[Scribus] I'm looking for a Portable Document Format (not PDF)

[Nik]

Hi All,

I realise that the Scribus community uses PDF for particular reasons, 
and so this may be a little off-topic.

However, I have struggled this week with various PDF documents I have 
received that are incompatable with my various PDF readers in a variety 
of ways.

What is needed is a document format that is designed for the easy and 
accurate exchange of documents. Sadly, Adobe are taking PDF in much same 
direction that Microsoft took the Word file-format, where frequent 
changes to the format meant that folks were forever playing version 
catch-up.

I realise that Adobe always intended to make money from the PDF format, 
and that changes to the format are a natural way for them to accomplish 
that, but if I can't successfully read the PDF documents that I receive 
or download, then PDF is no use to me as a portable document format.

What I am looking for is a document format that is open enough that 
anyone who wishes can build a reader and/or creator for it can. The 
format needs to have similar power and abilities to PDF. The format 
should also be "XML compatable", in that if it isn't stored in XML 
(which does compress fairly well), then it should be easily rendered 
into XML, so that a text editor can be used to make changes.

I am aware of SGML Document Interchange Format, but SGML seems to have 
gone out of favour. Does anyone know of a format that fits the 
requirements I've described, or could be made to?

All replies gratefully received.

Cheers!
Nik.