4 ms·

LibreOffice needs to pull their heads out of the sand and recognize that both OOXML and ODF are the past. Make it a polyglot ZIP à la SingleFileZ if you have t

by cxr 7mo ago

LibreOffice needs to pull their heads out of the sand and recognize that both OOXML and ODF are the past. Make it a polyglot ZIP à la SingleFileZ if you have to (or polyglot JSON[1] or just straight up XHTML with a big sidecar blob of embedded metadata), but nothing trying to take on Microsoft Office is "the future" if it's trying to get there with a strategy shackled to the notion of people downloading the appropriate format-compatible software for something as simple as being able to view (not even edit!) the document that has been sent to them. It's great to have open standards and free software, but be compatible by default with the universal formats understood by the readers for the ubiquitous document infrastructure that everyone already has installed (WHATWG-/W3C-compatible hypertext readers, i.e. Web browsers), or be forever doomed to the same level of obscurity that OpenOffice/LibreOffice were fated 10–15 years ago due to their myopia. > A forward-looking format is one that reduces future dependency, not one that reinforces it[…] A “backward-looking” format, by contrast, is one that ties the future to the commercial strategies of a single vendor. In this sense, OOXML Transitional is an archaeological artefact that preserves the past at the expense of the future. This is delusional. As long as it's modeled on the same outdated paradigm of 80s- and 90s-style office suites (no matter which one), then any format whether it's an ISO standard or not is hopelessly attempting to preserve the past. 1. <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44229684 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44229684>

LeFantome 7mo ago
Even today, web formats cannot render documents with the same fidelity as ODF. Especially not for spreadsheets. Remember, many people feel that neither ODF or OOXML are sufficient and reach for things like LaTeX. I think LibreOffice also supporting Markdown is a nice nod at simpler open formats. Perhaps you have not dug into the problem deeply enough. ODF is certainly better than OOXML at any rate.
- cxr 7mo ago
  > Even today, web formats cannot render documents with the same fidelity as ODF. Especially not for spreadsheets. That's a nonsense claim—literally a category error. You're conflating the limitations of what can be represented in a given file format with an implementation's (lack of) support for doing things encoded in that format. LibreOffice doesn't render documents encoded in plain-text, browser-compatible formats with the same fidelity as ODF because LibreOffice has not implemented encoding documents in plain-text, browser-compatible formats that it renders with the same fidelity as ODF. There is nothing in ODF that's inherently unrepresentable in JSON or pure XML.
  - adrian_b 7mo ago
    I am not sure what you claim about web formats. If you try to print any non-trivial Web page with any of the existing Web browsers, all of them will print different things and none of them will print the same thing that they render on the computer display. For all of them the printed files will have various obvious defects, caused by incorrect size ratios between various elements or by an incorrect stacking of the elements, so that some of them obscure others that should have been visible. For instance, Firefox and Chrome almost always print garbage, while Vivaldi is typically much better, but it also fails from time to time. It looks like all those who maintain Web browsers only test how pages are rendered on displays, but they never test how they are rendered by a print command. With a file format intended for documents, the first property that I demand is that the document will be rendered perfectly in a deterministic way and it will look absolutely the same regardless on what medium it is rendered. Nothing could be less true for anything that is used on the Web. I strongly hate anyone who provides documentation in the form of Web pages, instead of using real documents, e.g. PDF files, ODF files or even Microsoft Office files, which can be used offline without problems. Nowadays, even the attempt to save Web pages in browsers is unreliable, due to the embedded scripts that may fail to work offline, making impossible the rendering of the saved pages.
    - cxr 7mo ago
      > I am not sure what you claim about web formats.¶ If you try to print any non-trivial Web page with any of the existing Web browsers[…] For instance, Firefox and Chrome[…] ... why do you think this matters? Like, at all? We're talking about LibreOffice. > Nothing could be less true for anything that is used on the Web. This is, uh, crazy. In the first place, PDF is used on the Web, and it's both better suited for print-perfect sources and it's more portable. In the second place, believing that there's some magic inside ODF (or some other office suite's native format) that can't be represented in XML, JSON, or some other plain-text format is delusional.
      - adrian_b 7mo ago
        If you claim that some text format used on the Web is suitable for storing a document, you should be able to point to some application that demonstrates the use of that text format in a manner that can be used for a document. If none of the existing Web browsers can render a Web page in a predictable way in all circumstances, that clearly disqualifies all "Web formats". If the most complex programs like the Web browsers cannot always render correctly a Web page, then who can? > There is nothing in ODF that's inherently unrepresentable in JSON or pure XML. Since ODF is XML, that is a tautology. I do not doubt that it is likely that ODF is more complicated than really necessary, and that something better could be designed. However anyone who criticizes it should define an alternative better format and describe its advantages. Pointing to some of the existing markup text formats is not this, because those lack a great number of features that are absolutely necessary for any document file format, so they are not comparable at all. Saying that a markup text format can be suitable as a document format resembles the claim of the Americans that ASCII should be good enough for the speakers of non-English languages.
idoubtit 7mo ago
The media (web or desktop) is irrelevant: a file format must exists for backup and interoperability. I barely use office documents myself, but I work on software that produce and parse many spreadsheets every day. An open standard is even more very relevant in public administrations where the process follows legal constraints and ISO standards. The Document Foundation's article reacts to an German institutional decision.
- cxr 7mo ago
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by cxr 7mo ago

LeFantome 7mo ago

Even today, web formats cannot render documents with the same fidelity as ODF. Especially not for spreadsheets. Remember, many people feel that neither ODF or OOXML are sufficient and reach for things like LaTeX. I think LibreOffice also supporting Markdown is a nice nod at simpler open formats. Perhaps you have not dug into the problem deeply enough. ODF is certainly better than OOXML at any rate.

cxr 7mo ago
> Even today, web formats cannot render documents with the same fidelity as ODF. Especially not for spreadsheets. That's a nonsense claim—literally a category error. You're conflating the limitations of what can be represented in a given file format with an implementation's (lack of) support for doing things encoded in that format. LibreOffice doesn't render documents encoded in plain-text, browser-compatible formats with the same fidelity as ODF because LibreOffice has not implemented encoding documents in plain-text, browser-compatible formats that it renders with the same fidelity as ODF. There is nothing in ODF that's inherently unrepresentable in JSON or pure XML.
- adrian_b 7mo ago
  I am not sure what you claim about web formats. If you try to print any non-trivial Web page with any of the existing Web browsers, all of them will print different things and none of them will print the same thing that they render on the computer display. For all of them the printed files will have various obvious defects, caused by incorrect size ratios between various elements or by an incorrect stacking of the elements, so that some of them obscure others that should have been visible. For instance, Firefox and Chrome almost always print garbage, while Vivaldi is typically much better, but it also fails from time to time. It looks like all those who maintain Web browsers only test how pages are rendered on displays, but they never test how they are rendered by a print command. With a file format intended for documents, the first property that I demand is that the document will be rendered perfectly in a deterministic way and it will look absolutely the same regardless on what medium it is rendered. Nothing could be less true for anything that is used on the Web. I strongly hate anyone who provides documentation in the form of Web pages, instead of using real documents, e.g. PDF files, ODF files or even Microsoft Office files, which can be used offline without problems. Nowadays, even the attempt to save Web pages in browsers is unreliable, due to the embedded scripts that may fail to work offline, making impossible the rendering of the saved pages.
  - cxr 7mo ago
    > I am not sure what you claim about web formats.¶ If you try to print any non-trivial Web page with any of the existing Web browsers[…] For instance, Firefox and Chrome[…] ... why do you think this matters? Like, at all? We're talking about LibreOffice. > Nothing could be less true for anything that is used on the Web. This is, uh, crazy. In the first place, PDF is used on the Web, and it's both better suited for print-perfect sources and it's more portable. In the second place, believing that there's some magic inside ODF (or some other office suite's native format) that can't be represented in XML, JSON, or some other plain-text format is delusional.
    - adrian_b 7mo ago
      If you claim that some text format used on the Web is suitable for storing a document, you should be able to point to some application that demonstrates the use of that text format in a manner that can be used for a document. If none of the existing Web browsers can render a Web page in a predictable way in all circumstances, that clearly disqualifies all "Web formats". If the most complex programs like the Web browsers cannot always render correctly a Web page, then who can? > There is nothing in ODF that's inherently unrepresentable in JSON or pure XML. Since ODF is XML, that is a tautology. I do not doubt that it is likely that ODF is more complicated than really necessary, and that something better could be designed. However anyone who criticizes it should define an alternative better format and describe its advantages. Pointing to some of the existing markup text formats is not this, because those lack a great number of features that are absolutely necessary for any document file format, so they are not comparable at all. Saying that a markup text format can be suitable as a document format resembles the claim of the Americans that ASCII should be good enough for the speakers of non-English languages.

idoubtit 7mo ago

The media (web or desktop) is irrelevant: a file format must exists for backup and interoperability. I barely use office documents myself, but I work on software that produce and parse many spreadsheets every day. An open standard is even more very relevant in public administrations where the process follows legal constraints and ISO standards. The Document Foundation's article reacts to an German institutional decision.

cxr 7mo ago
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