Playing ping pong with ODF version; does it pose a danger to the end user.

[Drew Jensen]

Thanks for the feedback Regina & Thorsten.

Well, given the information in the replies and what I've seen
anecdotally I feel prepared to field questions if they come up.

BTW I added OnlyOffice into the mix last night. It behaves pretty much
as MSO 365 when handling these 1.3 files.

Best wishes,

Drew

On Thu, Apr 22, 2021 at 3:05 PM Regina Henschel <rb.henschel at t-online.de> wrote:
>
> Hi Drew,
>
> Drew Jensen schrieb am 22.04.2021 um 18:59:
> > Howdy,
> >
> > Recently I exchanged a few documents between a number of ODF editors:
> > LO 7.1 (all documents were created here with default settings)
> > Google Docs
> > Microsoft Office 365
> > Apache OpenOffice
> >
> > In the case of all Google and MSO the files open up without any kind
> > of warning about the ODF version being 1.3. AOO (4.1.10 RC2) offers a
> > rather poorly worded warning.
>
> This is a step forward compared to the change to ODF 1.2,
>
>   So far I have noticed no obvious loss of
> > features, but I assume there must be some, somewhere.
>
> It depends on the content whether you loose something. Even if all would
> use ODF 1.3 you cannot expect that different applications support the
> same subset of features.
>
> >
> > When I save from Google or MS or AOO the ODF version is dropped down
> > to 1.2, silently.
>
> If they are not aware of the version, they cannot warn.
>
> >
> > Open it again in LO 7.1 and it is quiet, edit and save it and it is
> > quietly moved back up to ODF 1.3.
>
> That could be improved. MS Office has for ooxml a warning, that the file
> is transformed to the newest version, if it has opened a older file format.
>
> >
> > So, I was wondering if this is a potential problem for the end users
> > and if so should we recommend that they change from the new default in
> > LO of ODF 1.43 (a non standard) back to 1.2 if they are expecting to
> > share for editing with other editors?
>
> I see no problem for end users. The differences between applications
> using the same ODF version is larger than the differences between ODF
> 1.2 and 1.3. So when documents need to be exchanged between different
> applications, the sender and receiver should always agree on which
> features not to use. That is nothing special for ODF. You know it too
> for HTML and browsers and for documents in ooxml-formats.
>
> The advise should be to always save in "ODF 1.3 extended" and use other
> version or formats only if explicit required.
>
> Kind regards
> Regina
>
>
>
>
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