[odf-discuss] Native ODF support in browsers

[David Cartwright]

marbux wrote:
> And ODF certainly has something to offer at the edge between 
> traditional word processing documents and web applications where 
> people attempt to emulate traditional document publishing on the web. 
> For example, creation of footnotes, endnotes, and tables of contents 
> is a mess of different methods now among web apps largely because CSS 
> and HTML were never designed to solve such problems, so we have 
> instead a huge mess of different and incompatible work-arounds mostly 
> implemented at the application level.
Excellent example .... and a potential strategic benefit  to both ODF 
and browser developers.

Lars D. Noodén wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Oct 2006, Alex Hudson wrote:
>> Plugins are fine, but they're their own little world, it's not the same
>> as native display.
>
> How about plug-in support as an intermediat step to native display?
Yes. Small steps can be a good way to move towards the final goal, as 
long as the final goal remains in view.

It was mentioned that Firefox has 12% market share. Whether it is 10% or 
20%, the point is that anybody who cares about open standards and open 
source cannot be satisfied with such a low marketshare ..... and I am 
sure the Mozilla Foundation has a goal to continue to grow that 
marketshare. I am sure the KDE Project and Opera Software (that at least 
cares about open standards) have similar goals to grow their marketshare.

And what about ODF .. what marketshare would we like to see ODF achieve? 
10% ... 20% .... What marketshare is achievable? Again I am sure that 
many of us would hope to eventually hit >80%.

So how do we get there?

I think there have been some good points raised about potential 
synergies between the goals of ODF and the goals of the Mozilla 
Foundation / KDE Project in addition to the goals of non-open source 
products such as Opera Software. To gain marketshare in the browser 
space, I believe there are real potential benefits for organizations 
such as the Mozilla Foundation, KDE Project, Opera Software to move 
towards native rendering of ODF.

Yes, there are plenty of issues to be resolved. For example, Marbux's 
"Towards a solution of the file type association problem" precisely 
addresses the concerns raised by Thomas Zander a few days ago. Yes, 
there are challenges, but solutions can be worked out.

Based on my reading of the Wikipedia articles: 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gecko_(layout_engine)  
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KHTML  and in trying to digest the 
technical aspects of the responses, would it be correct to say that 
native rendering in Firefox could be best stated as native rendering in 
the Gecko engine, while native rendering if a KDE environment means 
native rendering in the KHTML layout engine?

Perhaps the KHTML terminology has caused confusion. It certainly 
confused me, because if I have correctly understood the Wikipedia 
article, KHTML could also be developed to provide 'native' rendering of 
ODF. By native rendering I have in mind that the rendering engine does 
not go through an intermediary stage of converting the ODF file into 
HTML before correctly rendering the file.

Following on from the points raised by Lars, would it be appropriate to 
make a formal pitch/approach to the Mozilla Foundation, the KDE Project, 
Opera Software regarding the benefits of native support of ODF (that may 
also involve an intermediary step via a plugin)?

David Cartwright
Senior Consultant
Alkira Australia