Jon Bosak, who founded the XML and ODF efforts among many other achievements, recently wrote an article concerning the position of ODF, Open XML and PDF Jon’s public writings are rare, well-considered and always of interest. As with other Sun-affiliated people in recent times, Jon has been exemplary in that even though he has a side, he does not take sides. I think I can agree with much of what he says, though I would note Don’t forget about HTML.

Jon’s awareness of the different capabilities of different formats, and the centrality of having a clear understanding of these, stimulated me to try to articulate something I have been thinking about for while: is ODF better considered a replacement for .DOC or .RTF, and can it be a substitute for both? And are there any bigger issues than this looming, that we should take stock of?

First, a potted history of the document format landscape over last 25 years…..

http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/10/the-document-file-format-lands.html