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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."
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.
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.
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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.
Ive recently started using Apple's iWork suite, in particular Pages, and I love it much more then MS Office!
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.
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.)
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]
Ok so it might not happen exactly like this but I bet they will try to do something similar!
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.
I think there need to be several open file format standards: /n/c/r)
* one for plain text (straightforward, but standardize the
* 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.
--Hi. I'm in Portland and it's raining. This appears to be a permanent condition.