RE: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice

I don't understand the maddening aspect of this reaction.  I suppose I don't have to.

When ODF was developed at OASIS, one of the design points was to be based on the functionality of 
OpenOffice 1.x as it was at the time, starting from an XML format that was developed for that 
product.  It was explicitly ruled out of scope for the format to have counterparts of Microsoft 
Office document features.  

When OOXML was developed, using the Open Packaging Conventions that were already used by Microsoft 
for a different project, a critical goal was to have fidelity-preserving, convertible features of 
legacy Microsoft Office documents.  There is also a strict version that doesn't include so much of 
the legacy accommodation and has some better feature provisions going forward.

There you have it.  ODF 1.0 then ODF 1.1 and now ODF 1.2.  Also, OOXML versions 1 through 3 (so 
far), although ODF changed more from ODF 1.1 to ODF 1.2 (because of the addition of OpenFormula) 
than anything that happened to OOXML since the ISO OOXML version.

Neither of these are DocBook (an XML document format) or DITA or any other XML-carried document 
format.  None of that is surprising in any technical way: XML is not a document format, it is a 
markup format for extending and customizing into any number of document models and schemas.  XML by 
itself (unlike HTML, yet-another document format) doesn't establish any kind of document format 
whatsoever.

There was an ISO working group looking into the harmonization of document formats, especially with 
what could make better portability among OOXML-based and ODF-based software.  A recent report on 
the subject is rather interesting.  Look at 
<http://www.interoperability-center.com/en/dokumenten-iop-lab>.  The final report on Document 
Profiling and a White Paper on Document Interoperability are listed in the "Publications" sidebar.

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: VA [mailto:cuyfalls@hotmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 06:56
To: Pedro; users@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice

This is utterly maddening.

Based on Pedro's post, I ran a simple test. I created a document in Word 
(.docx) and an identical document in LibO (.odt). I saved them both and then 
extracted their contents using 7-zip Manager. I was amazed at how similar 
the two document contents were, and yet how different. Neither document had 
any of the binary smilie faces I've come to expect by opening a .doc 
document in a text editor. All of the individual files contained formatting 
codes in simple text. And, yet...

The maddening part is how two programs can create the same type of documents 
(xml files saved in a zipped format) and yet remain so completely different.

[ ... ]


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