4. The Reality in the Punchbowl Meanwhile, Sam Hiser offers a different impression of the DIN effort [4]: "The ODF-to-OOXML harmonization effort being hosted by the German standards group, DIN, is Europe's best effort to resolve our Mexican Standoff between Microsoft, Sun and IBM. Even though harmonization is laughably complex and will not work unless the applications are harmonized too, the best and brightest of Germany are left to hope for success." [emphasis mine: dh] Although the mission of the German effort is translation (Übersetzung), not harmonization, I find there is a very important point that is not made often enough: People write, read, and edit office documents with little, if any, understanding of the particular format that makes them persistent in digital form. The XML-based open formats do not change that. People adapt to the software/device they are using by trial and error. We train ourselves to obtain the visible results that we want. Different people obtain superficially similar results by quite different means. Even when someone has gone to the trouble to create style sheets, forms, macros, templates and other format-impacting aids, it is very loosey-goosey in practice. And it still does not require paying attention to the file format.
