Bryan Rasmussen wrote:
My starting point for the focus of standardization would be something like:
ODF supports a broader base of standards than OpenXML, this could reduce
costs for businesses, developers etc. because various objects placed
into a document will be described in standardized formats the knowledge
of which will be cross-platform. Examples would be - svg, xforms, xsl-fo
(of these formats though only SVG can be considered as being a
successful standard as of yet.)
The OpenDocument Fellowship has an introductory technical article giving
some reasons why OpenDocument is much easier to develop for.
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/Articles/FormatODFVsMSXML
The format is just more human-readable. The tags make sense, the content
model makes sense in the context of a document. Everything about the
format is clearly designed with the implementor in mind. Contrast this
with MS XML which looks like a XML serialization of internal data
structures.
Compare, MS XML:
<w:p>
<w:r>
<w:t>This is a </w:t>
</w:r>
<w:r>
<w:rPr>
<w:b />
</w:rPr>
<w:t>very basic</w:t>
</w:r>
<w:r>
<w:t> document.</w:t>
</w:r>
</w:p>
With OpenDocument:
<text:p text:style-name="Standard">
This is a <text:span text:style-name="bold">very basic
</text:span> document.
</text:p>
OpenXML has support for XML Schema, including definition of its
structure via XML Schema. In organizations where a lot of investment has
been made in XML Schemas it can be that OpenXML can be more easily
integrated with data (although that will depend a lot on how such
integration is handled at the functionality level of the application,
and is at this point a 'maybe' only)
Back to implementors, XML Schema is very complex and hard to read.
OpenDocument uses Relax NG which can be understood by someone reading it
for the first time. Relax NG is arguably more powerful, allowing a more
thorough validity check. A couple of weeks ago we heard from someone who
was trying to implement MS XML, but his files were not opening.
Microsoft told him that this was because there were features in MS XML
that just aren't represented in the schema.
Technically, this is true of any XML format, but it is much less likely
with OpenDocument.
Cheers,
Daniel.
--
/\/`) http://opendocumentfellowship.org
/\/_/
/\/_/ I'm not saying there should be a capital punishment for
\/_/ stupidity, but why don't we just take the safety labels
/ off of everything and let the problem solve itself?
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