[odf-discuss] Response to Andy Updegrove's article about the Foundation

[Ian Lynch]

On Thu, 2008-02-07 at 09:34 -0500, robert_weir at us.ibm.com wrote:
> 
> odf-discuss-bounces at opendocumentfellowship.com wrote on 02/06/2008
> 11:40:03 PM:
> 
> > 
> > One major focus will be comparison of standards against relatively 
> > objective interoperability criteria provided by international and 
> > national law and by authoritative governing documents such as the 
> > JTC-1 Directives. See e.g.,
> http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0856rev.pdf
> > , pp. 11, 145. 
> 
> What would be interesting is an examination of standards or
> technologies that you believe have provided "universal
> interoperability".

I doubt there is any absolutely universal interoperability standard but
ASCII for text characters and HTML for web pages have been as successful
as anything else I can think of. These are of course limited in some
respects. The more complex the data, the more difficult it is to have a
universal standard that meets everyone's needs. However that is not a
reason not to constantly strive to achieve improvement and remove
unnecessary noise from the system. It's more an issue of a is better
than b rather than a or b is perfect. So let's choose a and improve it
or replace it with a new c rather than having to deal with the
complexity of a and b. I see Marbux's work as potentially important in
informing future developments rather than as providing immediately
practical implementations.

>   Not necessarily document formats, but something adjacent.  Look at
> how those standards were made and maintained, what did they do in
> particular to accomplish their goals.  Point out the best practices,
> etc. 

Seems to me that simple and elegant is generally better than complex and
confusing. Serving many interests rather than individual interests and
free from legacy complications are desirable characteristics.

Ian
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