[odf-discuss] Sun's McNealy Calls for Merger of OASIS/ISO's ODF and China's UOF

[Lars D. Noodén]

On Wed, 18 Apr 2007, Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
> Sun's McNealy Calls for Merger of OASIS/ISO's ODF and China's UOF, Andy 
> Updegrove, Consortium Standards Blog, 17 April 2007
> http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20070417025728436

According to what Andy wrote, there is small, but important, error in 
Scott McNealy's statement:

 	"But the conference is also timely in that McNealy took a
 	meaningful amount of time during his presentation to note
 	that there are (in his words) three main document formats
 	in existence today: Microsoft Office, Open Document Format
 	(ODF) and China's Uniform Office Format (UOF)."

As much as MS marketeers would like people to perceive Microsoft Office's 
diverse zoo of formats as a single specification, it is not.

This is especially important when dealing with the problem Ecma 376. 
Legacy versions of MS Office are quite common, but those that can handle 
Ecma 376 are quite rare.  So prevalence of a specification and prevalence 
of an application are not the same.  It is incorrect and rather unhelpful 
to try to use them interchangeably.

-Lars

Lars Noodén
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