[odf-discuss] OOo OOXML filters

[Alex Hudson]

Carlos Moffat wrote:
> I don't quite the logic from "we haven't seen any results until now" to
> "[conversion] can never reach a sufficient quality". If not results are
> available, how does he know?
>   

Well, for one thing, if your OXML loader consists of OXML -> ODF ->
load; you're constrained a) by the speed of the conversion (which is
likely to be not-that-performant for large documents, compared to the
.doc loader) and b) by being able to map the OXML featureset onto ODF
(which is already know is problematic, if you read the conversion team's
blog - there are issues going in both directions).

OXML is a relative of the binary formats, and the new loader will be
written from that codebase - it's not a "from scratch" implementation.

> The only reason I've been able to come up with is that supporters of ODF
> would not like this, as it would make too easy for people to use OOXML
> instead of ODF. However, not having a good OOXML filter (the very best
> possible) would only make adoption of OO harder.
>   

I believe you're right. Personally, I believe that excellent conversion
to and from OXML only makes ODF stronger: it proves that the format is
equivalently featured, and if we have better tools for ODF there's a lot
of value in ODF even if people are only interested in the OXML output.

I have a lot of investment in ODF. However, conversion to and from
Office using ODF is still a world of pain for any moderately complex
document: I can show you structurally very simple documents that
OpenOffice.org cannot save in .doc reliably. I'm willing to put up with
that pain for the ease of development with ODF; a lot of other
developers won't.

-- 
Alex Hudson
IT Director, Stratagia Ltd.
P: 0845 226 17 13     W: http://www.stratagia.co.uk/
F: 0845 226 17 14     E: alex (at) stratagia.co.uk