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Open Document Format Approved
An anonymous reader writes "The OASIS Group announces that the third Committee Draft [PDF] of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification has been approved
as an OASIS Standard. The submission of the approved standard can be found at here.
The OpenDocument format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats including the popular DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office. Organizations and individuals that store their data in an open format avoid being locked in to a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their current vendor goes out of business or changes their software or licensing terms to something less favorable."
The OpenDocument format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats including the popular DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office. Organizations and individuals that store their data in an open format avoid being locked in to a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their current vendor goes out of business or changes their software or licensing terms to something less favorable."
- posted in hardware?
Actually, it's not ironic.
.doc...
PDF is an open format, with many non-acrobat readers for it. And one can't expect it to be in the format which the document specifies... it just got approved after all.
It would be ironic if it were in
PDF is an open format. Ther are several non_Adobe PDF readers, eg GSview.
What other office suites? You mean all the office suites except OpenOffice, StarOffice, KOffice and the Gnome Office project, which all are planning to use/are already using it?
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
Ehm, the OpenSource/Free Software office suites were the ones pushing this in the first place.
But to answer your question, yes, both Openoffice2 and Koffice-1.4 are going to switch to the format and Openoffice-1.4 already supports it.
Btw., does anybody know how abiword is going to handle it?
PDF is an open format. Here's the link, if you'd like to implement a reader: http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/ind ex_reference.html
Activists United
With respect to (1), OpenOffic.org and KOffice have both announced that OpenDocument will be their new native file format. This is one of the biggest changes in OO.o 2.0. You can try it for youself in the beta, OO.o 1.9. As for KOffice, I don't know when they are planning on having an OpenDoc version out, and as for AbiWord, I haven't heard much (I don't really follow AbiWord).
#define DRM chmod 000
That only means that they wanted to influence the process. Whether or not
they plan to adopt the new format(s) is a completely different issue.
Really? Where do you have that from? I see no mention of Microsoft.
On the website when I click on 'Members' it lists:
OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC
This page lists the OASIS members currently on this TC's membership roster. People with the role of Member, TC Chair, or Secretary are voting members of the TC. Prospective Members will become voting members after attending the first meeting of the TC or by completing a probationary period.
Person Organization Role
Tom Magliery Blast Radius Inc. Voting Member
Nathaniel Borenstein IBM Voting Member - Probation
Xiaowei Hu IBM Voting Member - Probation
Gary Edwards Individual Voting Member
David Faure Individual Voting Member
Patrick Durusau Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Voting Member
Michael Brauer Sun Microsystems* TC Chair
Lars Oppermann Sun Microsystems* Secretary
Why would you want a browser plugin? I click on pdf files, and xpdf opens them in a new window. I like that.
That said, if you want it opened in your browser, use konqueror (it can embed kpdf), or try plugger.
As much as it pains me to say this, Microsoft has such a strangle-hold over the most common document formats that this attempt will be largely useless unless they come on board.
Which they, most obviously, won't.
However, I applaud this group for at least trying.
Well, "this group" has Microsoft as a sponsor organization.
Actually, they're quite a bit involved in OASIS and standardization.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Most people are approaching this from the wrong PoV.
Once there is a standard in place, then implementation occurs. And it's definitely likely to appear - first in Open Office, then maybe spreading - I can see Linux using it as the default document standard.
Microsoft will eventually have to support it - if it reaches 10% of the market, then you are going to start getting complaints from customers. Even if it only implements a read-only function, that's good enough.
I face a major productivity sapper, when I send off a .sxw to someone who can't open it. I have to open, export to .doc, check that it displays ok, and then resend. If I can happily compose in whatever editor I want, and press send without having to bother about whether a client will be able to read or not - so much the better.
As an aside, the Indian government is slowly adopting Open Office - mainly because these can be easily translated into the local language. Useful, especially in rural areas and the smaller towns. The government itself released a Tamil version of Open Office, Firefox and a bunch of other stuff. Check out their efforts here.
Cheers, R.
Having an open, well-structured and well-documented format means that all word-processors will be able to write documents that will be (hopefully) perfectly readable in all word processors that implement the standard, and also ensures that we are not tied to the software of a single vendor (which might no longer exist) when we wish to view these documents years down the line (critically important for documents stored by e.g. the Government).
There is a mis-perception that it is not an open format by people who only know microsoft office, because the most reliable method of converting MS office documents to .pdf is by printing to acrobat distiller, for which you need to buy about $300 worth of Adobe software.
Open office exports to .pdf from the file menu. This functionality cost $0 to include, because the format is open. If Microsoft had a business model that involved providing useful tools to their customers they could have included the same functionality, with the same $0 in licensing costs to them.
However since it is more important to them that they have as large a proportion of the world as possible locked into their own proprietary formats, so you find that despite charging you $600-$900 dollars simple, cheap, useful functionality is not included.
And the consequence? People think that .pdf is a proprietary format! You should realize by now that Microsoft's (illegal) business model is doing a great disservice to their customers and the world.
They are not selling a product that is good for their customers. They are selling a product that instead ensures that they will not have to sell a product that is good for their customers in the future.
Still want to buy their stuff?
If you're not want to use PDF: It's also available in OpenOffice SXW format: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/download.php/ 12028/office-spec-1.0-cd-3.sxw
So OASIS support in KOffice is almost there. The final 1.4 release is scheduled for mid-June (see the release schedule)
To err is human, but to forgive is beyond the scope of the Operating System...
XML, self describing, easier to parse, easy to implement, self validating.
Any more questions?
You CAN get the PDF specifications directly from the Adobe, it has not been reverse engineered: http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/ind ex_reference.html
Your understanding is incorrect, the format is documented by Adobe right here.
>You mean all the office suites except OpenOffice, StarOffice, KOffice and the Gnome Office project, which all are planning to use/are already using it?
what about Apple's iWork with Keynote and Pages?
they should use this format as default file format.
I agree...though only two will for sure; Koffice and OpenOffice.org.
Abiword has an export/import support, though 'does not have a single native format'. Gnumeric doesn't currently support it, and I found no reference in the mailing list since 2003 about OASIS.
Let's hope that this turns around since the only alternative is to use Word and Excel as the main formats and convert to/from the others using that.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
I suspect that one of the (admittedly several) reasons that Word managed to knock out Wordperfect so many years ago was that Wordperfect didn't make a huge effort to be compatible with the competition.
Completely off topic: A reasonable suspicion, but that's not what happened:
WordPerfect prided itself on converting everything, even arcane formats (for example, on WP 2000, I can save in MultiMate and Navy DIF Standard formats, whatever that is). I recall no unusual problems with Word (no conversion is perfect).
Nor was WordPerfect technically inferior. In one PC Magazine review at the time, even 16 bit WordPerfect beat 32 bit Word.
Word's advantages were,
1) They came out with a 16 bit Windows 3.1 version first.
2) They came out with a 32 bit Windows version way ahead of the competition. There were complaints that they took advantage of inside info on Win95.
3) Word was bundled with Excel -- that was the beginning of 'office suites'.
4) Microsoft, already holding the Windows monopoly, licensed Office to PC manufacturers in the following way: The manufacturer buys one Office license fee for every machine they sell, whether or not the customer buys Office. Guess what came with every new PC?
The gov't eventually made MS change the last strategy on anti-trust grounds.
Accordingly, Adobe gives anyone copyright permission, subject to
the conditions stated below, to:
Prepare files whose content conforms to the Portable Document Format
Write drivers and applications that produce output represented in the Portable
Document Format
Write software that accepts input in the form of the Portable Document Format
and displays, prints, or otherwise interprets the contents
Copy Adobe's copyrighted list of data structures and operators, as well as the
example code and PostScript language function definitions in the written
specification, to the extent necessary to use the Portable Document Format for
the purposes above
If it's still unclear, I don't know what else to say.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
God knows why, but they are listed.
Microsoft is NOT a supporter of the OpenDocument format and it is very hard to believe they could sponsor its development. Only IBM and Sun are listed as "Sponsor-level members" on the OpenDocument TC Page so you would better check your sources before posting.
If you don't fail at least 90 percent of the time, you're not aiming high enough. (Alan Kay)
Only 600 pages? (checks...680+, 28 for the table of contents alone plus executive overviews here and there) Still, at 680 pages, that's not bad! After all, OpenDocument covers word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and graphics and all the elements in those formats including forms, dates, curved graphical elements, text flow -- both as raw data structures and printable output.
If you've ever worked on specifications before -- including raw specs that are not project/product specific -- you know that even to tell somone how scratch thier ass takes a good 15 pages. 15 pages if you skip defining what a hand is, what fingers are, and which specific person(s) are responsible for ass scratching and what the job titles are. Double the number of pages if it's in any way government related.
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
... but you can't make him use Ogg.
"Approved" != "Adopted", and best of luck with that.