On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 10:02:18 AM -0400, Wm Stewart ([email protected]) wrote: > > On 10/16/2010 9:36 AM, M. Fioretti wrote: > >On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 08:53:13 AM -0400, Wm Stewart > >([email protected]) wrote: > > > >>OpenOffice could be the world standard very quickly if it solved > >>what users say is the number one barrier to widespread adoption. > >>Slides 26 and 30 of this presentation show that the feature OO users > >>*themselves* most need is complete compatibility with MS formats: > > > >this is impossible BY DEFINITION. And it has been already explained > >many many times. You CANNOT achieve and maintain 100% compatibility > >with a format that YOUR competitor can change at whim every time > >you're over 95% compatibility. Period. > > > > Marco, stand back and look at the big picture.
Bill, please stand back and look again at what I actually wrote, pasted here for convenience: > The only way to achieve and maintain sufficient compatibility is to > get rid of the very concept that MS formats must continue to be > tolerated for NEW documents: demand law and regulations that mandate > OpenDocument as the only acceptable interchange and long storage > format of all public documents and the problem will solve itself I said NEW documents. Not already existing ones. And I meant NEW, and new only, even in the last line above, which should read: > format of all new public documents and the problem will solve itself Sorry if I forgot to repeat "new" in that line, however this is what my proposal is and remains. Using OOXML (which is NOT today's docx!) as the preferred STORAGE format to preserve already existing files is one thing. I have already said several times that, limited to that usage, OOXML is the least evil. Tolerating OOXML or .docx for interchange and storage, that is archival, of NEW files is an entirely different issue. That would be really stupid. Apart from, or in addition to this: 100% total compatibility as in 100% visual fidelity etc... on **editable formats** for every possible document is achievable only if everybody uses the same version of the same program with the same fonts, macros, multimedia plugins and so on. For the record, at the last OOoCon there was a Microsoft engineer that explained this very well. His slideshow is on the OOocon website: http://www.ooocon.org/index.php/ooocon/2010/paper/view/175 > Here is the decision > that must be made: > > 1. Do we wish to achieve compatibility with the existing MS > formats, through docx No. More exactly, I say: if/when that happens, great. But it is much, much more important to improve interoperability with other office suites (not just MS office) on OpenDocument files. > 2. Or do you wish to continue to ask the world to throw out all of > their existing billions of documents and software, which is not > possible as the past few years shows - and continue to lose? The best way to lose is to keep running after a target that changes just to keep you running. Fighting forever respecting unfair rules (=the file formats) against somebody who decides those rules alone makes much less sense than demanding a new game with new rules. If you didn't understand this from my first message, I don't know how to explain it simpler, so OK but we can and should stop here. This said, please remember again that I spoke of new files. In other words, change laws and regulations in governments so that: - from now on, whenever a government archives a NEW public document or anybody sends to any government office a NEW document, that document can only be in the OpenDocument format. Not OOXML, not .docx. How the author complies with this requirement is nobody's business, its his responsibility. Ditto for the documents they keep for their internal use only. > the point of users, and the point of the regular folks on the Fark > thread I referenced, is that it is the last 2% that is the key to > widespread adoption. My point remains that such users and regular folks simply don't get some basic truths and are fighting a battle that a) can't be won by definition, b) isn't even really worth fighting. See above and the link I provided in my earlier message. Do you care more about the software you use, or about the documents you create and manage with it? Microsoft never fought Linux and OpenOffice with the same intensity which with they fought OpenDocument. If this isn't enough to prove to you where their real weakness (that is the best way to accomplish your goal, "making OO the standard"), OK. Now, the real reason why we're discussing now is that we have two different objectives. You want OOo to be the standard. I want OpenDocument to be the standard, because file formats are much more important than software programs and we use software because we need documents, not the other way around. But we do have different objectives, maybe it's better to just acknowledge that, isn't it? Marco --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
