The Future Is Open: The OpenDocument Format

Daniel Carrera writes "I've written an article for Groklaw describing the OpenDocument format: 'I asked Daniel Carrera, an OpenOffice.org volunteer, if he'd please explain the OpenDocument format. How does a format get chosen? And is OpenDocument on the list of acceptable formats for governments like the State of Massachusetts? We are all concerned about proprietary formats and standards, and more and more governments are adopting policies requiring open standards, it's a very important subject.' It's currently being considered by the EU Commission as a candidate for an official format."

Comments

It has always baffled me...

[krudler]

Why people never even consider that something else exists other than MS Office. It's not just a philosophical argument, everyone I know has ran into problems with a .doc from a different version that doesn't open. It is hard for some people to do work at home, then bring it to work/school and use it! If it's a .doc, it should work in every version of work. The same goes for all the other formats.

Krudler

Re:It has always baffled me...

[synthparadox]

Its because Microsoft has taken an almost monopolitical (is that even a word?) stance on the common public's view of computers.

In fact, outside of select worlds (Slashdot, etc), Microsoft is synonymous with computer software.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[Anonymous Coward]

if you rant you at least should have a bit of clue: it's word, not work which produces the doc files

Re:It has always baffled me...

[elid]

Well, I think that depends. You can't expect every version of MS Word to support newer features (although the ability to read the rest of the document should be unaffected). However, never versions of the software should always be capable of opening older documents.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Monopolistic.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[pdiaz]

Because in these days most of the people that use computers are not computer experts (not that this is a bad thing though)

If they have a problem with microsoft word, they don't usually blame the program. For them there is no distinction between the software that runs on their computers and the computer itself. They blame the computer, because they don't know better.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's the same reason people eat at MacDonald's. "The evil you know..."

Re:It has always baffled me...

[yotto]

Software?

To most people Microsoft is synonymous with computers period.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Expecting a software company to support forwards compatibility on each and every piece of software it's ever made is such a baffingly ignorant concept it's amazing that it even manages to come up. Do you expect Microsoft Word 1.0 DOS to open up an office 2003 document? Of course not, any more than we expect DOS 1.0 to run Office 2003.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[fm6]

It's not just a philosophical argument...

Indeed, the philosophical argument is of no interest to anybody except a few geeks. But there are a lot of practical reasons to want alternatives to MS Office. Not just the reasons you mention, but issues of cost, and of problems caused by overdependence on a single notoriously flaky company.

But if you're baffled by people's adherence to MS Office, then you've never used this kind of software in a real-world environment. Being able to pass a file around without interopeability problems is crucial. Given the messy kind of data most people have to deal with, the only way to do this is to standardize on a specific set of tools from a specific vendor. In the past, you had real competition between Microsoft, IBM/Lotus, WordPerfect, and others. It was inevitable that one company would win the desktop application wars, though I wish it wasn't the same company that also won the desktop OS wars.

If you're going to end this monopoly, you're going to have to overcome the same social and economic forces that drove Lotus and WordPerfect into niche status. There's more to doing that than simply coming up with a technicallly supperior or more open product.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[k98sven]

Who's being bafflingly ignorant?

The original post did not bring up forwards compatibility. If you managed to read in an expectance of forwards-compatibility into that, then it's no wonder how it 'manages to come up' all the time.

Here's a tip: Stop assuming everyone is an idiot, and you'll find less people are idiots.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[TheKidWho]

Ive recently started using Apple's iWork suite, in particular Pages, and I love it much more then MS Office!

Re:It has always baffled me...

[doj8]

Actually, I used to write document conversion programs many years ago (back when dedicated word processors were still common). There were a couple of document formats which did support forward compatibility. It's been 25 years, but I believe IBM was one. The other escapes me (maybe Aquarius?). (I guess you can count SGML as supporting forward compatibility too.)

Basically, an older program could read any version of the document format. When it encountered elements it did not recognize, it retained them, but ignored them for rendering purposes. So, when the document was saved, the ignored elements were saved with it. A newer version of the word processor could then use them, even after the older version had edited the document.

You are mixing programs and document formats. The two do not have to have the same behavior.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to end this monopoly, you're going to have to overcome the same social and economic forces that drove Lotus and WordPerfect into niche status. There's more to doing that than simply coming up with a technicallly supperior or more open product.

Yes. You have to come up with a product that users will use. They dont care if it is technically "superior" or "open". (and I'm not sure that many open source products are technically superior).

Re:It has always baffled me...

[Taladar]

...and older versions should be able to read some kind of version field telling you which version is required to open the document.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[yagu]

..., But if you're baffled by people's adherence to MS Office, then you've never used this kind of software in a real-world environment. Being able to pass a file around without interopeability problems is crucial.

I am STILL baffled... I have attended meetings where I worked where people literally were not able to print or view agendas, etc. ahead of the meeting because of the incompatibilities among the microsoft applications! Were it not so counter-productive to the work at hand, it would have been funny. (And this was/is an almost every-meeting event.)

Re:It has always baffled me...

[aklix]

Although Microsoft hardware isn't as picky. I'm using a Microsoft Wireless Optical Desktop (or some confusing name) and Fedora Core 3.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[maxgilead]

Blender's (http://blender3d.org/) file format is compatible between older and newer versions. They use so-called DNA code which allows older versions to open files saved in newer ones. I don't know how technically it is realized but it's a proof that things like that are still available in todays software.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[808140]

You know, I'm not sure that's the case as much anymore... or really that it ever has been, actually.

The reason is simple: Apple. Now, Apple has taken a second (third?) seat to MS-based PCs for a long time and I think they probably will continue to do so for the forseeable future (ie, I am not an Apple zealot). But Apple remains a name-brand that exists in the public, non-geek consciousness. While their current success is due almost entirely to their iPod, in most people's minds, they remain a computer company.

I believe that part of the reason that alternative browsers like Firefox are beginning to gain ground is because of MS's discontinued support of IE on the Mac. Despite the fact that not many people use Macs, many of the people that do are not geeks, and those "not-geeks" were forced to consider the browser question in a more realistic way when MS discontinued Mac support. Up until then, they likely considered (as most people do) that IE was the internet.

Now they know better, and as you've probably noticed on Slashdot, Mac-types are a loud bunch -- even the non-geeky ones. They use Firefox or Safari and they make a big fuss about it. They're convinced of a conspiratorial anti-Macintosh agenda on the part of, well, pretty much everyone and they complain loudly when things don't work well on their macs. Nowadays, this includes websites.

My point in all of this is that MS has been the big bully in the industry for a long time. Apple, Sun, IBM -- all would be exactly like MS if their roles were reversed (IBM in fact was, at one time) -- but as it stands, all would like nothing more than to see MS toppled.

Individually, each of these companies represents a feeble marketshare. Together, it still isn't much, but it's enough, I think. They have the users required and the lobbying power, too, to really make a difference. IBM and Sun have always had the problem of being companies only IT people really know much about, due to their lack of penetration on the desktop. Apple, on the other hand, is widely seen as a desktop system normal people actually use, and so Apple being on board hopefully will make more non-industry folks aware of what's going on. Unfortunately, these three companies haven't been keen on cooperating on things like formats precisely because of the lack of open standards -- none of them wants to allow a competitor to dictate the structure of any format.

Each of them produces its own office suite; each of these is MS Office's bitch. By making sure that their office suites all interoperate 100% with an open format, and by lobbying governments (especially non-American governments) with arguments about (American) vendor lock-in, I believe they can make in-roads into ODF adoption.

If governments use it, large companies and contractors will be forced to use it as well, even if infrequently. They will quickly find MS Office's inability to save into these formats annoying (which will not force them to switch to another office suite, but which will cause them to lobby MS to support the format).

Big companies = big clients = big money. Add this to the fact that any law requiring a government to adopt an open format that MS Office doesn't support will make the use of MS Office illegal in a de facto sort of way, because of its non-compliance.

If (and that's a big if) all of this happens, if the laws pass, and IBM/Apple/Sun manage to cooperate for a change, I expect that MS Office will include support for a usable subset of ODF. What they will not do -- what they will never do -- is make it the default format. Further, they will likely ensure that some features of their doc format cannot be saved in ODF, allowing them to pop-up the little box that warns the user that "some formatting information may be lost, proceed?"

This will make little difference to governments legally required to avoid doc, but this will be enough to prevent widespread adoption in the private sphere.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[Anonymous Coward]

But if you're baffled by people's adherence to MS Office, then you've never used this kind of software in a real-world environment. Being able to pass a file around without interopeability problems is crucial.

I completely agree with this, and this is one of the main reasons why one shouldn't stick with the .doc format. There are several problems with it.

For starters, if you pass a .doc document inside an organisation, there's a chance that you will be spreading a micro virus unknowingly. That's BAD.

Another thing is Word .doc files corrupt. What I mean is, when you do enough editing to a .doc file, it is going to start doing all kinds of strange things. Depending on how badly corrupt the file is, you may not be able to save it.

In a large enough organisation, you often find people using many versions of the same program, and some of these are *old*. This is especially true of non-profit organisations. MS Office doesn't help here.

If you're going to end this monopoly, you're going to have to overcome the same social and economic forces that drove Lotus and WordPerfect into niche status.

There were very possibly other forces at work here.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[MicroBerto]

I'm not baffled when it comes to Office suites... MS Office is a very good product. Probably the only good product to come out of Microsoft, in my opinion.

We all know of the loads of problems with Windows and IE... but Office really never causes me problems at work, and I rarely have to support it (and if I do, it's operator error).

I love leveling the playing field and hope that open formats win out, but Office is the least of my problems with Microsoft at present.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the reader won't upgrade and author won't save using a back-level format (which is an easily-accessible option in Word) it's not any software developer's problem. This isn't just a problem with Word, but Word offers a way around it.

Word also saves in a shit load of formats other than .DOC. HTML for a start. This is not a Microsoft issue, this is a "users don't have a clue about document exchange formats" issue.

Re:It has always baffled me...

[ClubStew]

From my experience that's pretty rare. The compound document structure used by Microsoft Word is backward compatible and - so long as you don't use new features of newer Word versions - forward compatible. The OLE objects that comprise your basic document don't remove functionality but - at some times - add functionality. Any Windows developer centric around COM should know this (at least any decent developer).

Re:It has always baffled me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac-types are a loud bunch -- even the non-geeky ones.

Not true -- most of the Mac people I know are very quiet.

I think you're succumbing to sample bias: "Every Mac user I can hear is loud, therefore every Mac user is loud". (Well, of course every one you hear is loud: the quiet ones you can't hear!)

Re:It has always baffled me...

[KlomDark]

Start refusing any document sent to you in non-OpenDocument format. Refusal will help. Might force a few people to install OpenOffice, if only for document conversion from Word, "until" Microsoft comes out with an OpenDocument convertor. (Wonder how long that will take? They'll fight that kicking and screaming until it's made a legal standard in a majority of locations...)

Death to PDF..??

[E IS mC(Square)]

I will definitely miss that loading time (of approx. 2 minutes) of Acrobat Reater and that invaluable information on those 4573 (or something) patents that they have for one document reader software!

Re:Death to PDF..??

[sewagemaster]

on windows, stay away from any adobe readers above version 4. i have no problems with version 4 on my pentium 2.

on linux, acrobat's *ok*, but gpdf and xpdf are pretty decent and very fast. the new version of kpdf in kde 3.4 is going to be great as well.

Re:Death to PDF..??

[uss_valiant]

I will definitely miss that loading time (of approx. 2 minutes) of Acrobat Reater and that invaluable information on those 4573 (or something) patents that they have for one document reader software!

I too was very disappointed with Adobe because of the Acrobat Reader in Version 6.x.
But they managed to fix the performance problem in version 7. I haven't benchmarked Acrobat Reader 7, but it feels like it loads and scrolls as fast as version 5 with all the benefits from version 6/7.
Now they only need to improve their digital ink implementation and make it available for the free.

Re:Death to PDF..??

[bairy]

Foxit is a freeware, very light, no-install-needed pdf reader, loads ultra quick and does the job just fine. There's a foxit pdf editor too. The reader is free the editor is 99 bucks

Re:Death to PDF..??

[Bert64]

But the beauty of PDF is that it's an open format, it may be controlled by one company but the specs are public so theres nothing to stop you writing your own reader/writer.. And msoffice takes a similar time to load...
Other PDF viewers dont take so long to load, "preview" that comes with OSX is very fast, as is Xpdf on unix machines... You dont get the flexibility of being able to use multiple apps like this with a close format.

Re:Death to PDF..??

[coolcold]

or try arspeed-up

Re:Death to PDF..??

[vonFinkelstien]

Funny, but PDFs open in seconds on my old butt-slow iBook G3. Maybe you should use another program instead of Acrobat Reader.

Re:Death to PDF..??

[mrchaotica]

I haven't used an Adobe product to deal with pdfs in years. Ghostscript, xpdf, Preview and print-to-PDF (in Mac OS X), OpenOffice -- all those are better at dealing with PDFs than Acrobat reader is. So why bother?

Adobe Acrobat fostered in my a deep hatred of PDF; it's only since getting a Mac that I realized how unfounded that hatred was.

It's nice to be optimistic but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The Future Is Open

Years down the road, when everyone is still using Microsoft formats, I'll be sure to remember the prophetic vision of this article.

As Stephen King said, "it's all right to hope and noble to strive, but in the end it's doom alone that counts." Did you see the recent article about Microsoft's record earnings? They're going to be here for a long, long time, and there's no guarantee at all that their successor - if there is one - will be the open formats that Slashdot advocates so passionately.

Re:It's nice to be optimistic but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not in Europe they won't be.

Re:It's nice to be optimistic but...

[game kid]

Years down the road, when everyone is still using Microsoft formats, I'll be sure to remember the prophetic vision of this article.

Agreed. What MS Office will always have (and Lotus/Apple/et al. before that had) is ad money. They can sell to the schools and offices that move formats in the first place.

Over the years, people at home bought/received WordPerfect/MS Word/etc 'cause they needed them to use the formats they used at school and work. What OpenOffice.org needs, I think, is an even larger word of mouth (or mouf?) campaign. People have to know it exists, that it can be used with the suites still used at work, and, of course, that it's a free download and legal to copy.

Re:It's nice to be optimistic but...

[Anonymous Coward]

"They're going to be here for a long, long time"

Psst..pssst!!!I have a cunning plan to make that long, long time end tomorrow..First you gotta tell me if you can drive a truck?

Re:It's nice to be optimistic but...

[buxton4]

Yes, but what does Stephen King know, according to talk show radio he is dead at 54!

Re:It's nice to be optimistic but...

[essreenim]

Yeahhh, lets convince Gates that he's waisting money on software and to put his finances in the truck hauling industry!

OpenOffice

[mboverload]

Have you ever even looked at an OpenOffice document in notepad? Freaking nightmare.

Then again, .doc files have no text you can decipher at all.

Re:OpenOffice

[Teh_monkeyCode]

That is because OpenOffice documents are zipped ;)

Re:OpenOffice

[DrLZRDMN]

Try unzipping it first.

Re:OpenOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Then again, .doc files have no text you can decipher at all.

Eh?? I frequently open .doc files in Textpad (text editor) and read its text contents easily.

Re:OpenOffice

[Xtifr]

No, I've never looked at an OOo document in notepad; that would require installing a system that runs notepad, finding a copy of notepad, and installing it. That's an awful lot of work to go through to get a crappy plain-text editor that's nowhere near as good as the ones I already have installed. :)

I have looked at OOo documents in Emacs - many times - and it all looks pretty straightforward to me. With a bit of practice, I bet I could write OOo documents in Emacs. I'd hardly call that a nightmare.

I'd think that you were just unaware that OOo files are zipped, except that your second sentence implies that you did find text in the document, which seems like it would have been hard if you hadn't unzipped it. So I have to assume that you're just ignorant of XML. No, it's not a "freaking nightmare", it's a simple, pretty straightforward format.

And, just to complete the trifecta of you being wrong, I'd like to point out that .doc files DO have text you can decipher. I routinely use the UNIX strings command to extract the readable text from .doc files. Before OOo/Abi/etc. had usable MSFT filters, that was the only way I could read .doc files. And it actually works fairly well, if you're only interested in the content, and unconcerned about the format. Which is why I still often use strings to read .doc files. (The strings command loads a lot faster than OOo or even Abiword.)

Re:OpenOffice

[doj8]

It does depend on the version of Word which created the .DOC file, the method of saving (fast save vs. normal) and how heavily edited the document.

I just searched several hundred .DOC files for human-readable strings. Twelve documents had any significant human-readable text in them, barring phrases such as "Word.Document.8", "Dan Jenkins", etc. - document metadata, in other words.

Some others had phrases or occaisional paragraphs which were human-readable, the rest was not.

Years ago I wrote document conversion software (back when dedicated word processors were still common). One of the last conversions I was involved in was Microsoft Word. Their format was extremely complicated compared to the majority of word processors of the time. The format was also not linear. You had to follow binary pointers from section to section of the document. So, the contents of paragraph 23 might preceed paragraph 5. Also, deleted material could well be retained in the document.

Re:OpenOffice

[MemoryDragon]

Sure... but I know how to unzip a zipped file first before loading the XML part into notepad... Given that I run a system with that nightmare of text editor.

Re:OpenOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

You could also use catdoc, which does more than just extracting the strings:

http://www.45.free.net/~vitus/ice/catdoc/ver-0.9.h tml

Re:OpenOffice

[frostman]

You might want to check out Antiword.

I've been using that lately on .doc files and it works great - though I have to admit I haven't tried it on anything very complex yet.

Re:OpenOffice

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

No, I've never looked at an OOo document in notepad; that would require installing a system that runs notepad, finding a copy of notepad, and installing it. That's an awful lot of work to go through to get a crappy plain-text editor that's nowhere near as good as the ones I already have installed. :)

Notepad has become a generic term much like Kleenex, Xerox, Coke, etc. I really don't feel like explaining what "vim" is, what "vi" is, and how the two differ, every time I want to say I opened something in a text editor. If you ask someone for a Kleenex, do they say, "No, but I have a Puffs Plus (or whatever); would you like that instead, or shall I go buy a box of Kleenex?"

Re:OpenOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

People like you think they're part of the solution when in reality they're part of the problem.

People like you amuse the hell out of the rest of us -- we just can't believe anyone can be such a complete dumbfuck. You wouldn't get the point if it bit your dick off. Oh, wait, it looks like some other point already did.

Re:OpenOffice

[mrchaotica]

So why don't you just say "text editor?"

Re:OpenOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Answer: dos2unix ImportantFile.txt

Re:OpenOffice

[uohcicds]

(Disclaimer: writer from UK)

No, that's what the problem actually is: providing a document format that can fulfil the needs of all of these user groups. If you want to hack it by hand in emacs (or similar), then great. The same applies if you want to do it it in a GUI. The point is that the format lets the user decide which tool, or more accurately, tools to use to read and write the files. In such circumstances a user can choose to use different tools for each. The choice is the important thing. There seems to be little point (to me at least) in designing for the lowest common denominator. That's like trying to make TV or the internet a, 'place fit for children' and ending up making it a place fit only for children.

Some earlier posts talked about the need for a number of formats for differing purposes and I can see the point of this: the overhead of marking up is document that only needs to be in plain text is wasteful of resource (including storage space and bandwidth if it is to be transmitted). Then again, if that's the case, why not just use plain text? In other cases the markup will be desirable or necessary to indicate metadata or other content. That may even include securing or adding DRM info to them: this is soemthing can be vendor specific, if the creator so wishes. In any case, linking and embedding objects of other types has always been there in the SGML family, for example. The Groklaw article talks about issues connected with the embedding of binary data in MS's own doc formats. This little aside by Rick Jelliffe explains why it's a bad idea http://www.stylusstudio.com/xmldev/200303/post9073 0.html. In the end, the purpose is not to replace, but to provide an alternative when transparency and perspicuity is essential. not an unreasonable goal, I'd have thought.

I know this is going to sound like I too am part of the problem, but soemtimes users just have to think and must be educated to think in the correct way. You have to use the right tool for the job. Would you would use a knitting needle to hammer in a nail? Why should ignorance be a vaild excuse?

Re:OpenOffice

[Just Some Guy]

Notepad has become a generic term much like Kleenex, Xerox, Coke, etc. I really don't feel like explaining what "vim" is, what "vi" is, and how the two differ, every time I want to say I opened something in a text editor.

Saying that "notepad" and "vim" are both text editors is roughly as accurate as saying that a Geo Metro and a Ferrari Enzo are both cars; one meets the bare minimum requirements, while the other exemplifies the class. The lack of ability of notepad to make sense of a particular document doesn't mean that all text editors are so crippled, only that notepad sucks.

If you ask someone for a Kleenex, do you expect them to answer "no, but I have some lemon-juice soaked sand paper"? Why? They're both paper, aren't they?

Re:OpenOffice

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

If you ask someone for a Kleenex, do you expect them to answer "no, but I have some lemon-juice soaked sand paper"? Why? They're both paper, aren't they?

Wow. Just..wow.

The fact that vim has so many insane features doesn't affect the simple truth that writing HTML and so forth in vim is exactly the same as writing it in Notepad. Editing may be different, but the original writing is the same. The point is I write raw HTML.

Yes, I have seen "do you have a Kleenex?" answered with "no, but I have a paper towel." That works.

The lack of ability of notepad to make sense of a particular document doesn't mean that all text editors are so crippled, only that notepad sucks.

Irrelevant. In fact, Notepad would've been better in some cases because it's a native GUI app. "Making sense of a document" is something you're pulling in to attack MS products.

The point is, I use both of them as raw text editors. The person was asking about opening OOo docs in raw text editors. Assuming you unzip it first, there shouldn't be much of a difference.

Re:OpenOffice

[Geoffreyerffoeg]

'Cause "Notepad" is shorter and most people are at least as familiar with it as with the concept of a "text editor". Technically, all word processors are "text editors."

It's the same reason we use "Kleenex" instead of "disposable tissue".

Re:OpenOffice

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't you two stop having an 'I'm the smartest' dick-waving contest? Neither one of you is as smart as I am.

Talking to yourself again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Daniel Carrera writes ... 'I asked Daniel Carrera, ...'

Hmm... /me scratches head

Re:Talking to yourself again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your head?

Or Daniel Carrera's?

I'm confused.

Re:Talking to yourself again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why would I scratch Daniel's head? I'm not a monkey... Are you?

Re:Talking to yourself again?

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

You know, deep down, we are all Daniel Carrera on the inside! O_o

Re:Talking to yourself again?

[gardyloo]

You know, deep down, we are all Daniel Carrera on the inside!

I don't think that name means what you think it means. http://www.asiacarrera.com/ ;)

Re:Talking to yourself again?

[Anonymous Coward]

DON'T CLICK THE LINK! :( Not work safe! (Mods, where are you??)

Re:Talking to yourself again?

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD IT DOWN!!! It's a link to shemale porno! Why the fuck is it Score:2???

yup, you're right!

[krudler]

I shoulda checked over my document better! My main goal was to get my point across and acheive a first post, so I did not have the time, sorry :)

To speed up the loading time...

[elid]

...follow these instructions

Re:To speed up the loading time...

[Val314]

or get Adobe Reader 7 (that one has a preloader)

Re:To speed up the loading time...

[paretooptimum]

I use foxit pdf reader (free as in beer) to read pdf on my windoze machine. It loads in a flash - really - like 2 seconds. I have acrobat installed, but only use it rarely for creation/editing.

From a user's perspective

[bigberk]

For a similar discussion, but from the perspective of an OpenOffice.org user, check out this article (even though it's really talking about OO.org, there is a section where it goes into the advantages of open formats for data interchange and longevity/archival). The XML format discussed there is I believe the same as OpenDocument

should

[smittyoneeach]

supposed; ought to: thought.
These are the voyages of the conditional-ship Hypothetical, its five year mission to discover how that vast delta between the reference state and reality crept into the system...

Re:To summarize:

[randallpowell]

Office rules the world? No wonder things are bad. Just reboot....

.txt

[Sophrosyne]

Send all your files as .txt
If Fancy formatting is really necessary send as a pdf.
I could care-less about OpenOffice, they have done a nice job at emulating all the really bad elements of Microsoft Office without the perks like the speed of office, the interoperability, and some of the features.

Re:.txt

[fireboy1919]

Ah yes...I'm sure that will work. Tell me, where do I get a free WYSIWG editor so that I can collaborate with other people who can't write latex?

What? There isn't one? Well, that's not going to work, is it?

perks like the speed of office, the interoperability, and some of the features
OpenOffice might not have the speed, but it has more compatibility than Office does. Try this: get several versions of Word. Get them to output documents containing text boxes with floating alignments and put them on a page containing text. If you can think of a few more esoteric things to put in there, do so - just not macros, which obviously depend on other programs.

Try opening the result in each of the versions of Word you got and also in OpenOffice. In my experience, OpenOffice wins.

they have done a nice job at emulating all the really bad elements
OpenOffice has no clippy. The native format is considerably better than doc from a file-design standpoint. The html writer is MUCH, MUCH better, as is the rtf writer. Obviously they haven't emulated all the really bad elements. Or are you complaining that they put stuff in there for the interoperability that leads to the same problems as MS? You can't have it both ways there. Either it's interoperable, or the design is good. You can't have it both ways.

Re:.txt

[mz001b]

Ah yes...I'm sure that will work. Tell me, where do I get a free WYSIWG editor so that I can collaborate with other people who can't write latex?

He said .txt not .tex, as in plain ASCII, not TeX/LaTeX files.

Re:.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably you are confused between .txt and .tex. You can use just notepad or wordpad for the first. Only the second one refers usually to LaTeX. But even for that second one you can try, for example, the nice (and free) LyX (there is a standalone version for windows) and there are much other for windows (of course for the free operating systems there are much many).

Re:.txt

[Sophrosyne]

I just think that the UI is very similar to every other word processor out there- there is little innovation in OpenOffice, and not much incentive for people to use it other than being stuck on a linux system. I realize that openoffice inherited a lot from staroffice, which is both a positive and a limitation.
I've stopped using word and office, but I think the hook for people is exchange operability- not always word operability.
For many documents .txt would probably suffice- I know people like nice headers, and color... but why can't business keep things simple? Imagine if their were proprietary e-mail formats- that would be a nightmare... but for the most part people seem to keep it simple.

Re:.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

He was referring to the 'fancy formatting -> PDF' part, not the .txt part.

Re:.txt

[agraupe]

This makes no sense... most source code files (which is what I assume you are referring to) are saved in plain text format, nothing more.

Re:.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

No, I'm not talking about source code files. I am talking about word processing file formats - as is everyone else in this thread :)

Re:.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for the standalone version download (I've tried getting lyx working on windows but never got it working). Which one should I download? "lyx-1.3.5-win32-nc.exe (Compiled with Qt Non-Commercial 3.2.1.)", "lyx-1.3.5-win32.exe (Experimental version compiled with the kde-cygwin Qt, math fonts are still messed up)", or "lyx-1.3.3-win32.exe".

Does it still look like a motif app by default?

Re:.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

I just think that the UI is very similar to every other word processor out there- there is little innovation in OpenOffice, and not much incentive for people to use it other than being stuck on a linux system. I realize that openoffice inherited a lot from staroffice, which is both a positive and a limitation.

I think interfaces for things tend to stabilise after a while. All the desktops are WIMP now, and word processers are all still trying to look like the printed page. That's the standard because it's good enough.

The most innovative interface I've seen is Conglomerate, though that's more a document processer, rather than a word processer.

Applicaiton-wise I think exporting to Flash is a fantastic feature of OpenOffice's Slideshow software.

I know people like nice headers, and color... but why can't business keep things simple?

Headers and colour are just part of making a readable document. Document structure, and metadata, are essential for having computers parse documents and understand them.

The battle for programmers shouldn't be to reduce the formats to txt, but to move to open formats that can be parsed easily by computers (the same can't be said of msword, txt, etc., because they're either proprietary or they lack structure).

Re:.txt

[fireboy1919]

Lyx is not capable of reading any latex file - only Lyx produced Latex files are guaranteed to work.

And no, I am not confusing .txt and .tex. Rather, I am thinking about virtually the only way to produce still-editible fancy documents (for free) given the choice between pdf and plaintext is with latex, since .tex is a plaintext format. Reread my post.

Re:.txt

[Anonymous Coward]

Er... maybe you should look into XML. There's Docbook.xml to html/pdf (via xslt/xslfo) with a user friendly editor like Conglomerate / Abiword. Well tested tech.

Re:.txt

[paretooptimum]

I completely agree. OpenOffice is soooooo... in need of a Firefox to its Mozilla suite. Can someone please fork this puppy and dump the bloat.

Mention Microsoft & XML...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the sages -- pro and con -- come out of the woodwork.

Mention the same type of thing from an open group, and people don't seem to get as excited.

This leaves me very annoyed. OpenDocument is a very handy spec and will be implemented widely -- MS or no MS.

Hidden Information

[Lobishomen]

Biggest thing I'm looking for in a document format anymore is a lack of hidden strings imbedded into the document listing 'author' and 'program used'.

Same thing I'm looking for in my e-mail client too, as it stands.

Be careful what you wish for...

[Anonymous Coward]

Without PDF, most documents on the internet would be MS Word documents. (No, that's not what I wish would happen, but that's what'll realistically happen, at least for the near future).

OpenDocument

[Anonymous Coward]

The format everyone can support but no one does

The opposite of Microsoft Word, the format nobody can support but everyone tries

Re:OpenDocument

[FLEB]

Esperanto?

talking to himself?

[Anonymous Coward]

Quote:

"Daniel Carrera writes "I've written an article for Groklaw describing the OpenDocument format: 'I asked Daniel Carrera, an OpenOffice.org volunteer, if he'd please explain ...."

Daniel Carrera was asking himself something? What the heck?!?

Re:talking to himself?

[witte]

It's his evil twin from the mini solar system.

Actually..

[Rezonant]

After all complaints about the slowness of Adobe Reader 6 they have sped up version 7 A LOT. It starts almost instantaneously and even performance within the program is much better.

Re:Actually..

[archen]

Is that with or without the accelorator it sneaks in the start menu. Mozilla starts almost instantaniously too when it's already open =)

Actually I've disabled that and found it to be about as fast as acrobat 5 (maybe a bit faster). It's also got some usability improvments which are also nice. It still has a ways to go before it's as nice as whatever KDE opens pdfs with.

Re:Actually..

[Rutulian]

Yeah, and did you notice it is because they preload it in memory and leave it there, kind of like Office. Check your process list sometime...

Re:Actually..

[Rezonant]

Well, can't see it in my process list. Until I actually start it of course. What process would be the preloader?

This is what they should do: -

[bogaboga]

This is to the EU (European Union) and MA (Massachusettes), plus all those who want to bend the likes of MS.

They should draw their terms, make them known to all stake holders and put a close that says something to the effect that the likes of MS, by submitting whatever they submitting, agree to the terms. These terms could be GPL/LGPL or whetever they license they choose. This would save them (EU & MA), the burden of having to interprete whatever MS and others mean in their licences.

In effect, they should tell whoever wants to participate that MA and the EU plus all those who might decide to use the submitted works will not be sued under any circumstances by any entity...or that in case they are sued, the submitters will have to meet the full costs.

That insulates all of us...right?

Re:This is what they should do: -

[KontinMonet]

I hope you're kidding. If the EU were to define the terms of open documents, you'd have 25 countries each with their own experts half of whom would be fiddling the costs only to produce an 18,000 page document which, in order to be exactly translatable into all the official languages of the EU uses words (in the English language version, at least) that neither Websters or the Longer Oxford seem to recognise. The document would appear in eight versions and be finalized in 2014.

Not true. Move on.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Why people never even consider that something else exists other than MS Office

First, Word Perfect is still King in law offices and certain other niche areas. But two words: "Market Saturation". If you need to communicate with the majority of people and business out there, if you're not sending .doc you might as well just send a random string of characters, so it's a matter of if you want to do business or not.

everyone I know has ran into problems with a .doc from a different version that doesn't open

Also, most people don't have problems opening Word docs that are not the latest version, this is simply an anecdote perpetuated by people that don't like Microsoft. Right now, I have Office 97 (which I actually have owned since about that time) at home, and have never had any problems opening brand spanking new Word docs.

I support open document formats because it promotes competition in the areas of application user experience that count like usability. I would very much like to see OpenOffice mature to a point where most people including large companies would feel safe transitioning. But repeating these discounted "stories" of version incompatibility help no one.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[gardyloo]

most people don't have problems opening Word docs that are not the latest version, this is simply an anecdote perpetuated by people that don't like Microsoft.

Great. But the point is that no one, if the program were committed to being more compatible with past versions, should have problems. I have problems opening Word docs in several versions, whether they were created on older versions or on the newest ones. And many people I know do, too.
I don't care if 70% of people who use Office haven't had compatibility problems. I DO care that at least half of the people I work with do or have had problems with it. When you say "discounted 'stories'", I take some offense, because those stories should NOT be discounted, and they aren't apocryphal -- many are true!
There are rarely problems with postcript files or .pdfs, and they look much better. There are NEVER any problems with .rtfs, or with plain .txt documents, and even though these don't have the bells and whistles of many Word formats, they're always readable, and always editable.
There's a higher standard than Word, and there has been for a long, long time.

I don't hate Microsoft, but their compatibility issues are ridiculous.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Anonymous Coward]

First, Word Perfect is still King in law offices

Not even close. The Federal court system standardized on Microsoft Word years ago, as did most state court systems. there may be some law offices still using WordPerfect, but every large and most midsized firms dumped it years ago.

The specs even include the proper font and type size.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Anonymous Coward]

WordPerfect is loosing ground in law offices. Word is just so common that even lawyers are switching. WordPerfect allows much better control of the document layout, but if no one ever takes the time to learn there isn't much difference from Word. The main benifit is backward compatibilty of the file format all the way back to 6. But many don't even care about that.

I like that WordPerfect is now comming pre-installed on a lot of computers because its cheaper than the MS option. That at least gets some people to realize there are other word processors out there.

Older versions of Word do have problems opening documents saved in new versions. It may not be always, it could depend on using features that were not available in older versions. This really confuses people that start work at home on an old version and bring it to work, save in new version, and then can't work on it at home anymore.

I use mostly WordPerfect, but I also use Word when I know I may need to edit or print the document at school. But I never save in the current version of Word. I always save it as Word97 or RTF so I can use WordPad if I have to.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Brandybuck]

if you're not sending .doc you might as well just send a random string of characters

Nonsense. Even MSWord is able to open non-Word document formats, such as RTF. It will choke on other proprietary formats though, but that's not the point. If there were open standards for documents, and which were more comprehensive than RTF, then MSWord would be able to open them automatically. It may munge the document when it subsequently saves it, but opening it should be no problem... if there were an open standard.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Sure. Go ahead and try this. Send 'em all sorts of formats. Then wait for the email: "we don't accept that format. Please re-submit an MS Word doc."

Of course, you don't have to do business with these types, but you may not do much business than.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, most people don't have problems opening Word docs that are not the latest version, this is simply an anecdote perpetuated by people that don't like Microsoft. Right now, I have Office 97 (which I actually have owned since about that time) at home, and have never had any problems opening brand spanking new Word docs.

Ahhh, so because you say so, it just isn't true! This is simply a myth propagated by people who hate Microsoft, eh?

You know, I don't what is more fanatic: those who choose every chance to slam Microsoft because they hate them OR those who simply chalk up every problem reported as another example of Microsoft hatred!

I do know which one will cause any progress to be made... and YOU ain't it!

Re:Not true. Move on.

[civilizedINTENSITY]

The biggest problem our campus printing shop has is incompatibilies of versions of MS Word due to different computer labs running different versions (97 thru 2000 Pro). Mostly this seems to relate to embedded graphics and the formating of text around said emedded object. This isn't anecdote perpetuated by people who don't like Microsoft, this is historical fact related to using the campus printing shop, acknowledged by them as well as students.

Some classes required bound reports (Software Engineering did...), and your only hope is PDF. Crappy formatting isn't an option in a "professional" report.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[scgallafent]

My dad had some Excel files this week that he couldn't open. They were created in an older version and his version (2003) wouldn't open them. I ended up opening and saving them in my version (XP) and then sending them to him. Based on that experience, I'm going to respectfully disagree that this is "an anecdote perpetuated by people that don't like Microsoft."

There are compatibility issues between versions of Excel and I'm willing to prove it on demand, since I've still got the spreadsheets sitting on my desktop.

OpenOffice (1.9.74) did reasonably well opening the original files.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[redtux1]

Bullshit

I work in an office where I am the only Linux/OO user (they use MSoffice 2000)

It is unusual when I dont get a shout "mike I cant open this file - its says its a word doc"

9 times out of ten oo opens it fine

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, you're screwed if it has complex formatting or macros. And in biz, you will see those sorts of things!

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

This sort of thing will happen whe people refuse to update. NO software company is required to support old software forever, and we shall see if OO formats 10 years from now will open in today's version of OO, or the other way around.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Anonymous Coward]

WordPerfect is loosing ground in law offices.

Losing? They lost it years ago when the Feds mandated documents submitted electronically to the court be submitted in Microsoft Word .DOC format. I don't know why dim slashdotters cling to this belief that WordPerfect is still strong in law firms -- it may be strong in little mom and pops that do wills and such, but Word perfect is dead in any firm that does business with any court system.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[dspeyer]

Also, most people don't have problems opening Word docs that are not the latest version

As de facto tech support for my family and friends, I've run into quite a few cases. The biggest problem seems to be cross-archetechture compatibility. Someone saves from Word 97 on a Mac and the only PC program that can open it is OpenOffice. If you don't run into this, you may be in a mono-archetechtural environment.

I suspect this happens because MS Word dumps data structures raw with integers in binary host format with no explicite magic. Openoffice can handle this because Sun engineers always pay attention to these things and found some accidental magic. Can anyone confirm that documents saved on Opteron can't be opened on x86, as I would predict?

Re:Not true. Move on.

[dspeyer]

There are NEVER any problems with .rtfs, or with plain .txt documents

Let's not get carried away. .txt files are subject to \n vs \r\n mangling and to various failures of 128-255 charsets (plus the occasional UTF-8 sneeking in). Come to think of it, the most common problem (\n vs \r\n) is MS's fault....

The format I've found most universal is HTML. So long as you stay away from scripts, specific fonts, and complex CSS, it can be read pretty much anywhere.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[oliverthered]

The Help compiler that came with visuial basic 3 wouldn't work with RTF documents created using word 97.

I had to write something to reprocess the RTF documents and remove the crap that word 97 had put in there.

Oh, try opening a text document written on a Mac or Linux on windows, sometimes it forgets that crlf isn't the only form of line termination in the world.

And for the count, I've had lots of problems with word files of different versions, but word files with different fonts are even more annoying.

And I wish that I could save spellings with a document, but that's a differnt story.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Brandybuck]

Send 'em all sorts of formats.

Then that's their problem. If Word can open the file but they choose not to let it, don't blame it on me.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[mephist01]

My girlfriend visited her sister last year on spring break and worked on an essay when she was there. When she got back to school she couldn't open her essay on the school's computers. Her sister had the latest version of Office, but the school was one version behind. She flipped out. I suggested that she save her documents in plaintext or in rtf next time.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Baricom]

People have an incentive not to update when they have to pay hundreds of dollars per computer to do so. OpenOffice.org is free except for bandwidth, and even that is becoming less and less of a dealbreaker.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[richlv]

10 minutes ago a user asked me what could be the problem when a document has problems with diacritical symbols when opened by other msword versions.
and it's not the first time - these things happen _very_ often - pictures, tables, styles, formatting, fields. these problems happen very often, but people are used to them and in most cases don't notice them.
and from my experience - most users have thes problems on a regular basis. unless you are working with very simple documents in english-only, you'll stumble upon them. and if you really work only with very simple docs, rtf/txt will be better...

Re:Not true. Move on.

[seweso]

You only get compability issues when you use advanced features in your document. Normal people do not use these features.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Anonymous Coward]

For the record, OpenOffice.org is able to read version 1.0 of its file format using OpenOffice.org 1.1 and pretty sure OpenOffice.org 2.0 will be able to as well.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[oliverthered]

before you get too into blaming Microsoft for using a full carriage return, line feed which is defiantly the correct sequence of codes to start a new line. Apple uses \r.

Think about it, line feed would leave the printing head where it was, carriage return would send it to the beginning of the line without moving it down a line.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[acaird]

...and we shall see if OO formats 10 years from now will open in today's version of OO, or the other way around.

(La)TeX. A few weeks ago I re-typeset a 10 year old document in the latest version of LaTeX. Came out just right. I suspect that if I had a ten year old version of LaTeX2e I could typeset a modern document.

This is why I use LaTeX for more things than I probably should. On the other hand, I can still read and typeset those text files, and on whatever my platform of the day is. There simply isn't anything else that delivers the typesetting quality and longevity.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

So, will version 10 of OO still read version .9 and 1? Get real.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

LaTeX is not an "all purpose" word processor. Move on, before you make more of an ASS of your self.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[civilizedINTENSITY]

LaTeX is amazingly cool technology. It kicks ass for Math, and Math intensive areas like Physics. LaTeX is required for submitting to most Professional Journals in these fields.

While the learning curve is about that of hand coding HTML, LyX - The Document Processor gives you a frontend interface that simplifies getting started and getting things done. The output is beautiful.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, most people don't have problems opening Word docs that are not the latest version, this is simply an anecdote perpetuated by people that don't like Microsoft.

Hmm. Do you have anything to back this up? Saying "most people don't have problems" also sounds like an anecdote (perpetuated by people that like Microsoft?).

But repeating these discounted "stories" of version incompatibility help no one.

They would have helped my former employers, if they had heeded them. We switched from Wordperfect 5 to Word (despite my warnings); hilarity ensued.

Maybe Word 97 and Word XP using only English letters are fully compatible, but when you start trying to share files between Word XP and Word:mac using non-ASCII letters, it has ... Issues. (Of course, with some alphabets we needed to use, it couldn't even print correctly on Windows, so it's hardly surprising that their Mac version didn't open it perfectly.)

Slashdot is the king of the "I've never had this problem, therefore it doesn't exist" mentality.

(We would have been better off with TeX or HTML. When I suggested this the IT people groaned about how hard they were to use -- though I don't see how typing \bf or <b> would be harder than WP5. Here's a quiz to see how your WP5 skills are.)

Re:Not true. Move on.

[Zordak]

Amen to that. LaTeX is way better than those lame "all purpose" word processors that make it so terribly easy to make butt-ugly, cludged-together documents with inconsistent manual section numbering and content lined up with spaces. LaTeX instead does exactly what a document authoring system should do: it allows those responsible for content to worry about content, and those responsible for layout to worry about layout. Sure, it's missing a few key "features" like the ability to allow every moron in the office to include OS-borking VisualBasic scripts in their status reports and a paperclip that says, "I see you're using the 'article' document class. Would you like me to screw with your formatting commands?", but I think we could eventually learn to live without those. Don't even let me start on how Word handles hyperlinking.

Re:Not true. Move on.

[civilizedINTENSITY]

Why not? If it makes it *work*, Free Software wants to do it. There is no incentive to poison the well to force people to upgrade to drinking milk rather than water.

Wishful thinking

[JAFSlashdotter]

While I honestly hope the OpenDocument format catches on and wins out in the end, I really think it's not going to make a major impact until Microsoft Office & Works save in OpenDocument format by default.

I find that in my experience, most MS Word users have no clue what different file formats are, why they'd care to change, or even that they CAN choose a different type in the "Save As..." dialog. The only time it ever becomes an issue is if the version of Word / Excel / Powerpoint that they're using at work is significantly newer than the one they have at home . If they don't let that completely stop them (maybe "Clippy" shows them how), they learn to choose "Microsoft Excel 97" from the list if they want to take work home. That's the only time they are likely to differ from the default. And when they do that, they get warned what a bad idea it is, because features or formatting may not be available.

No, I doubt the future is open, unless Microsoft makes open the default.

Re:Wishful thinking

[ultrabot]

I find that in my experience, most MS Word users have no clue what different file formats are, why they'd care to change,

People who install software for them might have a clue. That's where it matters.

Re:Wishful thinking

[wanderingstan]

You're right that users choosing "Save as OpenDocument" won't be the driving force behind a shift. But I think the shift will happen. The pressure will come from integration with other systems, especially the internet varieties. Right now the MS Office suite covers most of what runs a business, but already strange new tools and data formats are becoming important even for small businesses: content/site management, integration with search tools, blogs, RSS, RDF, automatic translation systems, Wikis, collaberative document generation, and yet-to-be created tools.

Office can't handle these things. But the people who use and develop these new beasts will certainly find ways to integrate with a standard document format...and long before Microsoft gets around to it. Image being able to use one word-processing tool to create blog entries and update wiki pages, with content integrated to your sites CMS and published on RSS, with RDF automatically extracted, and FOAF used for distribution, and on and on... This can (and will) happen with an open document format... ...As long as it's standardized, and has a modicum of support. And this, I gather, is what OpenDocument is all about.

[That said, it'll still be an uphill battle. IMHO OpenOffice really sucks compared to MS Office, I just wish I had viable other options.]

-stan

Re:Wishful thinking

[JAFSlashdotter]

Good point, if the installers have a clue (and a motivation to complicate their install), this has a chance. I guess the key is making them have a reason to go the extra step and make the XML format the default. I'm still assuming that Microsoft won't make it the installation default, and it will require the installer (or the user) to change the default.

On the topic of colors...

[pyth]

What coloring scheme does this format use? Can it represent all visible colors, or is it oriented more towards CMYK (a focus on printing)? Or worse... was it designed by people who think 'color' means RGB?

Re:On the topic of colors...

[spitzak]

You can represent any color using RGB if you allow numbers outside the range of 0 to 1. This is probably a better solution than trying to change the colorspace and relying on all programs managing to implement identical conversions.

Re:On the topic of colors...

[random gibberish]

What would that give you? Ultra-white and infra-black? My understanding is that although RGB colors are generated additively, and CMYK colors are generated subtractively, both schemes generate the entire space of visible color and can be freely converted. Can you elaborate on your statements?

Re:On the topic of colors...

[Anonymous Coward]

The importance of CMYK is for integration with the world of print media. If OpenDocument doesn't support CMYK then it will need some intermediate stage for sending to print shops. In any case most print shops will only be able to cope with their existing formats for a good while even if OpenDocument does support CMYK as well as RGB.

Re:On the topic of colors...

[spitzak]

RGB with the components limited to 0-1 represents a cube. One corner (0,0,0) is black, diagonally opposite (1,1,1) is white. (1,0,0) is the red primary, other corners are the green and blue, and the three remaining colors are cyan, magenta, and yellow (not the same as the CMYK primaries, however).

This cube is normally called the "gamut" and a big complaint about RGB is that it is not big enough to cover all the colors a human can see. However the 3D space it is imbedded in can cover all the possible colors (at least according to XYZ color space theory). That 3D space also contains a lot of impossible colors, such as where the luminance is negative.

If you allow the components to go outside the 0,1 range the cube expands to fill all of space.

And "ultra white" is very very useful. We usually refer to it as "high dynamic range". Actualy scenes in nature can contain a ratio of millions to one in brightness (ie the sun in the sky is that many times brighter than a shadow) and unless we display this clipped on a monitor it would be completely black except for the sun.

Re:On the topic of colors...

[pyth]

In short, there are certain color combinations that normal RGB cannot represent. As
the other poster noted, letting RGB go outside the
normal ranges will make up for this shortcoming.

http://www.aols.com/colorite/convertingrgbcmyk1. ht ml

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/visio n/ cie.html

I saw a page once which demonstrated a beatiful deep shade of cyan that is simply not possible on a monitor. You would stare at a red square on the screen and then look at a light part, and the afterimage was this spiffy color.

For my settings, the slashdot logo looks cyan (#006666). Basically the color was that, with a little more gray taken out.

How in the world is that fair?

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about skewing results to your liking. The latest version of OO will open more documents correctly than Word 1937.

Tell ya what. If you really want to skew results for word by testing the newer version's backward compatibility, export a document in Word XP and then try and open it in the version of Word that was availble in 200 and the version of OO that was available in 2000.

Word's pretty friggin powerful and pretty compatbile. Of course, I don't need 90% of the features and 90% of the price, but that doesn't mean it isn't a good application.

Re:How in the world is that fair?

[Anonymous Coward]

Word 1937 ?! Hey, I know everyone likes to bash Microsoft, but it is unfair to use such old versions in any comparison.

Actually True...

[krudler]

Just because you've never seen something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. At my current job we ran into a problem where documents made with an older version would crash the newest version of word. I have also been the default tech support person for family and friends who are baffled that they can't open their documents. If everything is created with the same version, you'll be fine. Good luck in all other situations.

I don't have word on my computer any longer, I use openoffice.org. I haven't tested its ability to open and create word docs, but I know it's there. Still when I've applied for jobs that require a resume in ".doc format" they get my .html resume and if they have a problem with that, (which no one has yet, though they all ask for it in .doc), they get my explanation of, "All computers can view html, not all can view .doc... etc etc" Yes I know not *all* computers, but let's not be pedantic.

Re:Actually True...

[kantai]

ll when I've applied for jobs that require a resume in ".doc format" they get my .html resume

Ooooh, you rebel.

Re:Actually True...

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

Just because you've never seen something doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.

I said MOST people. Also, try PDF for resumes, they get there just the way you want them to, no one can change them (without difficulty)...

Re:Actually True...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just rename your .html to .doc and they'll never know the difference.

Re:Actually True...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have sent resumes in *.pdf and have been advised that they want a copy in *.doc format.

The brainwashed HR folks are not helping the situation. I guess some education would be in order.

World:
1)PDF's can be opened by Adobe Reader, XPDF and so on.
2)HTML can be see in a browser of your choice (not perfectly)
3) RTF almost all WP can read RTF but some standards are not fully implimented (IE: Word).

Ok, PDF or XML for resumes... get the hint world.

Re:Actually True...

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Also, try PDF for resumes

I normally do this, but I also include links in my mail message that will allow any HR people to download a version in .doc, RTF, plain text, and HTML. If you are looking to be hired, make things easy for the employer. Even UNIX shops with no Windows machines anywhere to be seen, often have a corporate office with an HR department that may not know anything but Word.

Note, for security positions, consider adding a web bug style image in .doc files. There is nothing like calling up an HR department and saying "Hi, I noticed that you are reading my Resume right now. I thought I'd call and ask if you know when you will be starting interviews" to make a good impression. :)

Re:Actually True...

[Anonymous Coward]

Problem with PDFs for resumes is also that you CAN'T change them easily!

Most recruitment companies that want to pass on resumes to their clients will want to remove personal details (email addresses, contact details) so the client can't contact the candidate directly!

So... a format that works in one situation, might not work as well in another!

GNOME Office document formats

[Anonymous Coward]

Has formats from GNOME Office been considered as open document formats by different governments too?

Such as,
Abiword for Word Processing
Gnumeric for Spreadsheets
etc...

Yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is the year of Linux!

DocBook

[systems]

Well I am mostly just thinking loudly!
Does anyone see the link here, OpenOffice or
WhateverOffice will just be a WYSIWYG editor
or an XSL Stylesheet, since an office word processor, is also What You See!
I think the people of OpenOffice or OpenFormat and DocBook/DebianDoc/TEI people, need to acknowledge the conflict of interest and offer a comprimise

Re:DocBook

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually OpenDocument and DocBook are standards from the same people, OASIS. OpenDocument defines markup applicable to an office document (which includes layout), and DocBook defines markup applicable to writing a book or a paper (no layout defined). DocBook doesn't want layout at all -- that is defined by the typesetter or other XSL translation.

OpenOffice does have some beta capability to write docbook documents. I tried for about a day to get it to work and got nothing more than crashes. I've since switched to Altova Authentic to write DocBook.

It seems the Irish Government has copped on

[Milton Waddams]

They release their documents in OpenOffice, PDF and .doc format.

Re:It seems the Irish Government has copped on

[schmiddy]

Releasing multiple versions is a wonderful idea, and I'm a little disappointed this idea hasn't caught on.

I'm not a good coder, but here's a simple yet powerful feature that I would absolutely love to see in a future OpenOffice.

During the install, ask the user whether they would like to operate in "MS Word Compatability Mode". Make this option default to "yes" in Windows. From then on, without any whining to the user about the evils of .doc , or the possibility that "Saving in an external format may have caused information loss", when the user selects 'Save', create a folder with the filename.

Make the only file in that folder be "Filename.doc" but, in a subfolder, have "Filename.sxw", "Filename.pdf", and "Filename.rtf". Give a dialog box on the first run of the program explaining what happened and how to change this default option (e.g. "Go to 'Tools' and hit the green button). Tell the user this dialog box won't be shown again.

There. I doubt that would be so hard.

OpenFormats.org

[wikinerd]

A very interesting place to discuss and advocate open formats is OpenFormats.org. It is a wiki, so you can contribute, too.

Coralized link to minimize the /.

[leicaM6]

Click me !

One word:

[sethadam1]

One word: Outlook.

Until FOSS can replace Outlook, Office is a necessity. In fact, most people I work with use Outlook all day everyday and would be perfectly happy on Writer and Calc. But until we can't ditch Outlook, because that's what everyone knows.

Re:One word:

[Taladar]

Can you elaborate which features of Outlook are missing from all the other Email/Calendar/... apps out there?

Re:One word:

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Can you elaborate which features of Outlook are missing from all the other Email/Calendar/... apps out there?

Compatability with Microsoft Exchange-specific features such as scheduling/meeting assignments.

That Outlook + Exchange does a poor job at even these things doesn't matter much. That many people never use the calender or use it improperly also doesn't matter. I've heard "person ???? needs the ?????? feature of Outlook" many times -- even when they are really talking about Exchange. When I track down this mythical person and ask them if they need that feature, they often admit that they haven't used that feature in a while and in total haven't used it much at all. A few people do indeed use things beyond email regularly, though they are the exception not the rule.

Yet, people have Outlook. They have Exchange too. To switch either out means that they loose some of that integration. To switch both out -- to gain back that integration and some additional features -- is often not something they want to deal with.

There are other more important things...so they stick with Outlook + Exchange and don't consider that the long-term pain is not really worth the short-term pain in switching to other setups.

If this sounds nutty, we're in agreement.

The only clean way to change this is to first swap out Exchange with an Exchange-compatable server and follow that with migrating people from Outlook with another client application. This is the reason why Novell is now porting Evolution to Windows .

The server will cost money, though if the client isn't swapped out you can't move people off of Windows in some environments as easily. Personally, I can't wait for the Windows version of Evolution. You can bet I'm going to be handing that one out and promoting it just as much as I've done with Firefox.

Re:One word:

[Anonymous Coward]

Market saturation.

Re:One word:

[|<amikaze]

The ability to migrate gently away from an Exchange server. There can be years of data stored in exchange, and that data can't just disappear because the company has chosen to use different software.

Re:One word:

[lachlan76]

On Linux there is Evolution, and I hear a Windows port is coming up.

Re:One word:

[|<amikaze]

Hmm, seems that Connector has been open-sourced. That's pretty cool. At one point I believe you could buy a 3rd-party plug-in to make it work.

Sweet deal. This could actually get things going. Go Novell!

That's what happens...

[Anonymous Coward]

...when you use notepad.

Are you seriously trying to view a complex XML file with that thing? It's not even a good text editor, never mind an XML editor. At least Kate can highlight and fold XML.

Re:Regarding your first paragraph

[Xtifr]

Gee, I thought the smiley would be a pretty clear indication that I was teasing, and it was intended as a joke. Ok, it was a fairly dumb joke I admit, but seriously, dude, don't be so bloody offended at a stupid joke just because it's stupid. Laugh or not, and move on. Life's too short.

Ghostscript

[Pan T. Hose]

I will definitely miss that loading time (of approx. 2 minutes) of Acrobat Reater and that invaluable information on those 4573 (or something) patents that they have for one document reader software!

Use Ghostscript then. The GSview graphical interface is available for Windows, OS/2 and Linux (though I personally prefer gv there). It supports PDF and Postscript formats (PS, EPS, etc.), and can display, print and easily convert between them, and even convert them to raster formats, so it is actually much more useful than Acrobat Reader, while being much less bloated at the same time. Ghostscript and GSview are always present on my CDs with useful Windows software, along with OpenOffice.org (which can save as PDF, nota bene), AbiWord, Firefox, ClamWin and PuTTY, to name just a few. If you work with serious printing, Ghostscript is a must.

MOD PARENT TROLL DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

Porn link.

Here

[Pan T. Hose]

Ah yes...I'm sure that will work. Tell me, where do I get a free WYSIWG editor so that I can collaborate with other people who can't write latex?

Here.

What? There isn't one?

There is one. See the link above.

Well, that's not going to work, is it?

It is going to work, if you have Windows, Linux, BSD or a Mac.

LaTeX

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not just skip all the problems and start using something free and open on all platforms like LaTex (or MikTeX). .doc files and openoffice files are all hell to look at on their own, at least everything is saved as a txt in LaTex (before being compiled to something like a pdf)

Massachusetts is a Commonwealth

[ptimmons]

Semantics or no, Massachusetts is a one of four commonwealths. It should not be referred to as the "State of Massachusetts".

Re:Massachusetts is a Commonwealth

[Anonymous Coward]

Last time I checked, the United "States" of America is made up of 50 "states" -- not 46 states and 4 commonwealths. Can you imagine the United States and Commonwealths of America? USCA instead of USA?

Hmmm... Should we use a different symbol on the US flag to represent a common wealth instead of a star, maybe a circle instead?

Re:Massachusetts is a Commonwealth

[iggymanz]

"Commonwealth" sounds vaguely socialistic and pinko; Maybe Bush should liberate it.

Re:Massachusetts is a Commonwealth

[RmanB17499]

You're correct and it's not socialistic or communistic or anything else.
Commonwealths "States" of this country are Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Massachusetts, and Virginia. VA doesn't have a Secretary of State -- they have a Secretary of Commonwealth.

Curious why some states are commonwealths? Read the FAQ -- Why is VA a Commonwealth?
Starts with: There is no such entity as the "State" of Virginia. While generally categorized as a state, Virginia has been the "Commonwealth" since independence from Great Britain. Virginia is first of four states that are Commonwealths, to include our daughter Commonwealth of Kentucky, which was formed from Virginia in 1792.
Finally, Puerto Rico is technically a commonwealth, but that's under a different situation, since it is not a State of the Union. It's just the name and form of its local government.

Each State of the Union is guaranteed sovereignty and a repulican form of government: thus they really are like 50 mini-countries.
However, they each agreed by compact upon admission or ratification of the Constitution for the original 13-states that they would have a Government of the United States of America (USG) to operate in certain areas and that this government would also be a sovereign, too.

How each state wants to operate in its sovereign form is up to the people as long as its republic in nature. If New Jersey would like to call itself the "Free and Independent Peoples Democratic Place of the Principality of New Jersey, formerly known as the State of New Jersey." That's up to itself.

However, from the point of view of the USG each state is just like any other state. That's why we just call them the fifty states. From the national point of view: All states are equal in that they have two senators, elect the president via the electoral college through whatever selection process the state would like to select, and can't be destroyed by Congress.

Re:Massachusetts is a Commonwealth

[Just Some Guy]

How each state wants to operate in its sovereign form is up to the people as long as its republic in nature. If New Jersey would like to call itself the "Free and Independent Peoples Democratic Place of the Principality of New Jersey, formerly known as the State of New Jersey." That's up to itself.

True, but everyone in the other 49 states will still laugh at them.

Re:Massachusetts is a Commonwealth

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe a penis. Plastering penises on the flag will be awesome.

Re:Regarding your first paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

Ignore him. He's nit picking and being reactionary (/. anyone?). I had no problem understanding what you wrote or the context that you provided it in.

The secretaries here have been baffled...

[gardyloo]

...but it actually is seeming to work (after weeks). Try this as your signature file:

Please avoid sending me Word or PowerPoint attachments.
See http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments. html

Re:Regarding your first paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

So, is the non-obnoxious joke part the part before or after the smiley? I can't tell.

OpenDoc... there's a 1993 flashback

[MarkRebuck]

Did anyone else flashback to the FORMER technology known as OpenDoc [wikipedia] after reading the title of the article?

Talk about a bad flashback... [shudder]

Prediction Time!

[thehunger]

My predictions:

1. EU chooses OpenDocument for standard
2. Micro$oft includes support in next version of M$ Office
3. then adds its own 'extensions' to OpenDocument format
4. People discover that using anything but M$ Office is a 'hassle' since other products dont support 'extensions'

Ok so it might not happen exactly like this but I bet they will try to do something similar!

Re:Prediction Time!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, they will. And they'll try a zillion other dirty tricks.

That's why we need to be alert and ready.

Daniel Carrera.
OpenOffice.org volunteer.

Re:Prediction Time!

[mrchaotica]

In other news, water is wet. Story at eleven!

Re:Regarding your first paragraph

[Gob Blesh It]

Well, I wasn't offended. I just find it annoying when people go on completely offtopic rants, seemingly in order to prove their own superiority (not saying that this was your motive). Sorry for the humorlessness. It's been a long day.

Why no Iraq Election Coverage.

[DAldredge]

Why is /. refusing to run articles covering the elections in Iraq?

Re:Why no Iraq Election Coverage.

[/dev/trash]

That's what CNN and Foxnews is for. See this is a Tech site. I bet you were pissed off when Jonh Stewart didn't ask Kerry the hard hitting questions on his show.

Re:Why no Iraq Election Coverage.

[DAldredge]

You do know this article and my post are under the POLITICS portion on /., don't you?

Re:Why no Iraq Election Coverage.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you are a stupid cum guzzling whore who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground!?

Re:Why no Iraq Election Coverage.

[nagora]

Why is /. refusing to run articles covering the elections in Iraq?

Because absolutely nothing of any note or import occured? Do you need /. to tell yo that the carefully vetted and selected pro-US candidate won? What's newsworthy in that?

TWW

Not a state

[robogymnast]

Hate to be nit-picking, but it is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Don't ask me explain how that works or what the difference is, but IIRC there are 3 others.

hooray for open Doc

[Anonymous Coward]

Open Doc is back. Now lets have Cyberdog and QuickDraw GX

You see Gil Amelio was right. Everyone wants Open Doc.

The OpenDocument Format

[demon_2k]

Obvious point : This could help solve most of the compatibility problems between different Office suits. Your work document may one day open in your frineds OpenOffice word processor and look 100% thesome as in you MS Office.

The problem : Digital Rights Management. Ms might have or might open their XML document format. Other suits might open their format.

However, can a application be an owner of a license? You could have a DRM'ed document created using Ms Word that is in an "open format" but, only Ms Work is licensed to open it or you are only allowed to open it in Ms Word. Anything else is considered a hack and you could me prosecuted under DMCA.

How about the National File Format?

[beetle496]

The U.S. Government has been pursing an XML based National File Format (NFF) for some time. This has currently morphed to the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard (NIMAS 1.0), a subset of ANSi/NISO Z39.86 (DAISY 3).

He addresses OpenDoc's failure in the article

[Anonymous Coward]

If you read the article, he specifically mentions OpenDoc and why it failed, and why he believes that OpenDocument is better. Basically he's saying that OpenDocument already has support from a number of large corporations, including Sun, IBM and Adobe, who are all making products that use OpenDocument, whereas OpenDoc never enjoyed ANY support from a large business.

What You See is Not What They Get...

[J. Random Luser]

.sig seen round the net,

this page best viewed by coming over to my office and looking at it on my monitor

I've seen the symptoms round here, same version of MSTurd, same version OS, same font set, different printer selected and the .doc is borked. I'm just waiting for it to happen with OOo...

we need several open standards

[macjohn]

I think there need to be several open file format standards:
* one for plain text (straightforward, but standardize the /n/c/r)
* one for rich text (above plus bold, italic, underline, color)
* one for mixed documents (basically html - mix rtf and graphics)
* one for rigid formatting (pdf)
* one for complex documents - including collaboration markup

Forgetting authoring interface, each is an extension of the one below it. Rich text is still only text. Mixed adds graphics and tables, but no rigid layout control. PDF adds exact duplication or all fonts and layout. The complex document should take the mixed format and add collaboration tools, embedded objects, and stuff like that.

These 5 formats would give you a right solution for just about any document interchange problem. In fact, the first 3 could be collapsed into one, if they were universally recognized.

If we could come up with these as published standards, then it would make great sense for governments and corporations to start requiring interchanged documents to be in one of the standard formats.

Absent published, supported open formats, Microsoft wins.

Re:we need several open standards

[Just Some Guy]

You just described LaTeX + CVS/Subversion/whatever. No one seems to be rushing to adopt it, which makes me think that the need for a unified format isn't as dire as you would expect. I love LaTeX and use it to write reports (and even my resume). However, the reality is that it will always be a niche application, even if it would solve 99.9% of the problems of people who don't know it exists.

Maybe Don should take out an ad in the Times?

do you remember ODA

[Anonymous Coward]

Early 1990's I studied ISO standard ISO/IEC 8613 Open Document Architecture (ODA).

The basic idea was that the content (the information) was important, not the tools (Word, emacs, vi, edlin, copy con) that you use.

AC

If it's a part, it's a really tiny one...

[MoggyMania]

"I believe that part of the reason that alternative browsers like Firefox are beginning to gain ground is because of MS's discontinued support of IE on the Mac."

The overwhelming majority of Mac users I know, including the geeks, default to the pre-installed browser (Safari) just like Windows newbies do, except with even less willingness to try an alternative. The few Mac users I know that do use (or even try) Firefox are already super-geeks, so they'd be using it even if they were in Windows and therefore can't really count.

So while the non-geek Mac contingent might be a "part" of the rise of Firefox, my guess is that it's an extremely small one at best.

Isn't flat text open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Flat text files are pretty open, no? Flat text + (HTML & CSS || LaTeX) == pretty documents. Just my $0.02

Acrobat 4 on Windows

[krygny]

Acrobat 4 is not supported on WinXP. I have never had success installing it.

Pedant Alert

[James.Stanton]

Massachusetts is not a State. Its a Commonwealth. Along with Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Virginia.

Yeah and?

[/dev/trash]

Does it involve Politics and Tech?

Re:Yeah and?

[DAldredge]

I guess you are right...I mean what is Political about an election?

Re:Yeah and?

[/dev/trash]

Tell me that Diebold provided the voting machiens and I'm interested in hearing about it on Slashdot. Otehrwise I'll stick to dKos and the like.

Early powerpoint solved this...

[doodlelogic]

You could save a powerpoint file as a standalone .exe file which would (and still does) run on any windows computer. Haven't used powerpoint for years, anyone know if it still does this?