osrin.net

Rick Jelliffe has posted a lengthy discussion on the future role of ODF, his conclusion;

So what is there that we can do to nudge us in the direction of this large-scale interoperability? Participate in the most congenial standards body to your interests, and encourage them to support plurality (modularity, alternatives, feature harmonization with each others standards, graceful degradation) and the dissolution of the great website/document divide. And to foster good reasons (carrots and sticks) so that the large developers see value in this kind of enabling standard. For developers, make browsers plugins that accept resources from an unzipped XML-in-ZIP document delivered over a web service; or enhance the existing XML-in-ZIP formats to cope with web formats (ODF with CSS, for example) better: round-trip rather than just convert-and-discard. There is lots to do —unblock the plumbing: for example, get standard URL format for compound documents, particularly inside ZIP archives and a standard for ZIP.

He discusses some of the history of document formats, some ideas about how we got to where we are, and a couple of possible scenarios that outline where we (the wider community) might go next.

The conclusion above says it all for me.

Blogging or moaning to friends about the state of things won’t create good standards – participation will.