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

[Regina Henschel]

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