[odf-discuss] Fwd: W3C Lead on CDF says OpenDocument Fellowship Position on CDF Makes No Sense

[J David Eisenberg]

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007, Gary Edwards wrote:

> Hi Ryan,
> 
> Chris Lilley's comments are in direct opposition to those we received a week
> ago from Doug Shepers, the head of the CDF Workgroup.   doug however asked
> that we not publicise his comments until Sir Timothy has had a chance to
> weigh in.  Our CDF support is solid.  Even within Sun and IBM!!!!  They've
> been arguing for years that CDF is the way to go.  Today IBM admitted to us
> that ODF is a transitional fiel format only.  They know that CDF is the
> future, and have spent enormous resources positioning WebSphere, Lotus
> Notes, and the Eclipse Community in that direction.  ODF is a transitional
> desktop play only.

I have yet to see how CDF exhibits "compatibility with existing MS 
documents."

> 
> The ODF mob has gone nuts trying to shut off the exits.  The worst thing
> they could have ever done is attack CDF.  Watch.  IBM admits that they lit
> the fire, and now they can't control the tmob.  The plan was to discredit us
> personally.  Now that CDF is under attack by the mob, IBM CALLED US, asking
> for help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  This was a two plus
> hour phone conference this afternoon.  I kid you not.
> 

I don't think anyone is "attacking" CDF. I, for one, like SVG, XForms, and
XHTML, and having them talk to one another is a wonderful and elegant
idea--but as I see it, there's a huge impedance mismatch between, say, a 
spreadsheet replete with formulas and the technologies of CDF (even if you 
include ECMAScript as required by the CDF Full 1.0).

There's also the pagination/printing problem. Without a working 
implementation of CSS 3, that's a *huge* problem.

> But hey, thanks for staying on top of this :)
> ~ge~
> 
> 

-- 
J. David Eisenberg  http://catcode.com/