Open Document files in Abiword and OpenOffice

[NoOp]

On 05/19/2010 06:10 AM, Graham Todd wrote:
> Often, when I write some thing in Abiword and save it in .odt (Open
> Document) format, it is not recognised in exactly the same way by Open
> Office. This is the same for text and formatting.
> 
> I thought the Open Document Format was a genuine standard, so in my
> ignorance I assumed that all documents created by a word processor
> supporting this format would recognise it identically.

It is. Abiword needs more work on their odt import/export filter. See below.

> 
> Can anyone explain why this should not be the case?
> 
> Its often less memory intensive to use Abiword than OpenOffice (or
> seems so) and that is the main reason I'm raising this query, but am I
> correct in my assumption that all .odt files should be treated the same
> way by all word processors claiming to support the Open Document
> Format?
> 
> If not, how can I be sure that any person to whom I send the .odt files
> will read them as I do, or be able to read them at all?
> 


OpenOffice.org (OOo) uses odt natively, Abiword does not:
http://www.abisource.com/wiki/OpenDocument_support
BTW: the recommendation to use rtf on that page is probably the worst
advise of all.

Abiword saves odt using a filter so some formating & bit loss is to be
expected. Same thing happens if OOo saves MS Word documents; it uses an
import/export filter and some formating & bits are lost in the translation.

http://www.abisource.com/wiki/OpenDocument
[Features that OpenDocument has but AbiWord doesn't]