[odf-discuss] Alex Brown on OOo ODF validity

[marbux]

<http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39409700,00.htm>

Alex Brown, a document-format expert who is convenor of the process to
standardise Office Open XML (OOXML), posted a blog this week reporting
the results of tests which he claims reveal that OpenOffice documents
do not conform to the International Organization for Standardization's
(ISO's) version of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard.

<http://www.griffinbrown.co.uk/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=f0384bed-808b-49a8-8887-ea7cde5caace>

   * For ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (ODF) in general, we can say that the
standard itself has a defect which prevents any document claiming
validity from being actually valid. Consequently, there are no XML
documents in existence which are valid to ISO ODF.

   * Even if the schema is fixed, we can see that OpenOffice.org
2.4.0 does not produce valid XML documents. This is to be expected and
is a mirror-case of what was found for MS Office 2007: while MS Office
has not caught up with the ISO standard, OpenOffice has rather
bypassed it (it aims at its consortium standard, just as MS Office
does).

I'd be very interested to find an office application that does work
with valid ISO/IEC 26300 content. Do any readers know of one?