[odf-discuss] Microsoft and Novell cooperate on document formats

[Daniel Carrera]

On Fri, 2006-03-11 at 10:37 +0000, Ian Lynch wrote:
> Impression Publisher on RISC OS I believe took a team of about 12, 2
> years to development and that was written entirely in assembler and
> included a document description language that although a lot less
> complex is similar in principle to ODF/MOOX.

I don't know what you mean by "similar in principle" but that can cover
a lot of ground. HTML is similar in principle to ODF and MOOX. But ODF
is like 10 times more complex than HTML, and MOOX is like 10 times more
complex than ODF. Since XML wasn't around at the time of RISC OS, I'm
not sure how similar that format can be. Also, it is one thing to design
a format for your own product (I could design one by Thursday), versus
coding to an external, neutral format (like ODF), or worse, coding to an
external, vendor-specific format (like MOOX). Apples and oranges.

> ...functionally equivalent application...

"functionally equivalent" and "good enough" is not good enough to
implement MOOX. You pretty much have to re-do all of MS-Office. Not any
office suite, but that particular office suite, even bug-for-bug (reall,
there are *bugs* in the spec purposely inserted to match *bugs* in MS
Office, like the way it stores dates).

How long would it take to even read and understand a 6,000-page spec? If
you were to print that, it would be a pile the size of Mark.


> I accept Impression Publisher benefited from not having to
> work on anything except RISC OS

Not only that, it also didn't have to use XML, or worry about
interoperability. Anyone can design a single-application format for
their own use. Heck, your format could just be a memory dump (like .doc
is) and that could be implemented overnight.

> functionally there is nothing I have ever used in say OOo Writer that I
> couldn't do in IP

Just because IP is perfectly sufficient for everything you do, it
doesn't mean that it would be easy for it to copy all of MS Office bug
for bug.

From the MOOX spec: "You have to start counting years from the year
1900, unless you are on a Mac, in which case it should be 1904, and you
should give dates as if 1900 was a leap year, even though it's not. Yes,
you are required to store the wrong date at times".

Now imagine 6,000 pages of this.

Cheers,
Daniel.
-- 
"I AM in shape. Round IS a shape."
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