RE: [xml-dev] OOXML: So what *should* happen now?

[mcarr@allette.com.au]

Michael Kay wrote:

> The ideal perhaps is that the ODF and OOXML players should get around
the table and design a single specification with a central core that
everyone agrees on...

A mapping between them would be just as good.

> ...and with sufficient extensibility to permit the necessary evils like
"doWordWrapLikeWord95" in separate namespaces to allow
> round-trippability.

But who wants to round trip to Word 95? Seriously, is anyone planning to
do that? As far as I can tell, the reason to get XML out of existing Word
documents is to use the data for something smarter and/or more up to date.
That might involve converting it to ODF, opening it in Word 2010, or
something totally unrelated to word processing. You need to know all the
crap like "doWordWrapLikeWord95" to get the data out properly, but that's
where it ends.

One size has never fit all in the structured data world. Since when did
that become a valid argument? What should happen now? The ODF and OOXML
people should continue to try to produce the best standards that they can,
and they and the rest of us should start figuring out how to efficiently
get data between them.


Marcus