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The Future Is Open: The OpenDocument Format

Posted by michael on from the backward-compatible dept.

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."

15 of 210 comments (clear)

  1. It has always baffled me... by krudler · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:It has always baffled me... by elid · · Score: 2, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:It has always baffled me... by pdiaz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
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    3. Re:It has always baffled me... by yotto · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Software?

      To most people Microsoft is synonymous with computers period.

      --
      Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
    4. Re:It has always baffled me... by 808140 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  2. Re:It's nice to be optimistic but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Not in Europe they won't be.

  3. Re:It's nice to be optimistic but... by game+kid · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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.

    --
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  4. Not true. Move on. by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

    --
    "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
    1. Re:Not true. Move on. by gardyloo · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  5. Re:OpenOffice by Xtifr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.)

  6. GNOME Office document formats by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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...

  7. Re:OpenOffice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    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

  8. Re:Actually True... by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 3, Insightful
    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)...

    --
    "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
  9. Re:OpenOffice by frostman · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    --

    This Like That - fun with words!

  10. Re:OpenOffice by Geoffreyerffoeg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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?"