On Fri, 2006-09-01 at 16:06 -0500, Shawn K. Quinn wrote: > 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.
If its used as the internal format they would have to drop MSOOXML and replace it with ODF. Politically a very difficult thing to do given there current reasons for developing their own XML based "standard" > 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. So the code will just get forked and there will be Free and Non-free variants. I think they would be likely to lose that battle since the who would use a non-free broken version when they can have a free version that does what is required? > The moment ODF support > is built into MSO without source code for it being made available, the > incompatibilities will begin. Mark my words. Look at it this way. Treat MSOOXML as an incompatible ODF. Both ODF and MSOOXML are based on XML and similar approaches to the same issue. I can't see any advantage in moving from MSOOXML to ODF and then breaking it. If having a format that breaks the standard works, just stick with MSOOXML. > > > 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. But the browser wars were a lot different to this battle. MS are not giving MSO away free with their operating system. If they decide to do that, perhaps your concerns are justified but if they do that they lose nearly half their operating income so I just don't see that happening any time soon. I'd say a port of MSO to Linux was a lot more likely. Imagine MS had been charging $50 for IE against Netscape being free. Do you think they would have had the take up to start dictating web standards? I don't. > > > (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. Agreed. Ian -- www.theINGOTS.org www.schoolforge.org.uk www.opendocumentfellowship.org --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
