I don't understand the maddening aspect of this reaction.  I suppose I don't 
have to.

When ODF was developed at OASIS, one of the design points was to be based on 
the functionality of OpenOffice 1.x as it was at the time, starting from an XML 
format that was developed for that product.  It was explicitly ruled out of 
scope for the format to have counterparts of Microsoft Office document 
features.  

When OOXML was developed, using the Open Packaging Conventions that were 
already used by Microsoft for a different project, a critical goal was to have 
fidelity-preserving, convertible features of legacy Microsoft Office documents. 
 There is also a strict version that doesn't include so much of the legacy 
accommodation and has some better feature provisions going forward.

There you have it.  ODF 1.0 then ODF 1.1 and now ODF 1.2.  Also, OOXML versions 
1 through 3 (so far), although ODF changed more from ODF 1.1 to ODF 1.2 
(because of the addition of OpenFormula) than anything that happened to OOXML 
since the ISO OOXML version.

Neither of these are DocBook (an XML document format) or DITA or any other 
XML-carried document format.  None of that is surprising in any technical way: 
XML is not a document format, it is a markup format for extending and 
customizing into any number of document models and schemas.  XML by itself 
(unlike HTML, yet-another document format) doesn't establish any kind of 
document format whatsoever.

There was an ISO working group looking into the harmonization of document 
formats, especially with what could make better portability among OOXML-based 
and ODF-based software.  A recent report on the subject is rather interesting.  
Look at <http://www.interoperability-center.com/en/dokumenten-iop-lab>.  The 
final report on Document Profiling and a White Paper on Document 
Interoperability are listed in the "Publications" sidebar.

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: VA [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 06:56
To: Pedro; [email protected]
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for 
LibreOffice

This is utterly maddening.

Based on Pedro's post, I ran a simple test. I created a document in Word 
(.docx) and an identical document in LibO (.odt). I saved them both and then 
extracted their contents using 7-zip Manager. I was amazed at how similar 
the two document contents were, and yet how different. Neither document had 
any of the binary smilie faces I've come to expect by opening a .doc 
document in a text editor. All of the individual files contained formatting 
codes in simple text. And, yet...

The maddening part is how two programs can create the same type of documents 
(xml files saved in a zipped format) and yet remain so completely different.

[ ... ]


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