Group tackles OpenOffice desktop spec (News.com) [LWN.net]

News.com reports on the formation of a working group to develop an XML file format specification for the OpenOffice project. "The working group is trying to develop a standard data format for the creation of content such as text, spreadsheets and charts. The goal is to develop an interface between the office software and other applications using XML (Extensible Markup Language)."

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Group tackles OpenOffice desktop spec (News.com)

Posted Nov 21, 2002 22:41 UTC (Thu) by jwharmanny (guest, #971) [Link] (6 responses)

That specification would be great. The current OOo file format specification is more then 300 pages long. There is no way to correctly implement it in an import filter, and exporting is usually even worse.

Some time ago, RMS started a campaign against ms-Word attachments. But the problem I encountered is, that there is no viable alternative to .doc. Of cource RTF usually works fine, but for busines use it's not enough. Sometimes I even send HTML files because there's no other option.

GNU/Linux office really needs an alternative to .doc. But as long as AbiWord, KWord, OOo Writer, SO Writer, XPW, and the ones I forget, each use their own file format, Linux office will never fully integrate in large networks.

Free Software is all about choice. But it is also about working together. XML could really help.

Group tackles OpenOffice desktop spec (News.com)

Posted Nov 22, 2002 0:50 UTC (Fri) by job (guest, #670) [Link] (4 responses)

Why? Why would anyone need a word-processor? It's counter-intuitive, ugly and cumbersome to work with. A text is a text is a text. Send text!

Would you like hyperlinks, text emphasis and headlines and the rest of a logically structured document? Send HTML! (That format is widely-adopted these days, wouldn't you say?)

Would you like to send a document with exact layout, more like using your email as a fax? Send PDF! (Traditionally that would be postscript, but PDF renderers are probably even more widespread today, given ghostscript and xpdf on unices and acroread on win32/mac.)

Word processors and their complicated, proprietary, document formats will do you no good! Just say no!

Group tackles OpenOffice desktop spec (News.com)

Posted Nov 22, 2002 1:23 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not trolling. If 80 column text is perfect for all situations, then why don't you shut down the graphical browser that I guarantee you're using and fire up lynx?

Group tackles OpenOffice desktop spec (News.com)

Posted Nov 22, 2002 10:04 UTC (Fri) by hummassa (guest, #307) [Link]

Now, my friend, you are the one who's trolling. /me, for instance, is using phoenix from my work-machine but from home, I mostly access lwn & cia with links...

Group tackles OpenOffice desktop spec (News.com)

Posted Nov 22, 2002 1:52 UTC (Fri) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link] (1 responses)

I would like to send a document to someone who will modify it and send it back to me. I don't want to specify the layout, although I would like to be able to print the document with layout such that it will be pleasent to read. I want to use the same format for this document and another one which will be large and need a table of contents (in fact, this document might be a chapter of a larger document). I want to use footnotes and bibliography citations, and be able to change how these will be presented in a printed version depending on who I'm printing for. I want to be able to refer to other parts of the document in some way that will be useful when the document is printed. I would like the ability to use mathematical equations, images, etc, and refer to them both in their captions and in the text by their index in the document.

I'd like to be able to make a change to the middle of a very large document and see the change in an amount of time that does not depend on the size of the document. I would like to provide information about the document in a way which can be read by machine easily and accurately. I would like people who get my document to be able to cite it based on the file, without copying anything out of it by hand. I would like to have only semantic elements (i.e., not formatting or processing commands, but just things whose meaning is part of the meaning of the document). I would like to be able to define (separately, with instructions for how they should appear) and use elements of my own invention, when the standard set lacks the ones I want.

There are probably more things I'd like, but these are the ones that prohibit using PDF, HTML, or plain text. I got this list primarily from looking at what I needed in order to produce my thesis (in LaTeX), as well as the things I couldn't do because it was in LaTeX which I would have liked to be able to do.

Group tackles OpenOffice desktop spec (News.com)

Posted Dec 1, 2002 21:41 UTC (Sun) by hazelsct (guest, #3659) [Link]

Sounds like an advertisement for LyX or Texmacs to me! TeX is a 20+-year-old standard with outstanding quality, reproducibility and extensibility, and a very portable implementation, and even has a few good WYSIWYG/M front-ends.

The one feature currently missing is "make a change to the middle of a very large document and see the change in an amount of time that does not depend on the size of the document". But then, no word processor has such a feature; even Word will let you work on the current paragraph, but moves larger objects and page breaks around in the background at the same time, on a timescale proportional to the length of the document. (Lyx does this in a sense, but cheats, in that you're not looking at the final product while editing.) I agree that it would be nice if one of the (La)TeX front-ends could add this... :-)

So in other words, this isn't much of a case for Word, or word processors in general for that matter.

Group tackles OpenOffice desktop spec (News.com)

Posted Nov 22, 2002 0:55 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link]

Agreed. The KDE Vs. GNOME battles of years gone by have benefitted both
communities greatly through competition (I believe). Now is probably the
time for a great collaboration.

As for RMS's campaign, during a local discussion, one fried told me that
he has procmail set up to return any emails that have MS Word attachments
with a note: "A virus has been detected in the following document(s), please
re-send in another format". Brilliant.

Ciaran O'Riordan