Re: [tdf-discuss] What about a common document support codebase/library between different FOSS Office suites and readers?

Hello (Tim?)

Le Sun, 26 Jun 2011 15:43:04 +0200,
timofonic timofonic <timofonic@gmail.com> a écrit :

> Hello.
>
>
> I also think all office applications should use a common codebase for
> reading and writing the files, instead competing on one that supports
> certain file formats better than the rest. Think of it as something
> similar to FFMPeg/Libav, that could be used by all FOSS Office or
> reader applications. It can give a enormous support advantage over
> Microsoft products and at the same time improve the support with more
> developers involved.

In theory I do completely adhere to this concept, and this idea is
brilliant; although you're not the first one to have it :) In essence,
you're describing what html is to web browsers. 

In practice, we should however make sure that we avoid being locked by
a common platform instead of innovating , and that we deal with quite a
sensational problem: LibreOffice/OpenOffice (and any of their
derivatives) do not have a separate conversion engine. What I'm trying
to say is that we can't separate the conversion engine from LibreOffice
and embed it somewhere else for instance. The conversion engine "is"
LibreOffice. We take the whole or nothing, in a sense. 

But we need to think about the future, and in this sense, we ought to
go the direction you mentioned. 


> I think statements like this in the FOSS world are EXTREMELY SAD:
> "With this snapshot Calligra Office Words is claiming better
> compatibility with .docx than LibreOffice, and also claims to be
> approaching the best compatibility with legacy .doc formats." (taken
> from OSNews).
>
> Of course this is a personal idea I gave many months ago in some email
> here, but my lack of proper English and not explaining it correctly
> made it to be ignored.


To be honest I don't know what was your point... are your referring to
the OOXML scam (yes Jesper, OOXML has ended up becoming the
symbol of the failure of global standardization and shown the
wrongdoings of MSFT) or to the fact that even in the FOSS world, there
can be competition? 

Best,
Charles.

> Regards.


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