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Posted by: garyedwards (Friday 29 February 2008, 8:24 AM)

Interoperability and the binary ODF conversion dilemma

There are two important issues to consider, especially wherever there are government pilot studies and ODF mandate proposals. The first is whether or not we can convert volumes of existing MSOffice binary documents to ODF, and do so with an acceptable fidelity loss. The second is whether or not ODF plug-ins for MSOffice can convert documents with sufficient fidelity such that MSOffice bound business processes can continue without costly disruption or re engineering.

For the sake of discussion, these issues are often referred to as “compatibility with existing documents”, and “interoperability with existing applications”. Or, as many do, the entire issue is lumped together as “interoperability”.

ODF must pass this real world test to be considered “implementable” or have any hope of success in the marketplace. Unfortunately, for much of the world isn't a clean slate implementation. Conversion of binary to ODF is a fact of life that can't be avoided.

Fortunately the reverse engineering and conversion of the MS binary formats is a sector as rich with success as it is rife with MS inspired turmoil, confusion, and obfuscation. Yes, the binaries have been a moving target. But the conversion sector can routinely hit an 85-95% fidelity and higher on import. Export however is a far more difficult issue.

Given the importance of being able to convert MS binaries to ODF, one would think that the OASIS ODF TC would do whatever it takes to improve conversion fidelity for both import and export. This sadly is not the case. Over the past five years some of the world's foremost conversion – reverse engineering experts have worked on the ODF TC, but have seen their efforts defeated or pushed out to future generations of ODF.

Two names in particular stand out; Phil Boutros and Florian Reuter. Phil was responsible for the outstanding Stellent conversion filters, considered by most to be the best in the business. Florian wrote the da Vinci ODF plug-in for MSOffice, and, the OOXML conversion plug-in for Novell's OpenOffice. Florian also represented Novell on the OASIS ODF TC, the Ecma 376 Workgroup, the Cleverage open source “Translator” project, and the EU-ISO authorized DIN Workgroup “Harmonization” study. Prior to his work with Novell and the OpenDocument Foundation, Florian was Sun's resident RTF – MS Binary conversion expert tasked with assisting and advising OpenOffice/StarOffice community developers.

That the many conversion sector inspired efforts to improve “compatibility-interoperability” within the OASIS ODF TC were defeated or kicked forward to future generations of ODF is a matter of record. But here's something else to consider. Microsoft is claiming that Sun and IBM have had access to the binary blueprints since 2003. I personally don't know if that's true. But what i do know is that Sun and IBM have had the binary blueprints since early 2006. And i do know that in the past two years, neither Sun or IBM have introduced any proposals to enhance or improve ODF interoperability with MSOffice, or compatibility with the billions of binary documents the marketplace seeks to convert to ODF.

So much for the value of the binary blueprints.

If you want to truly understand this difficult compatibility-interoperability” issue, the best place to look is at independent conversion efforts. Sadly, all you'll ever get from the application vendors is a lot of useless finger pointing, heated politics, and refusal to compromise or cooperate. They have a different agenda than that of interoperability with the enemies product line.

And what do the independent conversion efforts tell us? They scream loudly that there is a fundamental difference between how OpenOffice and MSOffice implement basic document structures such as lists, tables, fields, sections and page dynamics. These basic layout engine differences are further complicated by differences in feature s

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