Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: can I make Libre default to save as .rtf

On 24/11/2011, italovignoli <italo.vignoli@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am a TDF Director and one of the official spokespersons.
>
>
> e-letter wrote
> > > In other words, do not waste LO programmers' time to resolve your desire
> > > to use LO as a free m$o clone.
> >
> > You are assuming something completely wrong here. In the future, please
> > avoid such statements, and - even more important - please listen to people
> > on this mailing list who seem to be better informed than you are.

What exactly is being assumed? Better informed about what? The
original statement is merely a declaration of personal interest; a
preference that limited time spent resolving "compatibility" is
instead spent improving native odf.

> > TDF developers are working hard to improve the level of interoperability
> > with many file formats, because we want LibreOffice to be both the best
> > implementation of ODF (a format that we want to be the standard for
> > electronic documents) and the most interoperable office suite.

A fundamentally poor strategy; of the two objectives what do think is
higher priority: highest quality implementation of odf; or being
"interoperable"? More interestingly, how can perfect interoperability
lead to greater usage of odf?

> > Users are free to use LibreOffice to read and write RTF and DOC/XLS/PPT
> > files (and even DOCX/XLSX/PPTX files), although they should understand
> > that only ODF will provide the best level of document interoperability, as
> > it is the native LibreOffice file format and it is also supported by the
> > latest versions of MS Office for Windows.

If odf is the best strategic route to interoperability, this seems a
contradiction with the strategic aim to be perfect at producing m$
formats. If tdf were really serious about being sufficiently confident
to promote odf, LO would have excellent m$ format import capability
but document creation would only be in odf (as suggested by others).

> > Of course, users should also understand that proprietary formats like RTF
> > and legacy MS Office formats have been developed in order to lock them in
> > into using MS Office, and should avoid the formats not because they are
> > intrinsically bad (although they often are) but because they intentionally
> > reduce their freedom.

Review the bug reports and the mailing list posts; it can be seen that
users do not appreciate the strategic error in using LO to create m$
documents.

> > Although user habits could let many user think that MS Office legacy
> > formats are the most practical for interoperability, they should not
> > overlook the fact that by sticking to MS Office legacy format they
> > perpetuate their lock in into Microsoft products.

See comment above. Without forcing novice users to either pay m$ or
use a free(dom) alternative, odf usage will remain low.

> > TDF is actively promoting ODF, which is the format of choice for all
> > actual and future versions of LibreOffice. ODF is not only open and
> > standard, but is also easier to implement than other ISO standard formats.
> > For instance, OOXML has been approved as ISO standard in 2008, but after
> > almost four years is still implemented in the non standard "transitional"
> > version even by Microsoft (the company behind the original format) because
> > of the incredible complexity of the format (confirmed by the length of the
> > documentation of over 7.200 pages, i.e. almost six times as many as the
> > ODF documentation).

The _passive_ promotion of m$ is greater than the active promotion of
odf. To prove this point, why not create a simple poll on the web
site: users distributing LO documents is m$ formats; against users
distributing LO documents in odf?

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