4 ms·
ODF or not, no "open" office document format is going to catch on until everybody can cheaply and painlessly open them. That means a variety of editing suites
by pak 17y ago
ODF or not, no "open" office document format is going to catch on until everybody can cheaply and painlessly open them. That means a variety of editing suites and viewers installed by default or trivially installable across every major PC and mobile platform. Let's face it: OO.o isn't for everybody, it isn't a quick install, and you are not going to convince a majority of people to use it. There needs to be other major alternatives (that's the point of the "open", right?) catered to all devices/OSes.
To that end, I don't think you can create an office document format that is wholly divorced from the client that reads, views, and writes it. Even if I believed that you could agree on a perfectly future-proof and extensible data format, you would need a whole suite of tests available so that clients could test that they are rendering them to the screen and print {pixel|point}-perfectly. The closest analogue we have for this scenario is HTML, and look how imperfect the browser space still is; and browsers don't even need to provide editing functionality for what they are rendering.
- loup-vaillant 17y agoPeople should really learn to use computers. At least a little. They should at least be able to painlessly install popular programs. Before they do, no amount of free software will save them. We can't dumb down free software to the point it demands absolutely no effort to install (you need at least a few clicks). So we have to teach.
- bruceboughton 17y ago> We can't dumb down free software to the point it demands absolutely no effort to install (you need at least a few clicks). Why not? People don't want to learn how to install software. They want to do their jobs. Apple (with the App Store) and Google (with Chrome) understand that.
- loup-vaillant 17y agoBecause that would mean "installed by default". And until such software is widespread on the targeted platform, that won't happen. If the (very low) level of pain of the Apple store is low enough for you, then yes, that's definitely possible. We just need a "Free Software Store". The repository system found in Linux distributions is very close (or even on spot, depending on the UI wrapper). Maybe such a system would be desirable on Windows. That could ease the transition to fully fledged Linux systems.
- deleted 17y ago[deleted]