RE: [libreoffice-users] Calc corrupted an Excel xlsx file, should I report a bug?

This had nothing to do with OOXML being accepted as an ISO Standard.  It was and is.

It had to do with limitations of the ODF 1.0/1.1 specifications (and the ISO IS 26300:2006 standard 
for ODF 1.0) and deciding what to do about the formula specification in ODF 1.1 being totally 
implementation-dependent.  

Wisely or not, Microsoft chose to have formulas that would preserve Excel functionality and 
round-trip via ODF from Excel to Excel, the same that OpenOffice.org Calc chose its own formulas 
that roundtrip-via ODF among OpenOffice.org-based implementations.

I was in the room when they ran that by a group of people in a Document Interoperability Initiative 
meeting and none of us thought how users could misunderstand what was happening.  (The error 
messages, in particular, are less than helpful, but we had no idea about those at the time.)  [In 
the meeting, the big topic was preservation of PowerPoint fidelity to ODF and back.]

Now that ODF 1.2 does have an agreed specification for formulas and requires that to be used in 
fully-conforming ODF 1.2 Spreadsheet documents, we will see how implementations line up as there 
are releases from everyone that support OpenFormula.  I believe that LibreOffice is already using 
OpenFormula in current releases.  Microsoft's support for ODF 1.2 is not known at this time, 
although there is a meeting in Brussels in April where Microsoft is expected to provide more 
information.

I repeat, the International Standard IS 26300:2006 for ODF 1.0 DOES NOT define spreadsheet formulas 
and leaves it implementation-dependent. The standard does specify how implementations are 
identified, though, and both Excel and OpenOffice.org accomplish that.  (IS 29500, the 
International Standard for the Office Open XML (OOXML) has always had definitions of spreadsheet 
formulas and .xslx documents use those.)

Eike Rathke, here, was one of the major contributors to the definition of OpenFormula, now in ODF 
1.2, that will also be in an international standard once ODF 1.2 is accepted by ISO.
  
 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: webmaster for Kracked Press Productions [mailto:webmaster@krackedpress.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, September 07, 2011 08:46
To: users@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Calc corrupted an Excel xlsx file, should I report a bug?

[ ... ]

The fact that ODF is the International Standard for Office suite file 
formats over MS, even though it is still a "growing" format tells us a 
lot, or at least to me.  It seems that the developers of ODF is slowly 
adding the parts that need "formal" definitions instead of doing it 
quickly and badly as MS sometimes does.  I believe MS has tried to do 
everything they could to get on the controlling group of ODF and to have 
one more avenue for controlling the office suite market.  [ MS - if we 
make ODF bad enough, then people will not use it or FOSS for their 
office needs and come back to "us" ]

So, after all the ranting and raving, if you need to use MS Excel for 
the spreadsheet client, just save it as .xls instead of .ods.  I do not 
think MS will ever read/write the same version of ODF as everyone else 
uses unless they own/control the format, and that will never happen.

[ ... ]


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