Comments on: OpenDocument could 'turn everything inside out'
The data format standard has the potential to transform the world just as the Web did, according to a senior Sun executive.
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to the table is a waste of time. But we'll see. Most of what Sun has
been doing lately is losing money.
http://espellahumanzee.blogspot.com/
documents, presentations, and spreadsheets. It
as developed by a consortium of businesses
(including Sun, Microsoft, Corel, and IBM) as a
universal document interchange format
unencumbered by patents and copyrights that
would permit flexible automatable processing and
generation of documents, etc.
To Microsoft's chagrin, several word processors
and office suites supported it a few years
before they planned to and now they are
withdrawing support because doing so might
legitimize potential future competitors. It's
not that MS can't simply write a plug-in for
Word that supports OpenDocument.
OpenDocument has a number of advantages
over .DOC: it's human-readable XML, it's not
encumbered by patents (.DOC is), it's not tied
to the features of any one application, there
exists large code bases for maniuplating it, it
doesn't introduce incompatibilities with each
revision, it's transformable, etc.
.DOC is widely used because Word is widely used.
However, it is not a standard. The format is not
public nor does the public have a general
license to work with it.
However, it's likely that .DOC as a standard
will erode quickly. Many government agencies
have been burned by the inability to open
older .DOC files after several Word upgrades,
and are constrained by what you can do with
them. As a result, these jurisdictions are
requiring alternative formats.
Were it just Massachusetts and a few South
American countries requiring open formats,
perhaps there'd be little concern in Redmond.
The problem is that the use of open formats is
something that's not only becoming popular, but
has the insidious trait of being considered
commonsense by even the most stalwart devotees
of Word.
What functionality does .doc offer that OpenDocument doesn't? Trick question or vague but pointless maundering masquerading as a valid critique? Can you name a feature in .doc that you can't live without that OpenDocument doesn't offer? OK, Word doesn't format OpenDocument docs correctly or save in that format. I can live without that becasue I don't have Word and don't intend to get a copy of it. I have 3 word processors that read OpenDocument now. One came with Solaris 10, the other two were free downloads. Chances are there *is* something that .doc formatting is capable of that OpenDocument doesn't offer (other than vendor lock-in that is). So far I haven't needed that feature, whatever it might turn out to be. So there's no point using .doc for me.
OpenDocument works with word processors from many different providers, some commercial some non-commercial. As universal as MS operating systems are MS Office and MS Word don't have the same market penetration that the operating systems do. This leaves some folks locked in to the version of Office/Word that they already have and some locked out of exchanging files with them because even though they have Word/Office they can't read each other's files. Perhaps that is the point.
OpenDocument format can be used by those that don't own or can't afford Word/Office. Perhaps that is the point.
If it doesn't make sense to you that HTML is important to the web, perhaps you should try reading web pages without an HTML compatible document display tool, i.e. web browser. Some pages will look just fine and some will look very strange. Perhaps you will see a point to the comparison of HTML and OpenDocument after trying that simple experiment. Or perhaps you would see the point if all web pages were written to W3C standards and you couldn't read some of them in IE.
If pushing a new format is MS-hate then why does MS do it when they create non-backwards-compatible Word formats with no tool to convert to or from the previous format? Do they hate themselves? Should they?
have a world of respect for Tim Bray, but I simply do not
understand why I should care very much about ODF, let alone
why it should "turn the world inside out". As far as I can see, this
is simply encoding as XML the same broken model we've had in
Office Suites for 15 years. Content and presentation mashed
together in a jumble, and ten years from now, if I want to get my
content out, I'll need to know quite a bit about how openoffice
works (encodes fields, handles page breaks, styles text runs).
Contrary to Tim's comments to News.com, the web was a
tremendous explosion, but not because HTML was an open
standard (it really wasn't at the time). Leaving aside the fact that
we had access to a world wide network for the first time, a) there
were browsers on nearly every computer, b) HTML was simple
enough that it could be coded by hand in notepad, and c)
because you could teach yourself how to write it by using "view
source" on any page you thought was cool. ODF: strike one, two
and three by my count. Decouple the content from the
presentation entirely, and then I'll be impressed.
To me, DITA is the more singificant development. Now we can
take a sophisticated XML content framework, and specialize it
with company/industry/domain semantics without needing to
futz around with DTDs or Schema. True single source, multi-
channel publishing. Now that could turn everything inside out,
not refighting the office suite wars of the 80's, and making a
(somewhat ridiculous) comparison to HTML.
http://www.fergusson.net/blog.html
However in a climate where energy prices are set to continue to rise for at least the next decade a self interested approach would be to try to reduce your dependance on fossil fuels by as much as possible and as quickly as possible.
It is a global market, inefficient energy use where energy costs are quickly becoming one of the largest cost components will have the same impact on US manufacturing as low cost foreign labour has had.
In addition without access to a domestic market US wind, wave, geothermal and solar manufacturers are going to struggle in an international market dominated by manufacturers with ready access to large local markets for their products.
As a parallel look at the mobile phone operators and manufacturers. The reason that no US companies dominate either market is because in part due to the fragmentation of the US mobile market. Vodafone the worlds largest Mobile operator had access to the worlds largest single market on its doorstep as did Nokia and Sony-Ericsson the worlds largest handset manufacturers.
I'm looking forward to the time when I can get any office suite I like -- including many free Open Source options -- and open a file that is created in a completely different suite that supports OpenDocument (which should be all or most of them). It just makes so much more sense than the proprietary DOC format that has to hacked and worked around to only half-work in other programs, such as OpenOffice, 602 Suite, or Corel's office suite.
In fact, every format should be standardized. Hey, I geek can dream, can't he?
Doing the very right thing at the exact time is what it takes to succeed in IT. Oh! did I just read that MICROSOFT will support PDF in OFFICE 12 ????... oh what a tight slap !
And did I just hear all the buzz about a $100 laptop and the blah blah about the GOOGLE empire over-powering Microsoft. Google is good at search and I think it should stick to it and stop drooling about conquering the IT world. Java worked doesn't mean everything else would....search worked doesn't mean its time to for $100 laptops in Africa to be the next big thing.
Any shareholders holding GOOGLE ?? ... I think its time to sell.... !
Surprised to read some of the things that you
said in your email. Let me point out a few
things:
1) Let's say you are right and Sun 'sets'. This
means what exactly? Is there not still Open
Office? You better believe it! And amazingly
enough, it costs a whole lot less than MS's
offering ... kinda hard to beat free when the
feature set is so comparable.
2) Why do you think Ellison is any more a
lunatic than Bill G.? Seems to me they are both
working off the assumption that open source is
not going to eat their lunch, which in the long
run makes no sense at all. Again, kinda hard to
beat free, whether it is OSs or DBs.
3) Support for PDF is a 'tight slap'? Seems to
me that, since OpenOffice has offered that now
for a couple of years, there is nothing very
interesting about it. Sorry to burst any
bubbles that might have been fermenting in your
gray matter.
4) You seem to be laboring under the conception
that if it ain't Microsoft, there is no way it
can survive/prosper. Apparently Java was just
an anomaly, and so too would be anything else
that refuted your position. Would it be so bad
to keep an open mind?
5) Why does the notion of having an open and
standards based document format leave you
incensed? I just cannot understand your overall
position in this regard.
Why are governments moving to open standards... because they are either a) sick of Microsoft switching formats in every single version of Office, b) trying to make life easier for everybody who can't go out an blow $600 for a word processer, c) tired of trying to support a lot of different formats, d) all of the above.
Regardless of how I or anybody else feels about Microsoft or any other company to say that a company or software development organization sets standards is mostly ridiculas. It's not that Microsoft can't create a recommendation for standards, but those standards can't be tied to one OS or program. Those standards can't be restricted by licences that don't allow for fair competition. And those standards can't be owned by any one company for the purpose of thwarting competition. The DOC format is just that... a format and the OpenDoc recomendation is just a recommendation until at least two thirds of all software developers decide to standardize on it.
Not to mention that it may actually happen that MS will lose their monopolistic vision and skills that put them on top. Probably not today, though. So are they still the most visionary criminals in business? Who would disagree with what they have accomplished?
Doing the very right thing at the exact time is what it takes to succeed in IT. Oh! did I just read that MICROSOFT will support PDF in OFFICE 12 ????... oh what a tight slap !
And did I just hear all the buzz about a $100 laptop and the blah blah about the GOOGLE empire over-powering Microsoft. Google is good at search and I think it should stick to it and stop drooling about conquering the IT world. Java worked doesn't mean everything else would....search worked doesn't mean its time to for $100 laptops in Africa to be the next big thing.
Any shareholders holding GOOGLE ?? ... I think its time to sell.... !
"Doing the very right thing at the exact time is what it takes to succeed in IT. Oh! did I just read that MICROSOFT will support PDF in OFFICE 12 ????... oh what a tight slap !"
I am not sure Microsoft has ever done the right thing. That is unless you consider lock ins the right thing. It's not like Microsoft has never abused it's position to give it the advantage. Their ability to lie, cheat, and steal got them where they are.
PDF has been supported by OpenOffice for awhile. Not to mention there are several free utilites for converting documents to PDF and Macs come with ability to make PDFs.
"And did I just hear all the buzz about a $100 laptop and the blah blah about the GOOGLE empire over-powering Microsoft. Google is good at search and I think it should stick to it and stop drooling about conquering the IT world. Java worked doesn't mean everything else would....search worked doesn't mean its time to for $100 laptops in Africa to be the next big thing."
If Microsoft had adopted your luddite attitude they would have stuck with Windows and not branched out into alot of other markets.
"Any shareholders holding GOOGLE ?? ... I think its time to sell.... !"
You can sell Microsoft while you're at it. Their stock has been flat for the past few years.
that creates it because there are a number of
applications that write OpenDocument. Even
Microsoft, a contributor to the format standard,
had originally intended to implement
OpenDocument as their preferred XML format --
until someone beat them to the punch.
There's no reason Word can't write OpenDocument,
and there's nothing you can do in Word that
doesn't have a way to be represented in
OpenDocument, Microsoft already saw to that.
Microsoft says that OpenOffice 1.1.4 is
functionally the same as Office 97 (though it
handles figures better). But that doesn't change
the fact that the point of OpenDocument is that
you could choose any word-processor /
page-layout application that seems approriate
(which is Microsoft's principle concern).
The OpenDocument file you created in WordPerfect
would look the same in KWord, for example.
Now with that said, your right it's not the format that makes an office application usable. If it were nobody would use Microsoft Office. Why? Because office changes formats with each new release.
The real question is what would happen if every Office application adopted the OpenDocument format? One thing would be easier document interchanging. Another might be a real choice in applications.
One thing is probable. Many people would probably opt out of buying an Office application. I figure your looking at more home users who don't need all the power of any Office application. But that's how it starts. First the home user start using it then the business start using it. My assumption is that companies like Microsoft don't want the adoption of open standards because it takes away their key advantage of locking people into proprietary formats. Simply put they don't want to compete based on the quality of their software or the functionality or their software. They want to compete based on loads of useless features and proprietary formats. Of course Microsoft isn't the only one doing this.
It's unfortunate that the "standards" aren't really standards. It's not some consortium that decides standards, it's M$ and we all know it.
Once open standards actually *become* standards, I would gladly pay for a decent program that fully supports OpenDocument.
that support OpenDocument.
You've got OpenOffice, StarOffice, TextMaker,
WordPerfect (in progress), Scribus (page
layout), IBM/Lotus Workplace (strange hybrid
AJAX-based groupware office suite), KWord,
AbiWord, and NeoOffice/J. Once you get ove the
fact that none of them are actually MS Word,
you'll find that most implement the majority of
functionality of Word and most offer features
not yet found in Word.
There are various CMS systems and business
reporting systems that also support it.
I would suppose that since there's a burgeoning
demand (all MA documents should be in this form,
for example), there will be more support. I
suspect that the XSLT to translate MS-XML to
OpenDocument will not be far off ('docvert'
already provides a web service that converts
Word .DOC files to OpenDocument and can further
transform the output using XSLT).
Since MS' major contention with the format is
that it is not a legacy format and thus support
would legitimize competition, I suspect that it
will ultimately provide some level of support.
If not, it will be provided by a third-party, no
doubt, as an Office plug-in.
This is why they are responding with a PDF
export feature that mimics that of OpenOffice.
They are attempting to meet the state of MA (and
similarly inclined parties) with a format that
should fit their requirements for publication
and archiving without directly legitimizing the
move to standardize on open editable formats.
give it a try.
Free iPod</
A>, it really works.
That being said, I think the discussions overlook what is the truly important issue. What's important is free and unfettered access to government information. Regardless of how you look at it a government document put out in the .doc format only has a Poll Tax attached to it. But instead of paying the Government for the right to view the document you're paying Microsoft. In this day and age of connectivity and computers becoming as prevalent as TV's and refrigerators it behooves all Governments to move away from any closed proprietary format to one that is accessible regardless of the manner in which you access and view that document.
For those of you who say .doc is the de facto standard for text documents, I agree. Due to the prevalence of windows and MS Office it is the de facto standard but it is a standard not The Standard. As far as I can tell there is no set Standard for word processors formats they all do things their own way. Bearing that in mind, and despite being a linux user, I'd have no problem at all if all the standards bodies agreed to make the MS formats the standard format for documents, spreadsheets, or whatever. For that to happen though, Microsoft would have to publish the specifications for their formats in totality. No hidden tricks no mechanisms that would work in Windows or a Microsoft document only. If they would do that we'd have a Standard within a year.
OpenDocument can still grow. Considering the existing population of documents, there's a lot of converting to be done, and it's going to take a lot of time, not that it should matter as .doc is relatively irrelevant compared to say, a sql database or even a webserver. As long as we have a company(in this case two large companies), we can hold liable as a business for an "open" structure, it should take off both in adoption and development.
(any version) to OpenDocument.
http://software.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/09/09/192250&from=rss
Best regards.
1) Find something that Microsoft doesn't do. Declare that function to be a standard. Repeat.
2) Find something Microsoft does that other office suites don't do. Declare that functionality to be non-compliant. Repeat.
interoperability in mind. If you're arguing against such an open
approach and siding with Microsoft and its closed approach, then I
think you might a screw loose somewhere!
http://www.wohl.com/g0021.htm
Is this old technology with a different strategy for wide-scale adoption?
http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/why-opendocument-won.html
- Open Office is for sensible people.
- by t8 October 5, 2005 10:52 PM PDT
- I wouldn't trade Open Office for a free copy of MS Office. I have a licenced copy of MS Works. But I much prefer Open Office.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
-
- I hope so
- by hackingbear October 5, 2005 11:45 PM PDT
- But last time I tried it half years ago, Open Office is still not quite as easy to use as MS Office and more buggy.
- Like this
-
(58 Comments)I will never buy MS Office, I do not need it, and I am not a sucker for travelling down any road in life that has known toll bridges.
I cannot help it but when I meet someone who has paid for MS Office, I just see a big sucker. I tend to keep away from such people in business as they have demonstrated to me a lack of sensibility.
It does not seem to offer any new compelling features except its cost. Just a copycat of MS Ofice. How does it compete on features and quality?