FreeFormats

Principles

We should do everything in OpenOffice.org. It is free, uses a good XML file format, runs on all platforms, has spreadsheets you can embed in a document, math, writes to PDF, etc. Having everything in one tool helps to keep things organized, make it easy to get translated, etc. Keith worked on text engines for 5 years, and just wrote a book using the OpenOffice writer and found it to be good enough.

Diffing and merging

OpenOffice (the writer, at least) has a good ability to diff and merge documents. We can also turn on change tracking, which records who, what, when and where. If we get to the place where multiple want to improve files at the same time, we can work on better solutions. In general read all you want, but make your changes and upload them right away so there is no need to merge.

Browser integration OpenOffice.org

Spreadsheets in a browser is a very interesting challenge. There are several solutions, including a solution by Google, but no solution with critical mass. In addition, Google's spreadsheet introduces a whole bunch of other issues because it doesn't integrate with mediawiki.

I think in the short term, just copy and paste into a table on the page the few interesting bits of a spreadsheet, and have people just do any serious viewing in OpenOffice. Putting a spreadsheet in a browser won't automatically make them nice looking :-)