2008/11/5 Naz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > Dotan Cohen wrote: >> >> Naz, the problem is that there is no reference implementation of odf. >> It is similar to the fact that different web browsers display websites >> differently, even though the websites are W3C compliant and so are the >> browsers. It is different interpretations of the same law, like >> Kashrut and Halal. >> >> Documents that use proper styles should display fine on all compliant >> systems, even if they will look different. But for the type of >> appearance-based editing that most people (including myself) do, they >> get mumbled. The situation will only get worse when MS Office starts >> supporting odf shortly, and they will have their own implementation >> that is likely not to be to spec. So you will have OOo, Koffice, and >> Abiword that all display the same document differently even thought >> everything is to spec, and you will have MS Office that displays >> things yet differently and is not to spec. And because MS Office is so >> widely deployed.... [insert doomsday theory here] >> > > Being a web developer I fully understand the futility of perfectly rendering > a semantically defined document using different rendering implementations. > However, surely the ODF spec could have been designed in such a way to avoid > at least destructive editing? That the different editors should edit the > semantic *content* of the doc, even though the display is different. I can > understand and very well live with different document presentations, but > incompatible editing? That's another thing entirely. > > To me, I feel that it is an unacceptible, totally self-defeating situation > where an ODF created by one app and shared with a user of another app > actually *breaks* the document. This, IMHO is actually a worse situation > than if we'd had a multitude of formats (one for OOo, one for KO, one for > Abi etc) as at least then we'd know what app was the document's generating > app. As it is now, there's no easy way to know, and opening it with the > wrong one will silently mangle the document. >
If only text is being edited, then the document should not be mangled. But I agree with you 100% on the aspects of the problem, and that 'unifying' everything under a common document format was worse than leaving it alone. Take your pick or a reference implementation and file bugs against the other projects asking them to do something about it. The bugs will no doubt be closed as invalid, but what else can we do? The people who push for these open standards with no reference implementation cannot fathom that we are better off with a proprietary format that _does_have_ a reference implementation, namely MS Office. I am as frustrated as you are. In the meantime I stick with OOo and don't open my documents with other apps, but when MS Office 2007 SP1 comes along with it's own implementation of ODF I will likely standardize on it if it runs in Wine (I use Ubuntu Linux). As for the cost of MS Office 2007: I think it's worth it. Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת ä-ö-ü-ß-Ä-Ö-Ü
