Re: [tdf-discuss] Do not support writing to OOXML format

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On 12/30/2010 5:14 PM, BRM wrote:
> Agree. LibO should only read OOXML if anything at all.

[snip]

> ODF for that matter - should treat OOXML like Microsoft treats ODF
> and other formats - as third party as possible. In other words,
> read support should be something that users must enable; Save
> support should not be possible - it must be converted to either an
> older MS format (e.g. doc, xls) or ODF.

Ah . . .  so your solution is to make our application harder to use
than MS Office so that users will come to us instead of MS Office?

Interesting concept . . .


> We need to force MS to support ODF - as others have pointed out ODF
> is quickly becoming the world standard at least at the government
> level - which means in a few years most organizations that support
> governments will need to support ODF too, and a few years after
> that organizations that support those organizations, and so forth.
> MS has lost the file format battle to ODF - it's just time before
> OOXML (especially) and their legacy formats are gone.

In case you haven't noticed, the open source community isn't in a
position to "force" MS to do anything. And it never will be as long as
OS applications are aimed only at power users, with documentation that
is written in geek and features useful to a significant portion of
users that have to be manually turned on by the users. So far, OOo has
been really good about aiming at intermediate-level office users, and
it's easy enough for a lot of entry-level use. I would hope that LibO
would continue that trend. But as has already been pointed out, 90% of
office software users honestly don't care a thing about (or even know
about) file formats, open source v proprietary, or the politics of
software. All they want to know is: (1) How much does it cost? (2)
Does it do what I need it to do? (3) How easily does it do what I need
it to do? (4) Will I have to spend a ton of time retraining myself and
setting things up to get it to do what I need it to do?

Making LibO by default not read (or not be able to exchange) files
written in the format set by default by the market dominator because
of a philosophical or political stance is highly impractical and will
make the application less useful to end users . . . thus reducing your
own market share.  In other words: if you want to "stick it to
Microsoft", this is not the way to do it. All you are doing is making
their office suite more attractive than ours.


- -- 
Steven Shelton
Deputy Undersecretary for Made-up Titles
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