[odf-discuss] Foundation plugin.

[Alex Hudson]

Ok, let's try and take some of the heat out of this discussion.

I think, plainly, the differences in opinion here are about whether or 
not interoperability is a justifiable casualty in the War On OXML(TM).

Quoting from the Foundation Blog:

    "Using [section 1.5], daVinci can get perfect fidelity between the
    billions of binary documents and ODF. And get it right every time,
    with every Microsoft Office version from 1997 to 2007. But this
    "perfect fidelity" comes at a high cost of interoperability with
    other ODF ready applications. Simply put, the other ODF applications
    have no idea what to do with the daVinci <foreign elements>! An
    Microsoft Office with daVinci knows. But for all other ODF ready
    applications these dark objects are still a mystery. In many ways
    the <foreign element> tags are the equivalent of the what EOOXML
    does with the same volumes of unspecified legacy tags."

    --
    http://openstack.blogspot.com/2007/01/running-on-opendocument-inside-of.html


The approach that the Foundation is taking for preserving the Microsoft 
data is pretty clear, and I think the analogy with OXML is apt. It's 
taking Microsoft proprietary binary data, which neither the plugin nor 
anyone else understands, and translating it into proprietary XML. (And, 
ODF 1.2 doesn't give us any new tools to solve this problem)

The problem isn't that this isn't "allowed" or whatever with 
OpenDocument: plainly it is. The problem is the opportunity cost.

The question is, how good is the interoperability amongst OpenDocument 
applications? Our main claim about OpenDocument is that it is an open 
format which will, in the future, be implemented by a variety of 
applications, and users of those applications will be able to swap files 
without worrying whether or not the recipient is running "the Right 
application".

Gaining fidelity for Office users is a nice feature. But, at what cost 
interoperability?

Alex.