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IcyWindowsyesterday at 9:25 PM1 replyview on HN

Re: ooxml vs odt/odf

I've heard that both have parts of the spec that are hard to implement if you don't have the software to verify.

How is it a bad thing that both major office software are now documented?


Replies

rzerowantoday at 10:54 AM

As i rmeber it ooxml backers made it intentionally harder to parse the specs than was necessary ,if it was fully open i believe the open source implementation would have been on par. As it is its subtly broken in annoying ways , and with Word being the default - its version wins out and gets to be the only acceptable submission format. If you notice most doc submissions when its not a pdf being requested will specifify MS's version.And by sheer momentum the alts get less traction.