not good news for ODF :(

[Neil Joseph Schelly]

On Monday 18 August 2008 11:20, Michael Pelletier wrote:
> With OOXML an ISO standard, it should now be possible to write an editor
> that is absolutely 100% compatible with Office 2007 documents, with no
> pesky compatability or rendering quirks, right?

Should be possible, but it's not.  The appeals were valid appeals since the 
standard cannot be implemented.  It was bought and paid for by many exposed 
scandals, but it won't be implementable by anyone but Microsoft (and even 
that's debatable).  

> It's not like Microsoft was ever going to fully adopt ODF, in any case -
> they're Microsoft, after all.  IBM should know that personally, given their
> experience with OS/2.

It's my understanding that the next service pack to Office 2007 is/was 
supposed to support ODF natively since Microsoft needs to have an Office 
suite they can sell that supports standards that governments are demanding.  
I recall reading that they don't have a working implementation of OOXML yet 
by the standard that ISO has ratified, so they needed ODF as a stopgap.

Anyway, I would say that this isn't actually bad for ODF, just bad for 
everyone because Microsoft has been allowed to continue its shenanigans and 
in so doing, compromised a rather large standards organization.  ODF itself 
is in the same place it was.
-N