The State of ODF Interoperability and Conformance

1. The ODF Standard
   1. Scope
   2. Versions
   3. Classes of implementations
   4. Classes of users
2. ODF Conformance
   1. Definition of conformance
   2. Dimensions of conformance
   3. User expectations concerning conformance
   4. How conformance is assessed today, e.g., what activities, test suites, tools, research papers, etc. are known to us.
   5. Current state of ODF conformance, including progress since last report
   6. Recommendations for future activity
3. ODF Interoperability
   1. Definition of interoperability
   2. Dimensions of interoperability
   3. User expectations concerning interoperability
   4. How interoperability is assessed today, e.g., what activities, test suites, tools, research papers, etc. are known to us.
   5. Current state of ODF interoperability, including progress since last report
   6. Recommendations for future activity
4. Summary
5. References Cited

1. Relation conformance-interoperability
   1. Conformance is a means to achieve the goal of interoperability
   2. Non-conforming products might be interoperable

      • => risk of creating shadow-standard

   3. Conforming products might not be interoperable

      • => see below

2. Three aspects
   1. Data: the XML itself
   2. Presentation: the rendering of the data
   3. Behavior: scripts, form validation, refresh...
3. Possible reasons for interoperability issues
   1. Caused by standard itself
      1. Standard might not be clear
      2. Standard might be too permissive
      3. Lack of profiles (related to previous item)
   2. Caused by implementations
      1. Bugs in implementations
      2. Features not implemented
      3. Non-standard features implemented
      4. Lack of reference implementation
   3. Caused by user expectations
      1. ODF is not PDF (or should it ?)
   4. Perceived interoperability
      1. Products based on same code
4. Related work
   1. Rajiv and Kesan

-- bart.hanssens 2009-01-26 18:10:07