Re: Open Office file formats (Oasis-open) and gnumeric

[Jody Goldberg <jody gnome org>]

On Mon, Mar 10, 2003 at 10:41:23PM -0500, Russell McOrmond wrote:
> > A stand alone converter ?  That is very interesting.
>
>   This group of students are only around long enough to start a project.  
> We needed to be realistic in what they could accomplish.
 
I was fairly serious about this.  The extensions would take me about
2 days given my familiarity with the code base.  A team of students
could easily complete it within a month.

>   Whether the OASIS Open Office format is convenient or efficient may be
> secondary to the strategic value.  Sometimes you hold your nose on
> technical issues to be able to push things forward.

To paraphrase a Dan Akroyd line in Dragnet
    "I'll be doing it holding my nose which means I'll be doing it
     with one hand"
 
>   The rumbling I am hearing from key people in the federal government 
> suggests we need to get our stuff together quite quickly if we want to 
> take advantage of some possible movement.   A move from (as an example) 
> Lotus SmartSuite to "tools compatible with the OASIS Open Office TC file 
> format" could be a huge win for our community, especially if the 3 major 
> Free Software office suites supported the format.

Gnumeric will support whatever formats people request.  It really is
that simple.  However, in all format conversions data is usually
lost at some level.  If OASIS to accept OO's format OO will likely
be the only thing that will ever truely implement it.  The rest of
us can try, and it should be much simpler than with the MS binary
formats, but realisticly speaking a file format is always going to
reflect the representation of its native application.  Other
applications will always be at a disadvantage.