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by rbanffy 4640 days ago
> there are decent COTS tools to handle it

Of course there are - Microsoft's ecosystem is huge. And tools can use Office as a library

> output rendering is consistent

That's not a format problem

> It's also better documented

Now that's just wrong. It's more extensively documented (the spec is an impressive stack when printed) but there cannot possibly be a better specification than freely available source code. If you really want to know how to read an ODF document, you can always read LibreOffice's source code. And use it too.
2 comments
triton 4640 days ago
there cannot possibly be a better specification than freely available source code

That's even more horse shit and a poor excuse if there ever was one for not documenting something properly.

The source code by nature covers a subset of the standard as it can't cover every logical edge case and it isn't verified. At least the documentation is the verification source.

Not only that, I've delved into the LibreOffice source code and it's horrible, convoluted and a rats nest from hell.

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rbanffy 4640 days ago
I think you are not paying attention. In addition to the documentation you found confusing, ODF comes with a reference implementation. While sometimes the LibreOffice source code can be daunting, especially if you are not that a good coder, it's runnable and evidently usable. I'm not advocating not writing documentation (I take great pains not only to document my code but to also provide comprehensive tests for it).

I don't know what kind of code you do, but your lack of faith in the clarity of your code and your tests as a form of documentation is disturbing. I hope your clients can't identify you from your comments.

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cdcarter 4640 days ago
> but there cannot possibly be a better specification than freely available source code

That's so false. A great example is the history of different Ruby interpreters. The code to MRI was useful, but RubySpec changed the landscape.

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rbanffy 4640 days ago
I wouldn't consider a codebase acceptable unless it includes comprehensive tests. Tests can serve and validate a spec.
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