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ConsortiumInfo.org - ODF vs. OOXML: War of the Words Chapter 5

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  • document-wars

    Document Wars

    8 members,364 bookmarks

    Document Wars covers the portable XML document battle between OpenDocument, Office Open XML, and CDF, the W3C's Compound Document Format. The relationship to the Grand Convergence of desktop, server, device and web systems will be decisive, with application independence and universal interoperabili

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Saved by 1 people (0 private), first by anonymouse user on 2008-01-05


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on 2008-01-05 by garyedwards

The First Law of the Interent is that of interoperability. Interop ALWAYS comes first.


Interop trumps innovation!!!


This is why the Interent changes everything. Innovation takes place within the bounds of ineroperabiltiy. Vendors of course rely on innovation as the primary means of market differentiation. They would of course champion innovative features. Interop on the other hand is a leveling force.


on 2008-01-05 by garyedwards

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/trackback.php?id=20080104062428565

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Unlike screw threads, which are easily implemented with complete fidelity, it is sometimes only feasible to create a standard for software that, in a given case, at best will enable two products to become close to interoperable.  After that, tinkering and testing is necessary to accomplish the final "fit."  Similarly, the costs to innovation in achieving true "plug and play" interoperability when that result is feasible may be unacceptably high, leading to a decision to create a standard that (like ODF) only locks in a very significant amount of functionality, rather than complete uniformity (as OOXML strives to achieve).

Highlighted by garyedwards

on 2008-01-05 by garyedwards

This is an odd way of stating the interop problem between ODF and the billions of legacy MSOffice documents? "The costs to innovation in achieving true plug and play interoperability (high fidelity conversion?) when that result is feasible may be unacceptably high......"


OOXML was designed for the high fidelity conversion of those billions of legacy MSOffice documents. ODF was not.


What's interesting here is that Andy is correctly pointing out that the ODF vednors refuse to compromise on the innovative ways OpenOffice differs from MSOffice. The innovations involve the different ways OpenOffice implements basic docuemnt structures such as lists, sections, fields, tables and page dynamics. MSOffic euses an older method of implementation.


When converting legacy MSOffice documents to ODF, the fidelity breaks down wherever these strucutral features are present. The key point here is that these strucutral differentials are exactly related to how OpenOffice and MSOffice differ in their implementation methods. It's an application difference beign expressed at the file format level!!!!!!!!!!!


The ODF vendors refuse to compromise with their application level innovations. The result of this is that billions of MSOffice docuemnts cannot be converted to ODF without significant loss of information.


Which is to say: both ODF and OOXML are application specific formats. Worse, neither ODF or OOXML specify the syntax and semantics of layout!!! They only specify the syntax. Developers must study OpenOffice and MSDOffice to figure out how presentation (layout) is achieved.


This stands in stark contrast to the W3C's Compound Document Format (CDF). CDF provides a very generic, application independent separation of content (XHTML) and presentation (CSS), where the presentation layer is entirely specified. CSS is highly portable because it is completely specified and totally application independent.


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