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Re: [xml-dev] Common Word Processing Format
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I've worked within the ebook publishing as well as the textbook and computer book industries, so can at least claim a little experience in the headaches of publishing with XML formats.
XHTML is a fair presentation format, but it lacks the critical metadata that make things like ODF and even MOX (Microsoft Open Office XML) so attractive - the ability to retain comments, deleted text, layout and so on. XHTML has at best a remarkably rudimentary knowledge of columns and pagination, and that only if you're willing to work with CSS
3.0. ODF and MOX both contain rich typographical notation that's of intermediate complexity - not quite the overspecified syntax of XML-FO, but certainly far better than XHTML in this regard. I personally like DocBook, but DocBook by nature is specifically designed NOT to be presentation aware. On the other hand, as an abstraction layer, DocBook works remarkably well in developing content that could readily be deployed to ODF or MOX without an incredible amount of work.
Ultimately, to me, the challenge is basically moving out of the proprietary space in general. I personally prefer the cleaner interfaces that ODF has over MOX, but I see the discussion as being a preferential choice for two very similar formats,
provided that both formats are truly open and transparently derived. Let's say Microsoft follows through on its commitment to ECMA in posting MOX ... by placing the format with an open standards body (albeit one much friendlier to Microsoft than the W3C) and giving control of that format over to ECMA (the latter is very important), then I would say that Microsoft has effectively met the letter of the law in providing such a standard. Is MOX as open as ODF? No, not really - the process for creating the format was still hidden, the community involvement is still largely what Microsoft customers exclusively are seeking, and I suspect strongly that while the format will likely be supported by other vendor's tools - it will be a distant third or fourth option over ODF. I'd much prefer to see ODF dominate by my own biases, but I see the Microsoft move, if completed, as a major gesture of conciliation.
I suspect that we'll end up with about seven or eight "primary" document formats, with the occasional specialized vocabulary as appropriate, and they will vary from presentation language oriented documents (XHTML+CSS, XSL-FO,SVG) through word processing docs (ODF or MOX) into abstract document descriptors (DocBook, DITA, XHTML -CSS, OeBook). I think it ultimately comes down to the degree of recoverability of intent within the document (DocBook is ultimately very recoverable, whereas XSL-FO or SVG require extensive processing in order to recover the document intent). All of these have their place, which is why I don't see any of them fading away.
-- Kurt Cagle
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