Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: formats (Anti-Microsoft sentiment)
Author: Robert Cassidy Posted: 9/18/2000; 9:35:36 PM Topic: Debunking the OSS Bazaar? Msg #: 21490 (In response to 21488) Prev/Next: 21489 / 21491
The problem, however, is that the extensible file format also makes reliable file conversion impossible - which makes competing against Office damn near impossible.The formats are totally extensible, just as XML is. So imagine writing an XML file converter that can accept any XML file that is handed to you. (and we've gone through this argument wrt XML, in fact)
What? You weren't expecting me to put a bunch of greek papyri markup tags in that doc? What did your converter do to them? Are your users happy with that decision?
Same problem with Word. You have no clue what might show up in that doc... it's virtually impossible to convert (and sometimes a real challenge just to share...)
One of the things I really liked about OpenDoc: it treated each element in the doc as what it was - things were very compartmentalized. Now, you might need a converter for each component - text, spreadsheet, chart, video, whatever, but at least it would tell you what was there and what conversion was needed (hell, it'd even hunt down a viewer on the 'net and install it for you if you wished!)
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