-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 12/30/2010 5:14 PM, BRM wrote: > Agree. LibO should only read OOXML if anything at all.
[snip] > ODF for that matter - should treat OOXML like Microsoft treats ODF > and other formats - as third party as possible. In other words, > read support should be something that users must enable; Save > support should not be possible - it must be converted to either an > older MS format (e.g. doc, xls) or ODF. Ah . . . so your solution is to make our application harder to use than MS Office so that users will come to us instead of MS Office? Interesting concept . . . > We need to force MS to support ODF - as others have pointed out ODF > is quickly becoming the world standard at least at the government > level - which means in a few years most organizations that support > governments will need to support ODF too, and a few years after > that organizations that support those organizations, and so forth. > MS has lost the file format battle to ODF - it's just time before > OOXML (especially) and their legacy formats are gone. In case you haven't noticed, the open source community isn't in a position to "force" MS to do anything. And it never will be as long as OS applications are aimed only at power users, with documentation that is written in geek and features useful to a significant portion of users that have to be manually turned on by the users. So far, OOo has been really good about aiming at intermediate-level office users, and it's easy enough for a lot of entry-level use. I would hope that LibO would continue that trend. But as has already been pointed out, 90% of office software users honestly don't care a thing about (or even know about) file formats, open source v proprietary, or the politics of software. All they want to know is: (1) How much does it cost? (2) Does it do what I need it to do? (3) How easily does it do what I need it to do? (4) Will I have to spend a ton of time retraining myself and setting things up to get it to do what I need it to do? Making LibO by default not read (or not be able to exchange) files written in the format set by default by the market dominator because of a philosophical or political stance is highly impractical and will make the application less useful to end users . . . thus reducing your own market share. In other words: if you want to "stick it to Microsoft", this is not the way to do it. All you are doing is making their office suite more attractive than ours. - -- Steven Shelton Deputy Undersecretary for Made-up Titles -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (MingW32) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk0eA4wACgkQO+AD2HqgRoDs2QCgvr7OFlkLAj7c/VAfYr2a9MKl hkUAnA8m9Tuo0AFyFqgpIVewRj+pWmZB =wKrG -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***
