SoftMaker.com

Thanks again for your effort. I referred these bugs to our developers.

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Sven Leßmann
SoftMaker Software GmbH

What can be fixed, will be fixed. Of course, if ODT simply does not support a certain TextMaker feature (such as comments over ranges of text or many advanced tracked changes), then there is nothing we can do. Remember that ODT simply mirrors the feature set of OpenOffice.org and does not add any features of its own.

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Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Here is the heretic's answer: Keep your documents in each application's native format (because that guarantees reproducibility). It's not like your copy of TextMaker, Word, or OpenOffice falls to pieces just because the manufacturer vanishes on day X. You can still run DOS applications from 25 years ago today, and you will be able to run your Windows applications 25 years from now. If that's inside a virtual machine or on old clunker you get from a future E-Bay doesn't matter -- it's good enough to convert your files to another format when that need arises.

Each word processing format is a mirror of the application on which that format originated. If you want to know what OpenDocument doesn't support, look at what OpenOffice doesn't support. I already mentioned two (comments applied to ranges -- which means that all comments created in Word will suffer when opened in OpenOffice; tracked changes that go beyond mere insertions and deletions).

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Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Use the open format that is most natural to the word processor you are editing with. When you use Word or TextMaker, DOCX should be your best bet (as soon as we have import and export of DOCX working in TextMaker 2009) because TextMaker usually follows Word's and not OpenOffice.org's style of implementing a feature (though we are trying to streamline the user interface, compared to Word).

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Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

DOCX import was hard, export will be less so to develop.

What Microsoft doesn't tell you about the ribbon is that it does not contain all the features that were available from the menus. Of course, if you hide features, then things become easier to use... until, for example, you want to scan in an image. That command is not in the ribbons.

What's nice about Word 2007 is that it gives you many presets, without having to enter values manually. TextMaker 2009 will pick up this general idea.

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Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH

Adding blogging support is something that I don't want in the standard word processor. As an add-on or extension, that's OK.

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Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH