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Massachusetts Adopting 'Open Format' Software
XopherMV writes "A Massachusetts state senator who had complained about the state government's effort to promote open-source software at the expense of proprietary software has hailed the state's effort to reach a compromise over future software purchases by the state. The latest iteration of the state's policy emphasizes 'Open Formats' such as TXT, RTF, HTM, PDF, and XML." And if file formats for state use must be in truly open and free formats, then it matters much less what OS or application is used to create or open them. (On the other hand, XML and other TLAs don't always mean free or open formats.)
>On the other hand, XML and other TLAs don't
>always mean free or open formats.
This is true, but XML documents themselves are also considerably more open than their binary counterparts. Anyone can parse a well-formed XML document, and validate it if a DTD is provided. While companies may still create XML that behaves in a specific way bound to their application, the data in the XML document is available to any application. While developers could create obfuscated DTDs or encrypt their data in a proprietary manner, they would lose most of the benefits of using XML. XML doesn't bar the creation of proprietary formats, but its openness is one of its greatest advantages.
This is not the first time we at /. have seen states and countries go this route but they almost always end up back with Microsoft but with a discount on their licence.
I don't know about you guys but I won't believe it until I see office workers using it, before then it is just a negotiation ploy to save some money with Microsoft (Why else announce it early?)..
"We got to market six months faster, and saw 14 percent in cost savings over Linux." -quote from ad on the side of the article concerning Microsoft Windows Server System.
Oh, the irony of ad placement.
Adobe certain has done its job in making PDF so common place that it's become an "open" format, hasn't it?
I think that for specific purposes proprietary formats are ok, but for interchanging and for storage purposes, the open formats are important.
"Open Formats' such as TXT, RTF, HTM, PDF, and XML."
Is PDF actually an open format? Does Adobe publish a spec for it? or is it considered open because someone reverse engineered it?
HTM is the filename suffix that broken operating systems like Windows used to assign to HTML files. The document format is called HTML.
I hope this kind of government activity becomes commonplace, because it will benefit all of us using open source software. Propietary formats force software lock-in and future profits for only those specific companies that developed those formats. Hopefully this will encourage others to embrace open formats in order to advance software quality in general, due to increased competition against propietary software vendors.
--
Click Here to Register for a Free Mac Mini.
I think it's good because it will permit people/company to interact and be able to exchange document without to be forced to use some particular software.
But I think if you take XML, we need to have some effort to produce some standards DTD or XML-schema to be sure to have a real interoperability
Also it will be neccesary to have some kind of validator for each format to force that everybody is using the real standard and not some fancy extension that could ruin the all idea
"Use cases are fairy tales..." I. S. 2005
By thinking of XML as an "open" format they are walking right into Microsofts little trap... Try decoding Office-XML sometime. Or my little XML format here: <blob>()Yyfoas/FGTif</blob>.
(Of course, they don't trust that people really can't decipher it, so they protected it heavily with patents too.
It's like saying ASCII is an open format. That's right, but ... there's something written in ASCII too, is that format open? Like RTF, which is written in ASCII but *not* open.
If they are serious about enforcing open document formats, that's good: open source can compete and win if formats are open. The big concern is that companies like Microsoft will try to portray their proprietary formats as "open". For example, the DOC format has been documented by Microsoft, but it isn't truly open because it keeps changing and because it is under Microsoft's control. In particular, XML is not an open format--it isn't a format at all; XML is a standard in which people can define formats, both open and proprietary.
A format isn't open until it has actually been standardized by an independent body that can guarantee that it is free from patent or other claims, and until it has been demonstrated that it can be implemented independtly by actually doing so.
Similarly, RTF is RTFM.
Geez.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Most commenters seem to be missing the fact that this news is unequivocally bad. There were efforts to adopt open source instead of closed source software, but this senator (probably sponsored by Microsoft) managed to talk them into focusing on open formats instead. This coincides nicely with Microsoft's new XML formats for their office products, and lets Massachusetts continue using Microsoft products while paying lip-service to the fans of "open" solutions.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Boston City Council sends by email public hearings notices for council committees like the Human Rights Committee. But our Boston City Council is unwilling to send the email as plain ASCII text instead of the .doc formatted public notices that are not so compatible.
Maybe they want to preserve enbolded text as if that enbolded text was some sort of legal document. Maybe they want to preserve the image of a seal of the city. At the expense of wider more compatible distribution of important information our city council is even unwilling to put the full text of public hearings notices on the web site at http://cityofboston.gov/citycouncil
An online calendar at the website does list the meetings minimally with no details. The full explanation for the purpose for holding the public hearing needs to be posted every time with an archive for reviewing past hearings.
So much for a mandate of so called e-government !
Don't you mean TLI, meaning a Three Letter Initialism? A TLA is a Three Letter Abbreviation.
They "decided", and by "they" I mean this senator decided that promoting open-source projects was not as good as supporting propriety-source projects.
:
namely becaust it wasn't "fair"
open format FTFA
"specifications for data file formats that are based on an underlying open standard, developed by an open community, and affirmed by a standards body; or, de facto format standards controlled by other entities that are fully documented and available for public use under perpetual, royalty-free, and nondiscriminatory terms."
I would say that this is bad, because... less business for open source projects/programmers.
Check journal for info on Anti-TextBook, an idea by me.
The last time I was sendout out resumes (a lot of places want a doc file), I opened it in multiple versions of word. The file always opened, but the formating got changed. Sometimes it all fit on one page as intended, other times it would spill over onto two pages, etc. So for times when formatting is critical, word is not truly backwards compatible. You are better off exporting to pdf...
A .TXT file is nothing more and nothing less than a plain text file. Ironically, it's only because of MS, champion of closed standards, that using the .TXT extension for these files has now become a de facto convention, but in the DOS age, other extensions such as .DOC or extensions that were basically part of the name (like README.1ST) or the total absence of an extension were also very common.
While the idea of a clean e-government using fully compatible open standards is ideal, a few problems come from training and expectations. While for the savvy /. user changing program interfaces is easy, some users(normally older people new to computers in my experience) don't adjust well if they adjust at all. The changing of versions of MS Office, can be a confusing experience let alone a migration to Open Office or another standard.
While many of the "extra" features of the less compatible file are meaningless eye candy, your talking about politicians people that have forge a career on fighting over useless details. Giving someone something and then removing it, even for compatibility's sake, is always difficult.
As to having greater detail on their website, that is also ideal. Yet if the staff is having difficulties with basic computer skills, even using a simple web interface to update a website may be a challenge to them. You could be looking at a bottleneck at the webmaster, whom I would wager is either outsourced or wearing other hats in the organization and may not be supplied with either the time or details of each event.
It costs money and time to change the "I know where the power switch is and that's my Word icon" users to a the open source and many would rather hand the money to Microsoft to save the time.
Since when do plain text files count as an "open format"? Is it just because someone hasn't tried to patent it yet? (probably) Just seems a bit weird to me.
.txt attachments in email look encoded
I've worked with WordML. The only binary I saw was embedded images, encoded in plain old base64. Everything else was plain text.
Granted, there were features in the DTD that weren't in the spec, but I was using a pre-release documentation set, so hopefully they've gone back and fully updated things. Besides, everything was in the DTD, so if you had to, you could look at how it's supposed to work.
Try reading through the documentation and some WordML files of your own, instead of just talking out of your ass.
No, when TXT was heavly proprietary, it stood for the large company that invented it. Ever since it became open, I can now use other programs besides notepad to view the files. :-)
Make your computer faster: rm -rf
Obligatory disclaimer: I wrote this humble file formats FAQ and it represents my personal and professional opinion (not necessarily my employer's).
That said, can someone in MA please ask the movers and shakers there to read that document? It's probably in the class of "common sense" to most of us here, but clearly we've done a less than stellar job so far of imparting this clarity to those in political circles.
For the impatient: the conclusion I reached is that RTF and PDF are very questionable if you want to use them as truly interchangeable formats in a heterogeneous environment. This is an empirical finding, based on real life experience.
-- This
That is a troll.
The main source of word's backward incompatibilty lies with all the new useless features. There are new features! They just arn't very helpfull unless you are Microsoft, trying to get customers to upgrade. But Microsoft documents aren't even forward comatible. Reciently, I tried opening a docuement from '92 and Word wanted me to install an extention to read it! I didn't have the disk close by so I didn't bother installing an extention I would only use once.
There's a lot of (good) commentary on the detail of what is and isn't an open format. And it would be good to get the detail right, because there are many ways to abuse the phrase "open format" and there are companies that will take advantage of them.
.doc, .xls and .ppt formats would really open up the desktop marketplace.
Nonetheless, requiring the use of open formats is a strong, defendable position in practise. like it or not, mandating the use of open source isn't possible, or at least highly unlikely. The reason for this is that open source might be good but it's not *necessary*. Not in the short term, and never in the minds of people with votes and money for lobbyists. A lot of good things have been done with proprietary systems (I'm an Apple fan) with a lot of openness. Open source is therefore a difficult argument to win in terms of *requiring* its use. Again, as a Mac fan, I wouldn't agree to it myself as a *requirement*.
Open formats (*real* open formates) produce a level playing field. Open source could win its argument in a fair fight in public, not a dogmatic argument conducted in courts between various zealots on both sides that many people fight it hard to really bother with.
I'm not interested in forcing organisations to drop Microsoft. Dictatorial approaches to solving problems never appeal to me. I'd be far happier with a situation where by legal documents and government documents (as some important examples)must be in an open format so that full featured editors could be available on a number of platforms e.g. Windows, Mac OS X, Debian, Red Hat, Suse, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX.
That list is deliberately composed primarily of commercial companies because a) that's the way the world still works - make use of it to your own advantage, and b) to get all those platforms (including a good open source distro) sharing some new equivalents of
Windows is even more broken in this regard than you let on.
With Microsoft's history of forcing upgrades, closed file formats, etc, it's no wonder that a government would want to seek alternatives.
They want to be able to open an archive of documents in 20+ years. What if Microsoft stopped making office? What if the only versions of Office you could get for Windows 2030 won't open an Office 97 document correctly?
With open standards to the file formats, it's fairly trivial to write parsing software to bring the documents into new software correctly, not to mention index them and make them all searchable without being locked into Microsoft products. While not all XML is open and readable, as proven by WordML, I don't think this is the goal. They want real, easy to understand, open file formats and I don't think just because Microsoft says "This is XML!" it's good enough to fool people.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
I don't think that government should mandate open source vs. closed source code purchases. This is unfair. The government should not mandate against valid, legal business models.
I think the government should mandate that output from any software be an open standard format (XML or whatever) and then they choose, based on a competative bid process like they are supposed to do, the software that will do what they want (which may include adding features at some point). If some OSS group wins, so be it. If some proprietary group wins, so be it.
Allowing only OSS is both wrong and bad, IMO, for a number of reasons.
1. It is straight against capitalist economy to require one business/development model. In capitalism, you specify the product and whoever can do it best/cheapest/easiest wins. Only an OSS zealot would think that OSS would always win.
2. The government should not dictate the "right" business model for people to follow. As long as they are legal under the laws (both criminal and financial) of the country, they are valid. The government should not dictate that some valid models are not valid for the government.
as many people have pointed out in response to you, opening word documents in different versions of word will cause the document to be displayed differently.
This is true. However, that has nothing to do with the big picture. Open documents are documents, not documents and clients/readers/editors. Take any of the open formats in the original story and the same is true: opening in different clients will cause changes in the way the document is displayed. That is not the point, the point is that the document can be opened. An html document will look different in Netscape 4.7 than in Firefox 1.0 than in IE 5.0 than in Netscape 7. What matters is that the document can be opened, can be parsed, and, in needed, a client/reader/editor can be written for it at any time in the future.
Using open documents doesn't mean "we're going to stick with one version of documents forever", it means "we're going to stick to documents that we can open forever."
The truth doesn't care what I think.
definitely should have previewed that one first. Sorry for the bold.
The truth doesn't care what I think.
In the old Amiga days, some formats used prefixes.
mod.* instead of *.mod (or in the classic manner, "mod.#?")
This has a small advantage in file type comparison, and a larger advantage that it will make your files sort type (and then name) automagically when passed through a sorting list command or viewed in a file requester that sorted.
It wasn't practiced too widely, but that didn't matter as a typical GUI application used the system file requesters, which had a filter field where you could type something like, "mod.#?" if you chose that path.
'Open Formats' such as TXT, RTF, HTM
So that would be HTM as in HyperText Mockup? Netcraft confirms: 8.3 filenames are dead!
Move Sig. For great justice.
I recently had to fill out a form that required Adope Acrobat Reader 6.something to open properly, a version which is not available for Linux.
.asx, or maybe .apx -- at any rate, it's got some parts that render correctly, and some that are oh-so-secret and don't appear unless using a new enough AA Reader, by design.)
...
(I think the extension is
After no reader in Linux would work, I decided to try it with my iBook. Apple's preview also won't show the hidden parts -- it actually demands AA Reader. Sigh. So I downloaded a new AA Reader 6.02 think, (an obnoxious, screen-stealing application, btw, which makes you appreciate the beauty both of kPDF, Ghostview and other free viewers, and Apple's Preview), thinking, "Hey, I can view it with this, including the hidden parts, and print to a *real* (all displayed) PDF, then email to my Linux box, where I have a working printer
Even this convoluted path was too much to hope for, because the special encoded PDF didn't allow printing to a PDF, only to paper. Catch-22; you can view this PDF, but don't you try to save it as a PDF!
So, sadly, even PDF can be used to obscure as well as to delight and inform.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I am absolutely shocked that somebody would actually think this is true:
if you think back to the old typewriter, you have to have a Carriage Return, and a Line Feed to get to the start of the next line when typing.
Obviously you have never even seen a typewriter. On old typewriters the big silver bar on the left did both cr+lf. Electric ones had a key (where "Enter" is on your computer) that did both cr and lf. If you wanted to overprint, you did the return action, then turned the big knob on the left to basically do an "inverse-lf". If typewriters were the inspriation, we would have newline and reverse-lf characters.
It's true that early teletypes using baudot standardized on the two characters in their communication. This is because the mechanical return action was so slow that if it started doing the lf after the return started no time was lost. The lf character forced a delay to be added so the system would work, printing after a cr would never work, the next character would appear somewhere in the middle because the carriage was still returning. You had to add delay nulls to get overprinting. Believe me, at 50 baud, if they could have gotten it to return & lf in one character time they would have saved that character!
I think on early machines there was a key to generate a cr+lf pair. Also every computer system I ever saw or heard of would convert a single key into both codes internally, you never needed to type it.
Microsoft could fix their system in one day if they wanted to (just change "write as text" to be identical to "write as binary" but leave reading alone). However it is in their interest to make sure their files break when used on other systems, though almost all Unix programs have been fixed to treat CR as whitespace because of this. They also have made sure the default application you get when you double-clicik a file (textedit?) will not work for plain LF, so that Unix files look like crap. Notice that every other program they have can handle plain-LF just fine, this is pretty positive proof that they did this on purpose to make interoperability look difficult.
Also, OS/X uses LF, just like everything in the world except Microsoft.
By that you can tell where the "senator's idea" came from originally...
Standard bodies move so slowly that they are useless for developing the first solution to any problem or adding a major new feature. C and Javascript were long in use before ANSI or ECMA looked at them.
.DOC2007 and Microsoft can make any changes they want after that - so long as they are required to fully document/unpatent their current format and support all current features when saving to .DOC2007 to the best approximation allowed by the standard. Also they will have to adopt .DOC2010 some time after its out.
What the standards are good for are ironing out small wrinkles like concatenating arguments in macros after millions on users have already chosen the technology and settled any major differences. The solutions are often kludgy, unsatisfactory and simply take the lowest common denominator rather than the most elegant existing solution. Yet this work is absolutely essential - after innovations have been made and tested.
So, let there be ANSI
I assume computer users working for Mass government like some features in Microsoft software. The question is weather they should try to negotiate some agreement that serves interest of its citizens, or should just assume MS is evil and give up. I think they should approach this question much more seriously than most slashdot users - they are dealing with 100 of millions of taxpayers money and IT overhead is pure waste.
Good observation. The same holds true for many open specifications--there are proprietary extensions allowed in the specification, which are not compatible with other (generally older) versions.
It would seem wise for the people deploying such applications (whoever created the form) to be informed and educated about this issue.
Good technology deployment generally entails using current tools, but making the work product accessible to one's potential consumers is also very important. It seems this fact is lost on some technical people when they go to build something. The whole point of the use of technology is to BETTER reach the target audience.
Since when were 'TXT' and 'HTM' the names of document formats?
Please, this isn't MS-DOS, and even if it were there's no need to resort to such barbarisms. You mean plain text, and HTML.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
I mean it. Bravo!
Here is the Boston City Council rule 34 that needs to be updated for the web with regard to making available on the web full text of public notices of council committees public hearings
g .aspcouncilmeeting.asp
g .asp
Rule 34...
http://cityofboston.gov/citycouncil/councilmeetin
...Upon scheduling of a hearing and posting of a hearing notice (including time, place, and subject) with the clerk, the hearing notice shall be posted electronically and on council bulletin boards, and a written and electronic notice shall be delivered to each councilor and other interested parties by council staff...
http://cityofboston.gov/citycouncil/councilmeetin
Advocates of plain ASCII text can contact their favorite city councilor...
This is much more important than Open Source. Open file formats allow much greater flexibility.
Yet another example of a mainstream politician acting in the interests of the wealthy, and only the wealthy. How is this newsworthy? It happens every single day in every nation.
Don't spew that shit about "survival of the fitest." Being locked into proprietary products does not, ever, support the public's interests. Dependance on closed source, whether applications or formats, only restricts the masses; it does not enable them, no matter how good the exploitation fueled products are.
Fight for something better: www.socialistalternative.org
"...Microsoft is the only one that actually has it right, since if you think back to the old typewriter, you have to have a Carriage Return, and a Line Feed to get to the start of the next line when typing."
Thank God Microsoft maintains backwards compatibility with those old typewriters!
PDF is open (the spec is published). But whose GNOME/Linux SW can read every Adobe Acrobat doc as accurately as Adobe's reader, with text searching/copy/paste? And can create PDF? Without grinding a PIII/800 to its knees? This seems a case of the open source community missing the boat on a major cross-platform format not even influenced by Microsoft. Or maybe just a case of a single whining open sourcer not knowing which package to apt-get :).
--
make install -not war
OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org OpenOffice.org
Did I mention OpenOffice.org? It runs on Windows, too.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
Why is it considered open?
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
I never head of the open format standard named "HTM."
I have heard of Microsoft's three-letter naming system that turned "HTML" files into "HTM" files.
Same with "TXT" files.
It's pretty obvious if you say you want "HTM" and "TXT" files you've already made up your mind about what you want.
Think about it -- if something like this had been done earlier, we could have saved an awful lot of time and money that was instead spent on anti-trust lawsuits that the government ultimately "lost" (yes, I know they technically won, but have _you_ noticed any benefits from that win? I sure haven't).
Here's the problem -- Federal, State, and Local Government agencies of all sorts put out press releases, solicitations, regulatory notices and the like by the tens of thousands on a daily basis. Companies and citizens who wish to read and/or respond to this data stream have no choice but to purchase Word, Excel, and Powerpoint in order to interact with the Government. Government has ensured the Micorsoft monopoly simply by continuing to support a product with closed and proprietary file formats. If other state Governments, and especially if the Federal Government endorses _independantly verifiable_ open document formats, the monopoly is broken without the expense of continued litigation or oversight.
I think that the same can be said in other areas as well. For instance -- Mozilla, and now FireFox, are making inroads into IE's domain. The progress is slow because many sites do not support the HTML standards put forth by the W3C. What if all government agencies declared that all web pages created or maintained by their agencies would support only open standards -- not some of the wrinkles introduced by IE? Again, problem solved over the long run.
IMHO, we depend too much on legal wrangling to try to enforce corporate behavior, rather than encouraging, architechting, and supporting an infrastructure that would lead to the same end without all the pushing, shoving, and head-butting along the way.
Yes, I know that I am naively idealistic. Deal with it.
The contest for ages has been to rescue liberty from the grasp of executive power. -- Daniel Webster
Boston City Council indicated that the predicament would be fixed more subscribers asked for plain ASCII text. Subscriptions to public notices available at ann.hess@cityofboston.gov
http://cityofboston.gov/citycouncil
I call your bluff. The big new feature with the XML formats are the DRM mechanisms -- causing the document to be ultimately unreadable by whatever specification they've actually released.
MS Word is pretty much backwards compatible through Word 97. Word's format WAS changed in the transistion from 95 to 97 (needing import filters when opening old documents), but since then, the output has been of the same type. I jump between Word XP, 2000, and 97 all the time with nary a problem. And some of these documents are pretty complex, as far as Word goes. Most of the differences in 2000 and XP are just feature creep, nothing more. That's why so many shops dragged thier feet on upgrading office suites. They really didn't need to, and they knew it.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Rich text format, motherfucker?
Failure to do so or to publish only buggered or incomplete versiosn is in contempt of the court and can be punished.
MA needs to insure the specifications are complete as well as free, publicly-avaiable, open, etc.
A few years ago there was a brouhaha about Microsoft Active Directory authentication and MIT's kerberos standard that developed because the latter left a hole in the specification and the former took advantage of the opportunity to "add value" and "extend" the protocol in their product offering.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
IT handles Latin-1 (ISO8859/1) fine. I don't have any Mac Roman documents to test it with.This is completely untrue. Set your locale to UTF-8 & you can use all UTF-8 characters. I have done this. I haven't plaayed with other localizations, so can't comment on them.