Novell adds fuel to the fire in OOXML feud - News - Builder AU - 0 views
-
Microsoft has created its own proprietary document format, Office Open XML (OOXML), as a rival to the community-developed OpenDocument Format (ODF). OOXML is used in Microsoft's latest applications suite, Office 2007. Despite some efforts by the two camps, ODF and OOXML are, for the most part, not interoperable, meaning documents that are created in one format cannot be successfully read by applications based on the other format. According to Novell's vice president of developer platforms, Miguel de Icaza, the situation won't change in the foreseeable future. Want to know more? For all the latest news, analysis and opinion on open source, click here "There's no end in sight to the ongoing disputes between the two camps," said de Icaza, speaking at XML 2007, a Microsoft-sponsored event, on Tuesday. "In 2006, there was lots of FUD [fear, uncertainty and doubt] about the problems behind OOXML and it went downhill from there," Icaza said. "Neither group is willing to make the big changes required for real compatibility," de Icaza added.
-
Gary Edwards on 11 Dec 07What efforts are you talking about? The last time any effort was made to accomodate interoperability was in 2003 with the establishment of the ODF "Compatibilty clause" (Section 1.5). "Despite some efforts by the two camps, ODF and OOXML are, for the most part, not interoperable, meaning documents that are created in one format cannot be successfully read by applications based on the other format......" Section 1.5 authorizes the use of "foreign elements" and "alien attributes". These techniques were specifically written into ODF for handling unknown characteristics of existing MSOffice documents (binary and/or xml) on conversion to ODF. Since the Section 1.5 addition in 2003, every other suggestion to improve interop between ODF and MSOffice documents has been rejected by the OASIS ODF TC and Sub Committees. There are three problems with Section 1.5. The first is that there is only so much that can be done with foreign elements and alien attributes. There are still remaining compatibility issues relating to the basic structures of lists, tables, fields, sections and page dymnamics. The OpenDocument Foundaiton spent over a year trying to get approval for five generic elements relating to these structures, without success. As i said, there has not been a single successful comatibility - interoperability effort since 2003, although many have been proposed. The second reason for the failure of Section 1.5 is that OpenOffice only partially implements the "Compatibility Clause". OOo only recognizes "foreign elements and alien attributes" with text spans and paragraphs. The third reason is that "compatibility" is optional in ODF. The clause does not have any teeth. Applications can implement only those aspects of the spec they feel like implementing, and still be in total "compliance". This creates serious interop problem not only for MSOffice plug-in comverted documents, but also renders as
-