It’s not just ODF vs. MSOOXML in the world today, there are some other XML formats too. There’s UOF from China, and the native XML file format developed by Apple for its iWork suite, that come quickly to mind.

CyberTech Rambler investigates three XML formats in his post iWork XML Format vs ODF vs OOXML Preliminary Thoughts.

He gets inside Apple’s XML format for a close look and seems to be pleased by most of the design choices Apple made:

“What does all this say about Apple? It has the competency to implement a good XML structure for office documents. I cannot help but use this to take a swipe at OOXML. While I can see from a business point of view, participating in OOXML’s ECMA TC45 made sense, from a technical point of view, it tarnishes Apple’s reputation when one considers that it deliberated and approved that lousily-written OOXML in ECMA TC45. Also, since Apple is already brewing such an XML for its own document use, this further confirms my suspicion that Apple is there to ensure it can implement import/export filter only.”

From his perspective, OOXML is the least well-designed of the formats, and while Apple “supports” it as a (readable) format in iWork, it cannot save files into OOXML.

I don’t really care about OOXML format support for iWork, since I don’t think it will gain widespread adoption. However, I think ODF will, and I would like to see Apple’s iWork provide read and write support for ODF.

This entry was posted on Friday, August 31st, 2007 at 10:32 am and is filed under Mac, ODF. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.