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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Open Doc Format turns 20
Date: Sun, 4 May 2025 03:21:10 -0000 (UTC)
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On 03 May 2025 11:43:29 GMT, Retrograde wrote:

> It's been 20 years since the Open Document Format (ODF) became a
> standard, marking a milestone in the push for open, vendor-neutral file
> formats — and the beginning of a long but largely unsuccessful attempt
> to loosen Microsoft Office's grip on the desktop.…

I still think it’s fared better as a standard than Microsoft’s OOXML (aka 
ISO 29500). Microsoft’s attempt to make its Office document formats an 
official standard ended up being a complete mess -- basically bulldozed 
through various technical committees without due care and attention to the 
various glaring omissions and inconsistencies. Consider the “transitional” 
versus “strict” options, and notice that hardly anybody, even now, decades 
later, dares to use the “strict” version, because everybody is afraid to 
break compatibility with Microsoft Office.

ODF (ISO 26300) was and is a much cleaner and simpler spec by comparison, 
and anybody implementing it knows they actually have a realistic chance of 
ending up with something workable.