Vendor Neutral File Formats?

timmyv asks: "I have recently been tasked with developing a corporate wide policy that will standardize all employee created documents on vendor neutral file formats. OASIS is good in theory, but I haven't been able to locate enough concrete examples of policies or implementation schemes that work at a corporate level. Does anyone work at a company where documents can only be saved as RTF, HTML, etc. or have any experience with this type of problem?"

Comments

Not sure what the question is limited to

[GoofyBoy]

There could be a huge number of different files you need. CAD files, images, Powerpoint presentations, complex spreadsheets will all mess up any format you can come up with (eg HTML). How would you even edit some of these things?

Even OpenOffice formats are not vendor neutral, you have only one product out there that really uses it.

"Vendor Neutral"???!!!

[fm6]

You think RTF is "vendor neutral"? It's simply a 7-bit-safe version of Word's native format. There are lots of third-party tools that read and write RTF, but the same is true of Word native. Either way, you run up against all the formatting issues you always get when you're importing and exporting unstructured formats.

HTML is only vendor neutral if you don't use any vendor-specific extensions. So you can't just say, "Everybody save your files as HTML". You also have to forbid anybody using apps (such as Word) that save to a non-standard HTML.

In theory, you can create an XML-based format that looks the same in Word, OpenOffice, FrameMaker, and any other XML-aware app. But doing so means designing a schema in extreme nit-picking detail, and writing a lot of transformations to get that XML in and out of all the apps that need to read or write it. It's a lot of work, and nobody does it unless they have a specific application that requires highly-structured information. Like if you have a huge set of technical documentation that you need to update a lot. (I was involved in just such a project -- and the politics of converting all those documents to XML cost me my job.) Or if you have invoices or similar business documents that need to go into or out of a web services app.

But for the big mass of unstructured documents, there just isn't a vendor-neutral solution, and nobody has any real incentive to create one. The solution remains the same: standardize on certain specific applications. Which boils down to using OpenOffice if you hate giving money to Bill and/or want a platform-neutral solution. Otherwise you standardize on Microsoft Office, because it's what everybody knows how to use.

You're asking the wrong questions

[abb3w]

The first question is not what, or how; the first question is WHY. As in, why do this? And therefore, is there a better way to achieve this goal?

Are they doing this to save money? to clamp down on the uppity workers? because the CEO got emailed an AppleWorks attachment with no file extension from some Mac user? to avoid the risks of single vendor lock-in?

Many documents formats can be converted back-and-forth with some degree of effectiveness. Yes, if you open a document from WordPerfect in Microsoft Office, the word spacing may change a little. However, this happens if you move from a machine connected with a HP4000 printer to a HP2100 printer as well. However, some formats give different feature capabilities; saving from DOC to RTF will cause (as an example) tables to shift about a bit. TXT format is readable by most anything, but the formatting capabilites are nigh nonexistant. (Ooh! Tabs!) While WordPerfect and Word will each open the others documents, they aren't so good for saving in open formats

What formats are currently used? Why are they needed? Will everyone need to be able to write to them, or are pay-writer/free-reader combos acceptable? And, *ARE* there any "vendor neutral" formats out there? (For desktop publishing, the real answer is "no". Publisher is a joke, and while Adobe and Quark maintain some import compatibilties, the formats AREN'T neutral.)

For myself, working in a small department, "Let a thousand flowers bloom" is just fine. I accept that I will occaisionally get forwarded an e-mail with an attachement that the user can't figure out how to open-- usually Mac/PC file extension name issues solved easily by renaming. Once in a blue moon I have to explain to someone that no, not everyone has FooBarBaz market research organizer, since for most the $800 license cost for it would be more beneficially used for other things, and they will probably need to examine such data files once in their career, if that.

Perhaps a list of universally accepted formats-- that is, formats that must be used for wide distribution-- would be more appropriate, after considering what features are needed in said formats. After all, Photoshop .PSD documents are harder to view outside Photoshop, but far more useful for subtle graphics work than JPEGs.

I suspect you are being sent out on a project inadequately considered. Depending on the pointy-hairyness of the person who assigned it to you, you may find some substantial benefit to reconsidering the ground assumptions.