Sorry Shish, you're wrong about ODF 1.2
Try ODF 1.5 or ODF 2.0, maybe.
The metadata requirements for ODF 1.2 actually did include two way lossless translation capability. Unfortunately these features did not survive the final cut, and were not included in the April 2007 submission.
You might also want to check the February 23, 2007 metadata proposal from Florian Reuter. That also would have delivered the goods and perhaps put ODF that grand convergence category of usefulness across desktops, servers, devices and web systems currently the exclusive domains of MS-OOXML and CDF+. Florian had devised a means of using metadata to describe the presentation aspects of content and structural objects. Very revolutionary. And based on the simple notion that bold, font, margins etc. are simply metadata about content and style objects.
Where the train came off the track had to do with the concept of an XML ID means of linking metadata to content. Not that there was anything wrong with this mechanism. It's actually quite clever. What went wrong was that Sun insisted that only those elements approved and supported by OpenOffice would be allowed to make use of XML ID metadata. For independent developers, this is a serious constraint.
Because of this constraint, the metatdata sub committee started off with six elements supported by OOo that metadata could be appied to. IBM then came in and asked for eleven more elements having to do with charts and graphs. The OpenOffice crew decided they could support this, so in they went. Then an interesting question was posed, "How are independent developers supposed to submit elements for metadata consideration?"
