On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 09:11 +0100, Ian Lynch wrote: > On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 02:06 -0500, Shawn K. Quinn wrote: > > > It may well be that we are only a few months or weeks away from the last > > "clean" version of OpenOffice.org's ODF support which is free of any > > workarounds for Microsoft Office bugs with regard to ODF documents. > > The MS Plug-in is an Open Source project so if they deliberately break > it, it can be fixed and the fix can be given a lot of publicity.
I would expect that some day, the support for ODF will become part of MSO itself, instead of a plug-in. I don't expect the ODF plug-in to remain free software (or non-free "open source", depending on the license it was released under) for terribly long. The moment ODF support is built into MSO without source code for it being made available, the incompatibilities will begin. Mark my words. > > I, personally, don't think OOo should *ever* have *any* workarounds for > > Microsoft's poor programming when it comes to ODF > Since ODF is an ISO standard any files generated can be validated > against the standard. So I rather hope MS do break the standard with > their ODF output. It would be the best way of generating worldwide > publicity for the standard I could think of. I would rather hope for once they didn't. Ever tried to make a Web site to W3C's published specifications, only to find out Internet Exploder gets it royally wrong? This is just one of many examples where Microsoft's programmers have seen the specification, had the opportunity to follow it, and chose not to. > > (Speaking of which, is there such a beast as an ODF validator at the > > moment? If we don't have one now, I know we will need it very soon.) > > This has been discussed at the OpenDocument Fellowship and some initial > work has been done. If we continue to get financial support, this is a > project we would give some priority to. However, if a file was > specifically suspected of having a problem it could be manually examined > and I am sure those with the skills and knowledge will be waiting to > check out anything that comes from MS's plug-in. This is something sorely needed, right up there with HTML and CSS validators used by Web site author/designer types. -- Shawn K. Quinn --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
