Star/OpenOffice XML Format To Become ISO Standard?

Emil Brink writes "According to this entry in XML spec co-author Tim Bray's excellent blog, the European Commission has formally asked Sun to make the XML file format used in OpenOffice.org into a true ISO standard. Hopefully this will cut down on vendor lock-in and lure people from using Microsoft Office. "

Comments

Why would this lure them away?

[garcia]

Why would it lure people from Microsoft? People don't just use Office because they are forced into it. They use it because the alternatives suck. Yeah, Abiword is smaller and faster and takes up a little bit less RAM but it doesn't work as well as Word. Yeah, StarOffice/OO are open-source and free but they don't have the features that Word does.

People use MSFT because they are already locked in. Word does what they want it to do (and sometimes a lot more than they want it to). Just because Sun gets to set the standard in XML doesn't mean that Office users are going to give two shits... As long as their Word documents continue to open and they can continue to email DOC attachments to their email instead of just typing in the body of the email they are happy.

What will lure people away from Office is something that is somehow BETTER than Office. It will be free, it will be marketed, and it will be seven levels above Office in functionality. Honestly, as great as the OSS alternatives seem they just aren't Office/Word. You have to create a superior product and then market it. That's where OSS falls behind.

Everyone thinks that Firefox is so great. People weren't switching because they didn't know about it. Once IE vulnerabilities started showing up left and right they were alerted to the fact by mass media marketing. Sure, some people saw it and moved and even more didn't because they don't get their news from anything but the scrolling ticker below Survivor and The Apprentice...

Re:Why would this lure them away?

[Alranor]

Yeah, StarOffice/OO are open-source and free but they don't have the features that Word does.

Which features?

And how many people actually use those features?

Re:Why would this lure them away?

[Paulrothrock]

I know it's early monday morning but...

People don't just use Office because they are forced into it.

And then...

People use MSFT because they are already locked in.

Preview button, people!

As a web developer, I would prefer the XML document format to Word's format particularly because I can use different XSLT to display the data, meaning our clients would have greater control over their web sites without having to contact us for a lot of the changes. Just FTP the document to a specific directory and PHP can parse it out into a live page in a few minutes.

Re:Why would this lure them away?

[mks113]

I don't believe in your arguement. If there is an alternative standard, people could switch to say, abiword, knowing that they can easily move their documents to OpenOffice.org if it doesn't do all they want. It is also an iterative process. The software will become better developed once it is picks up a larger user base.

An established standard will force microsoft to at least read it, though perhaps not write to it. I think that it would open a world of choice.

It would be more like Linux distros. You can have a bunch of them, all competing, but they are standard enough to be interchangeable without a complete change in business practice.

Re:Why would this lure them away?

[gihan_ripper]

The main thing that stops me using OpenOffice is its poor interoperability with MS Office. Perhaps the European Union can twist Microsoft's arm to release details of MS Office file formats? This, above all else, would help to boost the number of OpenOffice users.

Re:Why would this lure them away?

[Xoro]

Which features?

And how many people actually use those features?

Outline mode! That floating navigator is lame.

And the problem with the "how many people use those features" argument is that while almost nobody uses all of them, many people use one or two of them. I make do with OOo, but if I did a lot more word processing, I'd probably spring for word and that crossover thing to run it.

Re:Why would this lure them away?

[archeopterix]

Why would it lure people from Microsoft? People don't just use Office because they are forced into it.

This, of course isn't true in case of people who must use Office because it's a part of their corporate desktop standard.

People who actually create the standards like having buzzwords like "ISO standard" and "XML" somehow connected to what they pick - it looks good in reports.

Re:Why would this lure them away?

[Anonymous Coward]

But if the EU Commission decided that it will require all its office documents from 2007 onwards to be in the ISO standard format, then you can bet that Microsoft would come up with good support for the standard format, and that would be a real step towards levelling the playing field in office software.

Re:Why would this lure them away?

[jeif1k]

Why would it lure people from Microsoft? People don't just use Office because they are forced into it. They use it because the alternatives suck.

There are many different kinds of people. I'm sure there are a few MS Office users that, after careful evaluation of the alternatives, have come to the conclusion that MS Office is the best office suite for them, but I suspect that group is pretty small. There is also a group of people who, after careful evaluation of the alternatives, have concluded that MS Office sucks; when those people use MS Office, they do so because Microsoft controls the standard.

And then there is the last, and probably by far largest, group of users: people who use MS Office not because they prefer it but because it is the only office suite they know and because switching to something else would be a big hassle. Part of that hassle is having to learn a new UI, and another part of that hassle is to try to convert documents in Microsoft's proprietary format.

and it will be seven levels above Office in functionality.

The needs of most users are more than adequately covered by versions of Microsoft Office that are several years old, as well as by Open Office. Offering more features is not going to make an open source office suite win against Microsoft Office.

Quite to the contrary: an open source office suite probably can win away users by being more usable and offering fewer features than Microsoft Office.

Re:Why would this lure them away?

[Bertie]

1 It's a bad habit to get into, depending on a spell checker. You're much better off learning to spell and proofread things properly. And I don't mean that to sound like I'm trying to belittle your intelligence - I don't know whether you're any good at spelling or not. I'm just saying that spellcheckers are bad. I never, ever use them, mostly because I can spell, but partly because I don't trust them, since they can't spot correctly spelled words used in the wrong context.

2 MS Word's grammar checker is useless. It's just plain wrong most of the time. I accept that a spellchecker can perform a useful function, namely making a first pass over a document to pick out obvious bloopers for those too lazy to take the time to type and read it properly. But if you follow your grammar checker's instructions to the letter, you'll end up producing stilted, formulaic prose, devoid of any kind of individual flair. There's absolutely no substitute for learning how to do it yourself, by simply reading a lot.

If they didn't include spelling and grammar checkers, I wouldn't miss them a bit. And personally I think the grammar checker's a false friend which we'd all be better off without.

Re:Why would this lure them away?

[schvenk]

It's a bad habit to get into, depending on a spell checker.

First of all, I disagree. My spelling is good but I rely heavily on spelling checkers to catch typos. They won't catch a typo that resulted in a valid word, but they sure help.

Second of all, even if I agreed it wouldn't be relevant. You're not likely to convince people to switch applications by telling them they shouldn't rely on a feature they've come to expect.

MS Word's grammar checker is useless. It's just plain wrong most of the time.

I use the grammar checker much as I use the spelling checker: To catch typing mistakes. Sure, most of its suggestions aren't great, but it will catch sentences where, in the course of rewording something, I ended up with two "the"s in a row or something.

I wonder..

[Eriky]

I wonder if microsoft will support that format too. It would be childish not to, but I wouldn't be suprised if they would totally ignore it and continue using there own format in M$ Word

Yeah, right.

[goofyheadedpunk]

Hopefully this will cut down on vendor lock-in and lure people from using Microsoft Office.

Right, because all those office workers are going to think "Oh God, we're using non-standard XML?!"

Call me a pessimist, but having a non Microsoft standard isn't going to matter much, what with Microsoft being able to make its own standard.

Besides, how many times have you heard office workers say "Oh God, IE doesn't support CSS properly or render transparent PNGs?!"

Settlement...

[kaiwai]

This would be great! the EU *SHOULD* back this move by mandating that any Office Suite that is to be sold in the EU or used by any government within the EU MUST conform to that ISO specification.

That would EXCLUDE extensions, meaning, the format, if embrassed by Microsoft would have to be 100% ISO XML compliant - No embrace and extend for you! (Microsoft)

Re:Cutting down on vendor lock-in

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Well actually its as important what the dominant consumer does as the dominant vendor. If goverenments around the world want the standard, then they will use a standard compliant system. If that occurs, what MS does matters less. No leader can lead without followers.

Won't help the Microsoft addled read text files

[shoppa]

I send out flat text files to co-workers, and they complain that they cannot open them because they don't have the appropriate reader on their (Microsoft) E-mail system. Yes, I know that notepad and Word and probably other applications can "open" a text file, but none of the defaults are set to do this automagically.

If it's an ISO standard it won't do a damn bit of good until the Microsoft OS's and Microsoft mail system and Microsoft Applications all know to do the right thing. Whad'ya think the chances of Microsoft cooperating are?

Government mandate is the only way

[georgep77]

Contrast this issue with that of the adoptation of IPV6. The ONLY way we will ever see IPV6 adoption is through a government mandate. IPV4 has way too much "inertia" for anything to supplant it. The same can be said of office applications. Try submitting your resume in anything but .txt or .doc (MS Word) format. NOBODY will be able to read it, believe me I tried sending mine in .pdf format and was told to "please send it in word". Once companies wishing to sell software to government are forced to support a common (and open) format then perhaps people will actually be able to choose the word processor they will use, otherwise they are locked in to what ever the dominate product (and it's proprietary format) are at the time.

Cheers,
_GP_

Re:to really lure people away from Office

[Dr. Evil]

OOO sometimes handles these formats even better than various office versions in between

This is a very important point which doesn't get stressed enough when people complain about MS office compatability.

Even different version of MS Office has trouble reading MS Office documents consistently... or a more appropriate comparison... even the same version of MS Office, for MacOS v.s. Windows has trouble reading MS Office documents consistently.

People also tend to rely heavily on the idiosyncracies of their local configuration (printer metrics, fonts, paper size) to align and layout their documents. An awful lot of people who write documents lack basic wordprocessing skills, yet they attempt complex desktop publishing tasks using a wordprocessor(!)

When these documents are converted into a different wordprocessor, it is no wonder that OOO can't match the nonsense arbitrary document layout ... it can't possibly know the idosyncracies of Bob's Win2k machine with a Lexmark printer, although it can attempt to match the idosyncracies of Bob's wordprocessor.

OOo Reader App!

[thepoch]

I've said it once and I'll say it again... what OpenOffice.org needs is a lean-mean OOo Reader Application! By that, I mean not having to download an 80mb installer with everything but the kitchen sink, but maybe a small 2mb or less reader that uses standard widgets (MFC, GTK, etc.) to make the app smaller and faster. I've gotten a friend interested in actually looking at OOo code to make a no-nonsense reader, but due to lack of time, he can't start any open source projects.

A reader app is all we need! Email a .sxw as an attachment to a friend. If he/she has broadband, point them to where to download the app. If not, maybe go over to their place and install it for them. If in another country, get them to download from someone who has broadband, snail mail them an installer CD with the reader and the full OOo app, or pester someone like IBM to include the said reader application with their desktops and laptops. See! I can already imagine the possibilities. If only I can program... I would be willing to test and help promote this stuff (preinstall on all PCs we sell).

This would help me

[NtroP]

We're still battling the WordPerfect -v- MS Office documnt format issue. Most people where I work now use MS Office, but we still have a few hold-outs that claim only WP will do what they want. This issue is exasserbated by the fact that we also have a lot of people still using AppleWorks as well.

I've tried to get peole to realize that in a few years, you won't be able to read many of the documents we are currently archiving because the office formats will have changed or the app that was used to create it might not be available to open it. I've tried to get people to save their read-only documents as PDFs and their "collaberative editing" documents as RTF, but this has proven to be difficult.

If I could go to my supervisors and point to an ISO standard format, I could more strongly argue for any "archivable" documents to be required to be stored in that format. From there it would me much easier to get people to save ALL their document that way.

I use OOo exclusively at work and love it. I am trying to get it installed as the default office suite on ALL new installations, with MS Office only installed on the desktops of those who can demonstrate a need (show me a document that won't work that you can't live without.) Right now OOo's documnet format is "just another word processing format". If it was an ISO standard, it'd have something strong to stand on for the "buzzword-only", tech-impaired descision-makers at work.