[odf-discuss] Sun's OpenDocument filter for MS office released

[Mirko Nasato]

Lars Noodén wrote:
>> ... might be more productive to push for full specification of those
>> APIs and their manipulation. (Microsoft is already required to do so
>> by the U.S. v. MIcrosoft consent decree.)  Those APIs are a far simpler 
>> and more stable target for interoperability development.
>>     
>
> The consent decree may be the most strategically valuable bit of
> information to turn up in this thread or even whole set of threads.
>
> However, I have to ask if you meant specification or API?  Does the
> consent decree refer to publishing the *specification* for the data
> format or only to the *APIs* which are tied into MS Office and/or MS
> Windows?  The former is very useful, the latter is worse than useless.
>
>   

Well if the specification contains definitions like
"autoSpaceLikeWord95: specifies whether to auto space as is done in Word
6.0/95" it would not be very useful, would it? ;-)

I guess Microsoft formats are just too crappy to be properly documented.
No wonder the Apache POI project (a Java library) calls the Word format
"HWPF" (for Horrible Word Processor Format), Excel "HSSF" (Horrible
SpreadSheet Format) etc. :-D

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Jakarta_POI

Kind regards

Mirko