[ODFPlugtest] ODF interop at DII event in Brussels tomorrow

[Sven Langkamp]

On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 1:53 AM, Doug Mahugh <Doug.Mahugh at microsoft.com>wrote:

> Michiel,
>
> Attached are three test documents and two images that summarize the
> behavior of these documents.  I think the results speak for themselves.
>
> As stated on the KOffice wiki (
> http://wiki.koffice.org/index.php?title=KOffice2/ODF_Problems), OOo does
> not support the SVG objects that KOffice writes.  I see that this page is
> dated October 25, eight days prior to the Orvieto Plugfest -- could somebody
> from KOffice please confirm the date on which KOffice's SVG support was
> first available?  That is relevant to this discussion, because Michiel has
> repeatedly claimed that we made a bad decision by failing to allow for
> KOffice's support for SVG.  Based on the date on that change log, it appears
> to me that KOffice may have added SVG support 16 months after we first
> demonstrated our ODF implementation (on July 30, 2008) and six months after
> we released that support (on April 28, 2009).  Is that correct?  If not,
> what was the date that this support was added?
>
> A few comments on our approach to this particular issue ...
>
> When we were planning our ODF implementation, we looked at existing ODF
> implementations and found that none of them supported reading or writing of
> SVG gradients.  So in an effort to achieve the best interop we could, we
> chose the <draw:gradient> form and limited the features we save to the ones
> supported by that form.  (i.e. only two stops).
>
> KOffice's decision to always writes SVG gradients, even in situations where
>  the gradient had originally been created and saved using draw:gradient (as
> in the attached two-stop example), has broken gradient interoperability with
> all existing ODF implementations that I'm aware of.  As a result of this
> approach, even a simple two-color gradient created by OpenOffice.org (or any
> ODF implementation) is destroyed by KOffice on a round trip.  This is
> clearly demonstrated in the attached files.
>
> So gradient interoperability between KOffice and OO.o is quite broken.
>  Interop between KOffice and Symphony is also broken.  And yes, interop
> between KOffice and MS Office is broken - because in this case we chose
> better interop with OO.o over a fancier feature set that was not supported
> by any existing implementation that we tested.
>
> This issue is a good example of why the ODF format sometimes makes it very
> hard to achieve good interoperability. There are two completely different
> and mutually incompatible ways of specifying a shape's gradient:
>  <draw:gradient>,  or <svg:linearGradient> and <svg:radialGradient>.  I
> don't know the history of this situation, but in order to improve ODF
> interoperability we need to fix the problem, and modify the standard so that
> it includes a single consistent and interoperable approach to gradients.
>
> Gradient fills are a pretty minor feature, especially when you look at some
> of the much more important document features that ODF does not support.  And
> gradient interoperability in ODF was just fine, albeit limited to two-stop
> gradients, until KOffice implemented a different and incompatible approach.
>
> Michiel, I don't understand why you insist on wasting so much of the
> community's time on this issue.  This is a very trivial issue, affecting a
> small number of users, and I don't believe it's worth spending our time on
> when there are so many larger issues to be addressed.
>
> 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.
>

 I just checked with Inkscape 0.47 and it uses SVG gradients too when
exporting to ODF.
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