perhaps there would be less
complaint. Are you aware of any tools, particularly lightweight Java-based
editors, other than Open Office?
I believe that Ted's already noted that we wouldn't be able to track the
actual content changes in source control. Instead, we would have binary
files being totally replaced, since SVN wouldn't see the content inside the
ZIP file.
--- Noel
