[ODFPlugtest] ODF interop at DII event in Brussels tomorrow

[robert_weir at us.ibm.com]

plugtest-bounces at opendocsociety.org wrote on 11/11/2009 07:53:10 PM:

> 
> I am very interested in others' thoughts on this matter.  What do 
> other implementers think?  Sun?  IBM?  Gnumeric?  AbiWord?  Are you 
> planning to implement support for SVG gradients as KOffice has done?
> We are committed to providing the best possible user experience in 
> this area, so if the community is moving toward SVG gradient support
> please let me know so that we can take that into consideration in 
> our planning, just as took the widespread support for the 
> draw:gradient approach into consideration in the planning of our 
> original ODF implementation.
> 

Since you asked...

I'd rather have apps get into the practice of "gracefully degrading" when 
reading and rendering rather than when writing the document.  So write out 
the SVG grad fill and then have the apps that do not support that pattern 
translate it at read time into a simpler pattern.  This is more 
future-proof.  If you throw out the user's intent from the start, then 
you've thrown out information and you can never get it back.  If you keep 
the information state high, then that would immediately give you better 
interop with KOffice and no worse interop with OpenOffice, etc.  It would 
also encourage other apps to implement more of the ODF spec.

But I do agree that grad fills are a relatively minor issue in the grand 
scheme of things.  From what I see there are more important areas in need 
of attention.  So with limited time and resources, I don't think I'd put 
my emphasis on grad fills.  But it is an interesting example that might 
lead to further discussion of general principles for how such issues might 
be addressed.

Regards,

-Rob