[odf-discuss] What is actually necessary and found only in OpenXML?

[Alex Hudson]

marbux wrote:
> What you argue in effect is that the Foundation's plug-in may
> allowably wrap MSWord metadata that can't be mapped to ODF within
> foreign elements and attributes, but that OOo when it receives the
> file is free to destroy the metadata required for the document to be
> translated back to MS Word format because OOo has scant support for
> the foreign elements and attributes. Now the Foundation's plugin gets
> the file back from OOo and needs to open it in MS Office, but the
> metadata needed to preserve the MS formatting is gone. 

This is exactly true.

> What's wrong with this picture? Under the ISO definition of "MAY,"
> nothing. Under the RFC 2119 definition, OOo has just violated its
> requirement to interoperate with the Foundation plug-in/MS Word even
> though OOo does not support the foreign element and attribute features.

No, it hasn't violated the requirement. The requirement for
"interoperation" is that OOo work with the ODF output of the plugin, not
that any optional feature of that output be supported. If OOo didn't
accept a file with foreign attributes, that would be breaking the
requirement.

It's really, really, really simple. Anything marked "MAY" does NOT need
to be implemented, under any circumstance. Any other understanding is
plainly wrong.

> The raw truth is that ODF is not designed for interoperability and has
> few interoperability features. ODF's key interoperability requirements
> for interop with non-conformant apps went out the window when the RFC
> 2119 definitions were toggled to ISO.

Pure FUD.

> Right now, less featureful apps can't interoperate with OOo.
> Right now OOo can't interoperate with less featureful apps.
>  Right now, ODF apps can't interoperate with MS Office. Right now,
> ODF, in the words of Sun and IBM's representative, "is essentially
> worthless."

I'm sorry, this is complete tosh.


So, previously, the Foundation's story on foreign attributes was "we
need them for full fidelity interop, but OOo doesn't support them - we
want them to be mandatory in ODF 1.2". It was always "ODF 1.2 is our
target format".

When did that change?

Alex.