Originally posted by: jfunk
You were saying your problem with OO was that some of the files don't always look right when opened, but I don't think you're going to find ANYTHING that doesn't have this problem. Even different versions of the same program will run into this from time to time. Word processing programs were never meant for distribution purposes, so you're never going to be able to guarantee what the formatting looks like when opened anywhere else (sometimes even on somebody else's computer that is running the same version of the software).
There is simply no way around the fact that people are going to have to manually correct the formatting on some of the documents here and there when you convert them to another format.
Depends on what sort of format.
The OASIS stuff (the ODF or Open Document Format) is designed so that it's as application independant as possible. Pretty much every application aviable will be able to import and export in this format, even Microsoft Office.. eventually.
What the problem is is that you end up with application-specific items that can only be used in one or another system.
So what is going to happen with office formats is the same thing that you deal with when your working with graphics.. You have a 'working' format, and then you have a distributable format.
For instance with Gimp I have XCF files for the native working format. With Photoshop you have those PSD files. (neither app can read each other's formats though.. at least well) However both of them support 'saving as' PNG files.. (which is a nice lossless image format that supports alpha channels and has good compression) which like the ODF should be is ultra-portable because it's a Free software format. Even Microsoft Paint supports it.
So the idea eventually will be like if your using Word perfect or Msoffice or Org or Abiword you use those application's native formats. When you want to archive the documents or send documents to other people then you do a 'save as' or 'export to' to ODF format and then it won't matter what sort of application you have. All of them should support it equally as well.
Right now you have Msoffice formats, which are fairly universal, but that's only because Msoffice is fairly universal. Anybody that is unwilling or is unable to go out and buy the latest version of Msoffice is pretty much screwed with certain types of documents.