[skreutzer]

@dickloraine: It's understandable that the format is more or less specific to a certain implementation, but for achieving more format compatibility across implementations, things have to be generalized and agreed upon, instead of inventing a conflicting standard.

@BetterRed: Now you're talking about something entirely different. Reverse engineering of formats is different from implementing features found in other, similar software, and I doubt that it is illegal to have such similarities (except patents, but the EU doesn't allow patents on software). I mean, what are developers supposed to do, invent different paper sizes, new geometric shapes to draw, menues not grouped around topics and random orthography rules? A word processor is comparatively simple when it comes to the functions that are needed, and the more advanced stuff might differ more. Of course, as people got accustomed to the way Microsoft Office is presenting their features, there's now a certain expectation about how a word processor has to look like. On the other hand, OpenOffice/LibreOffice still has manues, while Microsoft Office has a ribbon bar. Apart from the user interface, if one wants to implement serial letters, it will require to provide some fields and a dataset in one way or another.