File formats

by Volker Weber

Simon complains about Google:

No ODF? Very disappointing. Not A Team Player.

He also links to Ovum:

t's a pity that Google has not taken this opportunity to use ODF for importing and exporting spreadsheets. While this open standard does not have much traction yet, support from an organisation such as Google would give it a significant boost.

Exactly. The standard does not have much traction, and Google does not care so much about the standard. They care about their users. Chances are, that most users today prefer XLS over ODF. And there is nothing that would prevent Google from supporting ODF later in the beta.

What I find very stupid however is when a company creates their own private format today. Like Apple does with Pages and Keynote. They would be much better off using ODF than living in their own small world.

Comments

The Open Document format for a spreadsheet is .ods
ODF is the Open Document "Formula" format.

Looks like OoO does not have many users here as well. :)

Real pity as the more I use the Open Office suite, the more I like it.
Powerful, flexible, cross-platform, Open Standard and, last but not least, free of charge.
Should be compulsory standard in every government organisation .

I just wish the developers could sort out the problems with OSX/X11 fonts instead of using their own set wich makes it almost useless as a Word Processor in today's world of mixed computer platforms.

Pieter Lansbergen, 2006-06-09

I mean ODF as in Open Document Format.

Volker Weber, 2006-06-09

Sorry, my bad, and thank you for shedding some light on the (for me) somehow complex world of Open formats.

Pieter Lansbergen, 2006-06-10

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