HTML validation services have long been available for web developers to guarantee the sites they create follow the latest W3C standards. This has made it easier for web browser creators, site developers and web visitors to all keep coordinated and offer the best experience across the web. If something isn’t working, running the pages through an HTML validator helps to pinpoint whether the problem is in the code or browser, and then it can be fixed by the appropriate party.

In the same way, the open standard ODF format now has an online ODF validator service.

Michael Brauer, its creator, announces the service on the GullFOSS blog:

“What is it? It is actually a web page where you can check whether an ODF file meets some basic conformance or validation requirements defined by the ODF specification. This service is in particular useful for developers that want to test their implementations, but it may also be used to check if a particular file is a valid ODF file.”

My take is that this will be a very handy tool once Microsoft Office starts producing ODF files, since it will offer an independent service verifying whether those files are valid ODF or have been corrupted in some way. Based on Microsoft’s track record in failing to properly support open standards, we should expect major difficulties with the ODFs they produce. And the ODF validator service will let us pinpoint the cause of the problem. Surely Microsoft will claim that ODF is a broken file format, but users will be able to run the files through this validator and prove that is is MS Office, in fact, that is broken. (All this is conjecture at this point, but past experience suggests we’ll see it come true yet again.)

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 10th, 2008 at 11:23 am and is filed under Free Culture, ODF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.