Re: FYI: KOffice will switch to OpenOffice.org file format

From: msevior@physics.unimelb.edu.au
Date: Thu Sep 18 2003 - 10:29:33 EDT

  • Next message: Hubert Figuiere: "Commit: (HEAD) breakage"

    > At 9:10 AM +0200 9/18/03, Hubert Figuiere wrote:
    >>Sorry to appear to be nitpicky, but RTF ain't open. RTF is completely
    >> tied to Microsoft goodwillingness.
    >>Sure, it is documented. But if it were open, there would an open
    >> process to make it evolve. Currently Microsoft make it only evolves to
    >> follow MS-Word.
    >
    > And the OO format doesn't have the same issues - evolving for
    > OO's needs and purpose. The only difference is that OO is
    > XML-based, so it's easy to add your own stuff w/o breaking other
    > parsers.
    >

    It's also extremely easy to extend RTF for one's own purposes too. In fact
    I've made substantial extensions to the RTF AbiWord exports to allow
    lossless cut and paste. All other RTF readers happily ignore them.

    The most important point is that MS sets the defacto standard for Word
    Processing. If people really care about ordinary users they would make
    sure ordinary users of MS Word could read their documents.

    RTF is much more suited to this than OASIS.

    Anyway I do not have to time or energy to argue with the OASIS group. As
    I've said before, we'd love to fully support it as it's clearly widely
    prevalent now.

    Cheers

    Martin

    >
    > LDR
    > --
    > ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    > Leonard Rosenthol
    > <mailto:leonardr@lazerware.com>
    > <http://www.lazerware.com>



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