Comments on: proprietary file formats

By: SW

SW — Tue, 27 May 2008 14:02:05 +0000

A good CV is only a page long anyway (or two at most)– would probably have been quicker just to redo it from scratch in OO.o/ Google Docs/ AbiWord / whatever.

By: Kjartan Maraas

Kjartan Maraas — Mon, 26 May 2008 18:13:22 +0000

I’ve had more success with the latest OO.o 3.0 beta. Maybe worth giving that a try :-)

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 26 May 2008 13:11:40 +0000

You are right saying “XML is not really a panacea” but what it really helpful of using XML on document formats is that anyone know how it looks, that make developers with at least a little pride on what they code to create document structure that seem reasonable to understand (not everyone like you can see on the OOXML structure), with binary formats there is no way that someone can check what you thought was a good file structure without understanding what you code or document of it. I do not imagine the Web today with a more efficient binary format

By: Alexander Jones

Alexander Jones — Mon, 26 May 2008 10:35:21 +0000

Firstly, the binary formats are published now as a result of an antitrust settlement.

Secondly, I’ll trade a small amount of efficiency for the huge amount of benefit a mature, well-tested, widely-interpretable data modelling format any day. The fact you don’t have to worry about writing a new parser every time you add a new feature is enough to seal the deal alone. And if your adhoc format is flexible enough that you don’t, you’re probably not as efficient as XML anyway.

Give XML a chance!

By: Frej Soya

Frej Soya — Mon, 26 May 2008 08:21:22 +0000

You forget the business case. You can patent anything that ends …. “with xml” ;).