Re: Open Doc Format turns 20

On 03 May 2025 11:43:29 GMT, Retrograde wrote:

It's been 20 years since the Open Document Format (ODF) became a
standard, marking a milestone in the push for open, vendor-neutral file
formats — and the beginning of a long but largely unsuccessful attempt
to loosen Microsoft Office's grip on the desktop.…

I still think it’s fared better as a standard than Microsoft’s OOXML (aka
ISO 29500). Microsoft’s attempt to make its Office document formats an
official standard ended up being a complete mess -- basically bulldozed
through various technical committees without due care and attention to the
various glaring omissions and inconsistencies. Consider the “transitional”
versus “strict” options, and notice that hardly anybody, even now, decades
later, dares to use the “strict” version, because everybody is afraid to
break compatibility with Microsoft Office.

ODF (ISO 26300) was and is a much cleaner and simpler spec by comparison,
and anybody implementing it knows they actually have a realistic chance of
ending up with something workable.