[odf-discuss] Re: ODF on Mac

[Jean Hollis Weber]

I sent Max's note to Eric, whose reply is below.
--Jean

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [Fwd: [odf-discuss] ODF on Mac]
Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 18:35:30 +1000
From: Eric Lindsay
To: Jean Hollis Weber
References: <457A09A3.9000209 at gmail.com>

On 09/12/2006, at 10:56 AM, Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [odf-discuss] ODF on Mac
> Date: Sat, 9 Dec 2006 01:08:36 +0100
> From: SEPT-Solutions <info at sept-solutions.de>
> Reply-To: ODF Discussion List <odf-discuss at opendocumentfellowship.org>
> To: ODF Discuss <odf-discuss at opendocumentfellowship.org>
>
> Hi,
>
> could anyone with a Mac try this out?
> http://impulsivehighlighters.blogspot.com/2006/08/leopard-preview- 
> textedit.html
>
> I think it is great that also Apple added support for ODF
>
> Regards
> Max

Jean,

Anyone with Leopard is under non-disclosure restrictions, so I 
doubt anyone will provide any further information.  The blog item 
could just be a piece of Photoshop.

TextEdit is an open source Unicode editor using rtf as its 
default file format (source is on the developer's disk under 
Developer/Examples/AppKit/TextEdit), and really does not do any 
of its own conversions nor text support. I think it still uses 
NSTestStorage internally. I imagine the file conversions are 
actually done by the Cocoa text system filter services, which can 
also be accessed by the command line textutil utility. This 
currently handles txt, html, rtf, rtfd, doc, wordml, or 
webarchive formats.

If OpenDocuments are added, access will be by filter services, 
and the access should then be system wide, not restricted to 
TextEdit. That is, any Cocoa rtf handling application should then 
be able to open (and possibly save) Open Document files. 
Currently a rtf file can be saved as RTF (RTFD is automatically 
used for files that can't be handled as RTF alone i.e. graphics), 
HTML, Word, or WordXML. Note that opening Word documents is 
"lossy", so I assume OpenDocuments will also be "lossy". I 
believe you will get a warning if attempting to overwrite such a 
document.

TextEdit still isn't NSDocument based (although it should be). It 
is possible the author will manage to add this change when the 
Leopard version appears.

Eric