support open document format (ODT)
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Hi, I was wondering if you plant to support libreoffice as well?
I use ODT by default and it would be really useful if the tool could support it natively without any manual conversion. Thank you for the great project!
Hei, Anton.
It's a good and important question. The short answer is no. You probably know the following, but for other readers, I'll explain.
LibreOffice implements Open Document Format (ODF); Microsoft Word implements Office Open XML (OOXML). These formats are actually very different. Supporting both really requires two completely different rendering streams. Which, for now, surpasses the Caracal community's (i.e., my) ability to keep up.
I've felt for a long time that the design of the rendering half of Caracal is incorrect. Even within the context of supporting OOXML, multiple rendering streams would be helpful. The OOXML spec changes significantly all the time. As a result, supporting multiple versions of OOXML within a single set of renderers is virtually impossible. The truth is Word versions are popping off our supported list all the time. We survive mostly by supporting a very small subset of Word's features.
All of which is to say, extending Caracal's version support really requires a rethinking of its rendering design. I'd be pumped for someone to tackle that huge problem, but thus far, I don't have any volunteers. :)
John, thank you for the very detailed explanation. Well noted!