Hi :)
You are making it sound more complicated than it really is.  

1.  There is already a bug-report about this.  I doubt everything that anyone 
does is 100% perfect 100% of the time.  When problems are noticed in LO a 
bug-report gets posted and then hopefully get worked on.  Similarly with other 
programs using the ODF formats.  Even if the bug-report doesn't get fixed 
quickly then at least there is a record of the problem.  If the problem affects 
enough people then it probably gets listed in the Release Notes. The question 
is how can we attract more devs and once they have started working on some 
parts of LO how can we attract them into fixing old problems rather than just 
going off to some other project?  

2.  Formats are likely to grow and change in the future.  LO uses ODF 1.2 
(Extended) and hopefully the departures from normal 1.2 are documented.  If you 
want to return to pure 1.2 then it's fairly easy to look up the ISO standard 
for that.  If you want to return to 1.1, or the 1.0 then again it's reasonably 
easy to look up the specs for those too.  Those specs closely match the way 
it's implemented in the various programs that use the format.  

3.  You can find programs that still use the older formats.  Even LO can be 
switched to using older formats.  See 
Tools - Options - "Load/Save" - General

4.  The devs have created a new format for LO that wraps up the 3 older 
formats, 1.2 (not extended), 1.1 and 1.0 and are calling it something like "1.2 
Extended (compat)".  Files created using that format will be able to be read by 
legacy software that can only read 1.0 or only 1.1.  Presumably at some point 
we are going to find the options listed in 
Tools - Options - "Load/Save" - General
to drop from 4 formats back down to 2.  


The whole point of ODF is that even if or when programs do abandon a particular 
version of it that format is still readable because the format is implemented 
as specified.  The point is NOT to condemn us all to sticking with an 
unchanging format for the next few hundred years!  Change is inevitable.  
Documenting those changes is part of the aim of ODF so that old files can be 
read.  

This is going waaay off-topic again.  
Regards from 
Tom :)  






>________________________________
> From: Ken Springer <snowsh...@q.com>
>To: users@global.libreoffice.org 
>Sent: Friday, 14 June 2013, 0:32
>Subject: [libreoffice-users] Re: LO 4.0.3.3: 'Insert: Horizontal rule' is 
>missing
> 
>
>On 6/13/13 5:12 PM, Tom Davies wrote:
>> Hi :)
>> Hmm, there are many reasons for preferring non-MS.  Backwards compatibility 
>> is just 1 of the issues.  Current compatibility with it's own current 
>> formats is another.  A third is whether it's current formats work with 
>> non-MS products that do follow the OOXML ISO standard.
>> Regards from
>> Tom :)
>>
>
>Preferring MS or not, or any other format, isn't the point here.
>
>It's accessing the old files regardless of format, which even LO appears 
>to be abandoning.  You can't have it both ways, use ODT because the 
>standards will remain unchanged so old files can be accessed while 
>accepting a decision that prevents the accurate opening of the old files.
>
>
>-- 
>Ken
>
>Mac OS X 10.8.4
>Firefox 20.0
>Thunderbird 17.0.5
>LibreOffice 4.0.3.3
>
>
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