>         A very well put reply. This has always been a traditional problem, that
> of having no standard. Come to think of it , even KDE's image viewer doesnot
> read gimp's .xcf file. So kword's file format will be another one among many.
> While kword will read and write to a few other file formats , this still doesnt
> solve the problem.
> 
I agree. And what is more: Does KSpread have a standardized format on saving data ?
And what about KPresenter ?

I mean itīs time to think about a new way to store data.
As "dep" mentioned 500k docs are easy to store and forward with the means of today.

So why not take XML into account ?
In my opinion Microsoft is slowly moving toward this format to store data. The last version of their PowerPoint converts presentations automatically into html-files and gifs. Next step would be to have -sort of- XML, see Office2000.

So what about the following:
Choose XML.
Letīs handle text and graphics separately. Means that text has links to graphics and so on.
At save time grab all the files of the document and sent them through the tar/gz or bz2 algorithm to store all data into one file.
At load time process vice versa.
For the user it will be easy to handle the document:
Itīs size is small, so he can sent it via mail.
One can untar the doc-file and use the files separetly.
The docs can easily put to the web
Data can be processed with other programs, too. 
Choose XML because it will be a standard to the industry in less than 3 ys.

Well, there have to be import/export filters, too. But these are mainly to support users that want to switch their docs to the new format. They will take into account that the import fails or is incomplete in some cases, but they will use the programs native format for the future because it has advantages. 

Seeing forward to the answers of the community,

	Frank