.ODT files - open office

Keynote, Pages, and Numbers all include functions that are iWork only because they utilize system resources not available on other OS's. ODF does not support these Mac OS X only features, so, while ODF may be an output or an import option, Apple will likely continue natively supporting only their own XML (which they control completely and don't have to check with anyone before making wholesale changes).

Kyn Drake wrote:
Keynote, Pages, and Numbers all include functions that are iWork only because they utilize system resources not available on other OS's. ODF does not support these Mac OS X only features, so, while ODF may be an output or an import option, Apple will likely continue natively supporting only their own XML (which they control completely and don't have to check with anyone before making wholesale changes).

Are you sure? Is not ODF somehow extendible, so a particular program could add features to a file that other programs cannot read?

I know that TIFF and DNG in the image world work that way.

In the Microsoft word OLE works in a somewhat similar way too. I can write a document on a PC with MS Visio and embed a Visio drawing in a Word document. When I open it on a Mac, I can see the Visio drawing, even though I of course cannot edit it, as there is no Visio version for Mac OS X.

I'm just guessing about ODF here. It may be complete nonsense, but it would be interesting to learn if someone knows for sure.

Yeah, I'm not so sure it would be that difficult as well. The whole point of OpenDocument is to be extensible and to degrade gracefully, to be an excellent "middle ground" format structured much the same way HTML is. We've reached a point where web pages render fairly consistently cross-platform, it seems a viable goal that our word processing documents and spreadsheets would also be in that realm eventually.

Document interoperability is too important of an issue for people these days, as referenced by Microsoft's inclusion of full inline ODF support (not via a translator), for Apple to indefinitely continue to ignore. They learned that with AppleTalk and other Apple-specific protocols.

What exactly wouldn't be covered? Pages would seem to have most things expressible. Numbers might be challenging due to the model in which it structures sheets/tables. Keynote probably wouldn't be so bad because the presentations would either rely on the fancy Apple-hardware-specific transitions if they were available, or default to something else if they weren't. In the latter case. I really don't know how ODF implements things like that, but I do know that OOo was in the process of adding OpenGL transitions some time ago.

Don't forget that one guy that did the comparison between ODF and AppleXML discovered that Apple had structured its XML very similarly to ODF. Ah, here: http://ctrambler.wordpress.com/2007/08/21/iworks-xml-format-vs-odf-vs-ooxml-prel iminary-thoughts/ (minus the fact that he refers to it as "iWorks". :-P

Another advantage of using odt instead of .pages files, is that less users would have problems attaching them to e-mails.

Document interoperability is too important of an issue for people these days

I think those people concerned with document interoperability will have a Free option and it'd be hard for Apple to compete against free. It might not work well now, but in a few years, if it gets better, then who'd need iWork?

My main thinking about this is from examining the XML files since version 1. They've changed significantly but, since it's not published in any real sense, they have complete control to totally rewrite the XML at any point if that rewrite serves how they want the objects to load, how they want the file to be laid out, or to account for some new framework they've set up. They don't even have to implement it fully (some parameters could be active under some cases and not under others), or they can freely use portions of it to create new non-office products (like iWeb). All of this is only possible because they have complete 100% control of the XML, to do with it as they see fit.

Since they've previously marketed it as "Office for the rest of us" (ie, those of us that don't need to work in an Office world), I just don't feel they'll change that position.

Document interoperability is too important of an issue for people these days

Desktop publishing saw an interest in presentation information to the exclusion of content information. What one would want is the ability to depict the page description onto the page markup in a meaningful manner. The present emphasis on content information to exclusion of presentation information is no more helpful than the previous emphasis. Also, the idea of free software involves the idea of software for which no-one is answerable. Not an idea that appeals if predictability is important.

Just my ten cents,

Henrik

Why is OpenDocument less capable of marking up presentation information than it is content?

At what point did we stop talking about an internationally certified document standard and start talking about free software? OpenDocument has absolutely nothing to do with free software, nor the question of who fixes it when something breaks. OpenDocument is a vendor-neutral specification for storing data that IS answerable by the OASIS ODF working group and the corresponding ISO/IEC joint technical groups. No one is talking about iWork competing with OpenOffice or other free software on technical merit, we're only talking about storing the data that is created in iWork in an interoperable format that is useful. The idea that a program should store data in its own format for vendor-lock in and competition's sake kinda died several years ago.

But since you brought it up...

Free software has way more support options than proprietary software. If a vibrant free community doesn't answer your question you can purchase software from, in the case of OpenOffice, a little company called Sun Microsystems. But if you're unhappy with that, you can also get support from IBM.

Free software has way more support options than proprietary software.

I'm confused, but it does not take much to confuse me - it's the advance of old age which has an impact on one's wits, or possible of having seen too much turn sour that sounded somewhere between sweet and silly -:).

hh