Re: Open doc format
As for the open document format - one of the chief problems with open standards
is that they take too long to come to fruition.
That may be true of some open standards that are designed by comittee. But that is not the case with all such standards. And indeed there are many very successful open document formats, e.g., MP3, Tiff, and XML.
(With "open standards" I mean in this case standards of which a complete documentation is available to all interested parties and that may be used by these parties either for free or for a nondiscriminatory standard fee.)
Microsoft and others have long since moved ahead with their own
implementations.
Which has advantages and disadvantages. Swift implementation can be one such advantage (although it should not be forgotten that there are also companies with large committees). Low quality can be a disadvantage. The Word document format (.doc) is a good example: It structural shortcomings have long since greatly reduced its reliability and stability.
Overall, it does not seem useful to me to try to ascribe a greater overall quality or desirability to either open or proprietary document formats. Either can be helpful or not; one has to look at the individual case.
Regards
Jan Henning
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Jan Henning
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