[odf-discuss] A story of TIFF

[Andreas J. Guelzow]

On Sun, 2007-04-02 at 13:11 +0100, Thomas Zander wrote:
> On Saturday 03 February 2007 17:21, Alex Hudson wrote:
> > We can say this in fewer words: "We expect ODF-compliant apps to
> > understand our special Office foreign data, and attempt to decode it".
> 
> I'm pretty sure thats reading too much into this.
> 
> AFAICT;
> When certain data that is stored in those blobs can be represented in a future 
> ODF spec, then the plugin will stop saving it in the blob and start saving it 
> in the odf-compliant tags.
> 
> The 'foreign data' is and always will be foreign that only one party should be 
> able to read.
> 
> Rule number one in writing filtering software (aka software to convert between 
> formats) is to never throw away data.  This plugin just follows that basic 
> principle by saving it in a way that the plugin can later read that data 
> again.
> Which allows a MS document to be saved in ODF, edited in KWord and then read 
> in MS without loosing features that KWord did not know about.
> 
> Thats all; don't make more out of it :)

Unfortunately that is not "it". Users will see that one application can
open that so called odf file retrieving all info while another
application cannot (since some of the info is stored as foreign data  by
the first application.)
The only reasonable conclusion for the user is that the first
application is a preferable application since it can read all parts of
the file. (Even bringing up a warning that the file contains foreign
information may not mitigate this!)

Andreas
-- 
Prof. Dr. Andreas J. Guelzow
Dept. of Mathematical & Computing Sciences
Concordia University College of Alberta