Quote:
Originally Posted by dickloraine
Instead of inventing something new
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Actually, DOCX is the invention of something new for the sake of doing so, because
ODT came first, is standardized, cleaner, and is also supported by Microsoft Word. Instead of embracing ODT, Microsoft made up DOCX with artificial quirks in it, persuading it to get it accepted as a different standard conflicting with ODT. As the European Union forced Microsoft to make their format more open, DOCX is at least an improvement over DOC, but it seems to be designed to still make it hard to make use of it without Microsoft Word.
Regarding the only software that can fully deal with DOCX, in my opinion, it would be of great help if there would be some kind of “book mode”, which would disable direct formatting and present styles as the main mechanism for markup. Per default, Word's GUI is configured for composing office documents, which is unfortunate for writing long form texts. And, let's not forget about the fact, that Microsoft Word is still in the year of the Lord 2015 unable to export well-formed XHTML (not even talking about valid output), so that people like Toxaris, Hitch and now jeffcb too have to invest valuable lifetime for compensating the lack of cooperation on the side of Microsoft.
I don't object to Microsoft per se, I object to what they do and don't.