Tim Bray: If those docs/spreadsheets/presos might be
long-lived, or contain high-value data that you might want to
re-use later, and you don’t use OpenDocument, well
there’s a word for that but I’m not going to put it up
on the front page at ongoing.
I will note in passing that OpenDocument is the default file
format for OpenOffice 2.0,
currently
in beta. It
apparently
is not compatible with the OpenOffice 1.x formats.
Earlier I wrote parts
1,
2,
3,
4. Time for an update.
Complaints on OpenOffice at the time? XML Schema, and
extensibility. Let’s see how they fared.
Documents that conform to the OpenDocument specification MAY
contain elements and attributes not specified within the
OpenDocument schema. Such elements and attributes must not be
part of a namespace that is defined within this specification and
are called foreign elements and attributes.
Excellent! Once again, full points awarded.
MSOffice
My “gripe” related to MS Office? I cited the
unwillingness to working with others to describe the semantics
that PowerPoint 11 uses to capture a pie chart.
Some things never change.
As someone who has written code (not much but anyway) that deals with OpenOffice.org 1.x docs, it irks me that the OASIS spec seemingly gratuitously changes the namespace URIs. The fact that the name of the speccing organization is visible in namespaces is a problem. It encourages namespace changes in the standardization phase. Changing namespaces on formats that have running code is uncool. It’s like running Rot13 on the element names.
Gratuitous format changes like that do not inspire confidence in the long term stability of the format.
Also, it appears the format still treats text language as a stylistic property instead of using xml:lang and treating language as an intrinsic property of the content. Also, the way OOo/OpenDocument don’t have a single concept of language but three simultaneous languages divided according to writing system (Latin/Greek/Cyrillic, CJK, CTL) is annoying. If you know the language of your text and want to store it as OOo/OpenDocument, you need to know how OOo classifies the language.
I still think OOo/OpenDocument docs are more pleasant to deal with than Word docs. java.util.zip and javax.xml take you a long way with OOo/OpenDocument. Also, I think using a ZIP container for XML and bitmaps is highly clueful compared to storing images as Base64 inside XML or, worse, using a multipart/*-based container.
Anyone who puts their trust in an organization (and that includes you OpenOffice) that does not provide backwards compatibility is a sucker for punishment.
Dare: history has shown that if/when Microsoft decides to open up their specifications, I will link to it. Apparently the earliest that one can hope for that to occur is the second half of 2006.
From Tim Bray, we learn that Open Document 1.0 has been approved as an OASIS Standard. The new format will be the standard for the OpenOffice.org office suite. This paves the way for an unprecedented level of compatibility between applications and...
[via Dare Obasanjo] Fresh on the heels of the OpenOffice standard announcement comes this welcome news. Questions/comments: Will schemas be provided? When? Will these formats be extensible by third parties? If Office 2003 can be updated to support...
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