ODF or OOXML?

The two office file formats benefit from ISO. But choosing between the two is not trivial. Beware of interoperability issues to come, as shown in an independent study.

The prestigious Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin has engaged in an extensive study of the interoperability of the two competing formats of office. Open Document Format (ODF) 1.0, the format implemented in OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, NeoOffice or KOffice, was created by Sun in the early 2000s, adopted by Oasis in 2005 to become an ISO standard in 2006. Standard that has not been selected by Microsoft as XML format of Office 2007, the publisher has chosen to create its own XML format, Office Open XML (OOXML). The software giant was quick to recognize OOXML as standard with the Ecma before submission to ISO. The debate that followed was epic, but now both of them have been adopted by ISO as a standard.

Companies can retain either of these formats to produce and store their documents. However, the syndrome of "vendor lock-in" watching the futures. For if the two formats are both XML, the transition from one to another will be problematic, as evidenced by the Fraunhofer Institute in copious study of 90 pages devoted to the interoperability of the two formats, it either for text documents, spreadsheets or presentations.

Inherently incompatible formats ...

And the results speak for themselves. For word processing - a priori the most used application for an office suite but also the simplest in terms of size - is already complicated. No problem for the selection of typefaces, but already a small problem for italics. With ODF, there are italic and oblique text ... an unknown difference of OOXML. With the latter, one can define a document theme, which is not possible with ODF: a conversion will lead to problems of police.

For layout, we can not avoid the quirks during conversion: Can not justify a single word on the line with OOXML. This prevents the cutting of a single paragraph to two pages, which is more complicated with ODF. You want to put a border to your paragraph? Easy with OOXML, ODF impossible with. Same to give it a frame effect and change the color of the curb. Same thing for placing notes on a piece of text. This is possible with OOXML, ODF impossible with. Conclusion: unable to guarantee a converter made a 100% faithful translation of a document.

Spreadsheet side, it's worse. These are obviously the formulas that are problematic. For example, OOXML implements the concept of shared formula: it can be used on several cells of the leaf. An unknown concept in ODF.

... Especially for presentation materials

The field as conflict between the two formats remains the presentation documents. Inserting text and images should be no problem converting. However, as soon as we wish to go further in multimedia, incompatibilities will multiply. ODF does not implement the sound or video. It should be biased with OLE objects to insert these elements. Difficulties will still multiply if one wants to put animation in the presentation. In both cases, it is possible, but there are differences, and the devil is in the details. OOXML seems better equipped to handle complex animations: you can create a timeline to synchronize animations, define complex trajectories, as many completely unknown functions of ODF ... and that can not be carried over from one format to other.

In short, if you choose to archive your documents in ODF, hoping one day get rid of the Office suite in favor of an alternative compatible with OOXML, you are going to meet some incompatibility issues, and even converters can best do nothing. The reverse is also true, so watch your choice, you commit to a long, long time.