this needs wide distribution

[Alex Hudson]

On Tue, 2006-12-12 at 11:04 +0100, Max Moritz Sievers wrote:
> Alex Hudson wrote:
> > By giving Office the lead in that area, people like me are going to stop
> > using tools like OpenOffice.org and use Office instead, because their
> > output will be more widely compatible [...]
> 
> I don't understand why and when you stop(ped) using OpenOffice.org. The output 
> of it is maximally compatible.

Well, I haven't yet (and am unlikely to!), but I can give you a firm
example from a recent project.

I have a set of documents which are generated from an automated system,
which comprise many hundreds of pages and are turned into OpenDocument.
Now, Word support is a must, but converting them into Word is pretty
difficult (e.g., OpenOffice.org is unable to handle numbered lists with
breaks in them, when converting). However, this pain is less than trying
to do it in Office and trying to do the other conversions (HTML, PDF).

If Office gains excellent OpenDocument support, but going from
OpenOffice.org -> Office remains as painful as today, Office then
becomes the obvious place to do this kind of work. 

You're right, today OOo output is maximally compatible. Without OXML
support, though, tomorrow it won't be. If you make decisions purely on
that basis, you wouldn't choose OOo in the future. That would harm OOo.

> > *By all means*, people need to support OpenDocument.
> 
> So what are you arguing about in this list? I guess we all here support 
> OpenDocument.

I'm talking about militating against OpenXML support in free software,
which I think actually harms those applications which support
OpenDocument, and provides disincentives to people using it.

Cheers,

Alex.