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

I think you may be over-estimating the similarities.  There are strong differences in the models 
and architectures of the two formats.  And their goals were different.  That they both use Zip and 
XML is a bit like saying my house and the railroad station both have copper plumbing.  

While it is the case that there are many common features that users see and use, how they are 
reflected in the format is quite different and, in some cases, lossy under portability, even 
sometimes incommensurable.  Despite that, there is high portability for a class of documents.

 - Dennis

Anecdote #1: Regina and I just ran into an interesting one.  Passwords use to protect fields and 
sheets and text documents don't convert between the OOXML and ODF formats.  One reason is that the 
code in which the password is stored before it is converted to a digital hash is different.  So 
even if the hash is moved, it can't be unlocked using the other format because the internal form of 
the password is different, and there's no way to adjust the hash for that.  (In the case of 
encrypted documents, as opposed to protected documents, that doesn't work either, not the least 
being that there is no encryption as part of OOXML.) Ignoring the encrypted document case, there 
are ways that the products could come closer with regard to protection passwords.

Anecdote #2: Microsoft Word protects word documents by setting protection for the entire document 
and the user then selecting those parts of the document that are to have relaxed protection.  Then 
a single password is used to lock in the arrangement.  In ODF and OpenOffice, the selections to be 
protected are identified and they can be locked individually by passwords, with the rest of the 
document treated differently (or with yet another password).  It is very had to take a protected 
document that was created in one model and convert it to a *protected* document in the other model. 
 What is usually done is that each product ignores the protection settings from the other.  This is 
a model incompatibility.  That's a bigger deal, especially if it confounds something that is 
important to a very large number of users.



-----Original Message-----
From: VA [mailto:cuyfalls@hotmail.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 13:13
To: dennis.hamilton@acm.org; users@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Good Article for LibreOffice

What I find maddening is that two document formats can be so similar, and 
yet remain so different. As Maxwell Smart would say, "missed by THAT much."

Virgil

-----Original Message----- 
From: Dennis E. Hamilton
Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2012 1:27 PM
To: 'VA' ; 'Pedro' ; users@global.libreoffice.org
Subject: 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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