Gary Edwards of the OpenDocument Foundation stopped by the other dayto comment on my post "Spinning out of control" in which I commented that the ISO press release about ODF made claims which I didn't believe could be truthful. Specifically that

Billions of existing office documents will be able to be converted to the [ODF] XML standard format with no loss of data, formatting, properties, or capabilities.

I represent Microsoft at all kinds of meetings and my firm understanding is that one of the things that differentiates OpenXML and ODF is OpenXML's ability to faithfully represent all of the previously created Microsoft Office binary format documents. Gary was pretty forthright in his feedback and told me, amongst a few other things :-)

"You're wrong.  The OpenDocument Foundation plug-in will deliver near perfect fidelity for ODF documents produced by MSOffice."

Now I don't for one second mind being wrong, but I like to know where or how I'm wrong. I therefore called Brian Jones and asked him to take a look at the post and Gary's response. Brian did this and asked Gary for more information, and later posted "Spin spin sugar" over on his blog.

Gary's now commented there too, but I am confused by what he says:-

• He talks about an ODF "interop eXtensions" proposal that's "been quietly making the rounds of OASIS ODF TC members".  
• He says that the "iX proposal itself comes out of our work in the Massachusetts RFi trials, where high fidelity roundtripping of ODF files is a priority".
• He mentions "ODF 1.2 iX ready applications".

There's a bunch of other stuff too, and you should check out Brian's post and Gary's comment to get the full picture. I'm confused because Gary's comment has left me with more questions and no answers :-

• My reading of what he says is that the ISO Press Release is certainly wrong to claim that "Billions of existing office documents will be able to be converted to the XML standard format with no loss of data, formatting, properties, or capabilities" at least as far as ODF 1.0, to which it was referring, is concerned.
• The only public reference I can find to Gary's "Interoperability Extensions/iX" phrase is actually an email from Gary himself that, intriguingly, refers to the OpenForum Europe Meeting I posted about here.  I say intriguingly because Gary seems to suggest that there was a "private briefing" to the IDABC Experts Group.
• The reference to "ODF 1.2 iX" suggests to me that this is part of ODF1.2 which I understood to be slated for late 2007. I must have got this wrong though because Gary says it will be ready by January 2007.

I am left with an even stronger sense that the spinning is out of control. In any case, I hope ISO correct their press release.