Slashdot Mirror
The Massachusetts Office Party
Quattro Vezina writes "The Inquirer reports that the state of Massachusetts has performed a modern-day Boston Tea Party, by dumping Microsoft Office in the proverbial ocean. According to the article, 'every state document must be in PDF or using Open Office formats' starting in 2007." Forbes has the story as well. More from the article: "The switch to open formats such as these was needed to ensure that the state could guarantee that citizens could open and read electronic documents in the future, according to Massachusetts - something that was not possible using closed formats. The proposal, which is open for comment until the end of next week before it takes effect, would represent a big boost for open source software such as Open Office, which is created by volunteer programmers and made available free of charge."
At least the file format has been publicly released:t /sdk/index.html
And you can use it reliably on more than just devices that can handle office formats.3 .shtml
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/acroba
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/Xpdf-415
I don't get it.
This was also covered on groklaw, yesterday.
"The proposal, which is open for comment until the end of next week before it takes effect, would represent a big boost for open source software such as Open Office, which is created by volunteer programmers and made available free of charge.""
It's also a "boost" for PDF too. But let's not draw too much attention to that fact. Seriously "open formats" aren't the exclusive province of Open Source.
I hardly see how Open Office and PDF formats "guarantee" citizens will be able to view electronic documents in the future any more so than MS Office formats.
Open Office formats are zipped XML. All you need to get at the data in them is an unzip program and a text reader. It's a good way to "guarantee" that anyone can view them in the future.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
If the format is properly documented and the documentation is available, it is only a matter of getting someone to write an appropriate viewer or conversion tool.
If the formats documentation is not available, you are pretty much at mercy of whoever invented it, and their willingness and ability to provide viewers and conversion tools.
An open format cannot die, as anybody can read the open standard and produce an implementation.
Also, using something like open office lowers the barrier to entry for those wishing to read the documents. If a user can use cheap hardware with free software then a larger proportion of the population can access the data.
Actually, the Boston Tea Party was held to incite the British into open action against the rebel minority in the colonies. In effect, the rebels wanted to increase the divide between Britain and the colonies so that the colonials who preferred amity and compromise would come to their side.
The pretext of the BTP was to protest the imposition of import taxes, it had nothing to do with opening up the market to American tea traders.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Adobe Acrobat is not the only program that can open PDF. At least on Linux there is vast choice of PDF readers, all of them are much faster than Acrobat, I guess it applies to Windows too.
No, it doesn't. That is a built-in feature of OS X. Any program with a print option in OS X has a "Save as PDF" button.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
Actually, it was created by a bunch of paid programmers in Germany. It has been maintained, enhanced, and extended by volunteer programmers.
And I love it!
This is amusing.
.sxw extension to .zip & throw it into whatever unzipper you wish to.
However, less-astute readers should remember that the OO.o formats are well-documented & any other program can easily write an implementation to spec.
They are also XML files, which can be understandable in plaintext. This means many people don't even have to bother looking at the spec to extract useful information.
So why the gobblygook? Look at that "PK" at the beginning of the string. That indicates that it is zipped. Rename the
Check it out: Microsoft Office Open XML Formats:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/fileoverv
http://www.betanews.com/article/Microsoft_Opens_O
Ummm, anyone has been able to open office documents for free for a long time now. Microsoft has had viewers available for most of their office formats, free to download, for years.
a milyID=95e24c87-8732-48d5-8689-ab826e7b8fdf&Displa yLang=en
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?F
Hell the viewer is faster than opening acrobat by a long shot too.
Know why? Adobe Reader 7 (and I'd guess Acrobat 7 too) start a speed launch app at system startup... of course, the downside is slower system startup and a couple of megs of lost RAM. Which isn't all that much if you consider that Logitech's latest mouse drivers take up to ten...
Has no one noticed that MS themselves have recognised that open file formats are the way forward? Office 12, currently in Alpha, switches the default file format for Word, Powerpoint and Excel to a royalty free published XML format. Let the flamewar begin...
http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
http://www.planetpdf.com/
I've only used Adobe's reader.
I have used a free pdf maker, and it worked fine.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
If you use Adobe's reader, you can hold onto either shift or control (I forget, so I just press both) and the reader opens up in a second with no plugins.
The format isn't made for heavy editing of files, it is meant to be an archival format for finished documents. The big thing now in the business world are these high speed, networked scanner/copier/printers that can save the scans in PDF. In fact, "PDF" is quickly becoming a verb.
To navigate through the document faster, just use the thumbnail mode...it's just like using a microfilm reader, without the film.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
PDF is an open, documented format, and anyone can implement it.
In particular:
- On Linux, ggv will open PDF documents quickly and very happily, and they didn't need to reverse engineer anything or infringe patents to do it. It's free.
- On Windows, there are viewers that aren't Acrobat.
- OpenOffice on all plaforms can output PDF. No $400 license needed to generate the PDF.
- Scripting tools: GhostScript can be used for the batch generation or batch printing of PDF files. GhostScript is free. Our customers regularly send us thousands of print jobs - usually as PDF, which we run through gs, which is available for many platforms including Windows and Linux.
- There are lots of automatic tools for generating PDF on the fly, such as HTMLdoc (a GPLed tool, which is available for Windows, Linux, Mac etc. and includes a GUI).
- The Macintosh by default can create output from ANY program as PDF, because you can print to PDF. There are similar print drivers for Windows.
You don't need to pay Adobe any money to read, generate or manipulate PDF files. It's an open format. Many programs can do it. It's only those who know of nothing outside of a Microsoft catalogue who think it's different.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
KDE now has a very nice and efficient implementation (kpdf), which will be available for all major platforms eventually.
I am trolling
Not true, CSS has pagination rules.
This is more of a push by the state of Massachusetts to force Microsoft and other similar vendors to provide an export option that contains no proprietary data in it.
.doc files and other proprietary storage formats. Basically, MA is making a law that states that they do not ever want to be committed to any one vendor, and that all they really care about is the document and the actual information it contains.
While it's true that standards change over time, the fact that there would be an open standard means that a document could be successfully reconstituted (all standards include version information). Requiring an open document storage option means that even 5 years after a standard has gone the way of the dodo, a developer such as myself could still recreate the document if needed.
This is not true of
Yes, but as an addendum, don't forget that deficit spending isn't necessarily covered by the tax payers, but rather by the tax payers' children.
Of course, since the rapture is coming "any day now", the current federal deficit won't be a problem.
You can try this out ** BEWARE ** Page causes Deer Park 2 to crash so maybe you want to use something else to open it http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11041 I keep only the EH32.api and Search.api, all the rest is shoved out. Acrobat loads in a snap after that.
Any bets that Microsoft will be there, trying to get this reversed?
Well, of course. They're presumably already hard at work.
But in the long run, this is a rather good idea for the state. Remember that state agencies send out a lot of things that are legal notices, and there are consequences to ignoring them.
Consider a scenario:
1. Citizen C gets notice N from state agency A. It's in a format that doesn't display properly on C's computer, or displays in a garbled form that is easily misunderstood.
2. C doesn't do what N requires, because C can't read N.
3. A files suit against C for noncompliance.
4. C demonstrates in court that he/she couldn't read N because it was in a proprietary format not readable on C's computer.
5. The court decides for C and orders A to pay court costs.
6. On appeal, the court orders A to also provide C with a Windows machine so that C can read future notices.
Microsoft is now in a good situation to sell a lot of machines in the state. However, every citizen is now filing for a state reimbursement on the price fo their computer. The courts uphold these reimbursements on the grounds that the machines are necessary to read state notices.
Wonderful for Microsoft. Not wonderful for the state.
Anyone with a grain of sense would want a law to the effect that state notices be readable by the recipient without purchasing any specialized equipment. Sensible government admins would already require this of their employees. This doesn't prevent computerized documents; it only requires that documents be in formats that all computers can display properly. Plain text, HTML and PDF all work fine.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
What's even funnier is people parroting right wing propoganda. Observe the top ten states for taxing their residents as documented by CNN/Money:
And where does Massachusetts rank? Way down the list. Tied with the liberal sewer pits of Georgia and South Carolina:
30 Illinois 9.80%
31 Georgia 9.80%
32 Massachusetts 9.80%
33 South Carolina 9.70%
34 Virginia 9.70%
Source: http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/taxesbystat e2005/
But why let facts intrude on your right wing talking points?
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
This event has been long in the making. Massachusetts established an "Open Source Public Trough" over a year ago, and many of its more prominent regional web sites had been using and/or advocating open source since before then (see this recommendation or Guide to Free Software for just a couple of examples from my home town) and of course Massachusetts was the only state not to cave in regarding the court case against Microsoft.
For locals, this isn't surprising. What's more surprising is that it took so long.
BS. What Adobe really offers is the documentation on how the format works. Microsoft doesn't do that for their formats.
There are others with bad implementations of XML, so that even though they don't obfuscate or patent-encumber them, interoperability is painful.
But OO.o XML is fine.
I agree. I work for a Michigan College's online study program, and we require all of our instructors post their documents either in .RTF or .PDF files (unless they're teaching a specialized computer course like Microsoft Word, Office, or Powerpoint), so that people on Macs, Linux or even older Microsoft systems can read the documents. It would be nice to see the government have the same concern for its citizens as we have for our students.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
That's a red herring. They charge less in sales because they charge more in other areas. When you rank states by ALL regulations and taxes, Massachusetts ranks in the worst 10 every time.
4 /econ_freedom/freedom.html
... well, what else is old?
http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/entrep/200
http://heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=15303
Notice how the liberal states have economic environments that are the most likely to screw poor people out of higer wages and opportunity. So it seems to me the sales tax rankings were selectively chosen to promote an dishonest liberal bias
Page 18 of the PDF:
...so Jan 2007 is when existing apps must be replaced. Newly bought stuff will have to be compliant from now (more or less), as you suggest. A year and a quarter for the complete migration of a state government bureacracy isn't unreasonable...
I
Of course, until 2007 is more than enough time for MS to add OpenDocument support if they'd risk losing too much.
... you know that any official/legal notice will be sent by US mail, certified mail, or delivered by hand.
Not true at all, at least not in Masachusetts.
There are a number of agencies that send out things like tax and license notices via email, if you've registered to receive them that way. If you don't pay, you will eventually get that registered-mail notice. But if you do pay, that email becomes your only notice. It's a real convenience for us computer-literate types, and saves the government a lot of money. It's been years since I've received a hand-delivered government notice. Some things still arrive via first-class mail, but very often the email/web approach has handled it already.
They can get away with it legally, because such "pre-notice" messages aren't the legal notices; they're just a convenience for the taxpayer.
But we've had problems with government web sites that are only tested, and only render sensibly, with IE. Some downloadable docs are only in MS-Word format. Again, this is legal, because you aren't forced to use them; you can always use the hard copy. You can take a day off work, drive downtown to the agency, and pick up the docs you need. Or you can buy a Windows machine and download the Word doc, saving yourself a day off work and lining Bill Gates' pockets by another (to him) small amount.
There are those who think that it's not quite right for the government to be in bed with a major manufacturer like this. It's not a new story, of course; that's why the Boston Tea Party is brought up. Look up the history of that event. It's not an exact parallel, but it's close enough for media reports.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
At least, I didn't have it until I installed a licensed copy of Adobe Acrobat Standard.
The Adobe PDF printer you're seeing was added by a third party application, probably some flavor of Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional. I don't know what other Adobe products also add a PDF printer driver. Photoshop might, and I'm pretty sure Illustrator does as well.
No, it's not part of Windows XP, and the only way to (legally) get it is to buy the necessary software from Adobe.
Some demo versions of Adobe software may have a bug that results in the PDF Printer remaining behind after an uninstall, or after the demo expires. That could be another way you got the option.
But no, the rank and file Windows XP users do not have a PDF Printer available by default in either the Home or Professional editions.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
There are probably parts of PDF that are propietary or undocumented (special features), but basic PDF is just compressed postscript.
There are LOTS of open source readers for PDF that work well.
You're still missing the point and there's no "emotion based challenge."
It's not whether a home user can open the file easily today. That's irrelevant. It's whether it CAN be opened at all if the company providing the free viewer stops providing that free viewer. In 25 years, will you be able to find a viewer to open word97 docs? It's doubtful.
OpenDocument, however, is an open format. It's plain text. Anyone can read the text by unzipping the file and opening the text up with any text editor. Because of this, it doesn't matter what happens to Sun (the company developing StarOffice/OpenOffice).
As long as ASCII or Unicode is still around, you could still open an OpenDocument file and read the text, even if it's 500 years in the future and Microsoft is only a footnote in some dusty old history book.
Since when do you have to shell out big bucks to read MS Office documents? MS itself provides free viewers for all their formats.
Furthermore, the next version of MS Office will have open formats.
Please provide some evidence of this. I frankly don't believe it for a minute. While the upcoming Office file formats will be XML based, there is absolutely no reason to believe that the format will be open. Unless I've missed the boat entirely (which is certainly possible), it's my understanding that the "open" XML documents will contain lots of binary information understandable only by Office and decidedly not open.
Also, since when is open source a guarantee that a file format will be around forever? It seems to me the opposite is true.
If that's the way it seems to you, then you aren't thinking too clearly. Open source definitely guarantees that a file format will be around forever because the source will be around forever. In the absolute worst case, you would need to find a dusty old version of the app in question, and compile it yourself. However, I can't see how that worst case could ever happen since I'm assuming that the document format would be open as well as the application source. Think about it for a minute. If the source code of the application that produces and consumes the documents is open, then how in the hell would the document format be closed?!
It seems to me like Massachussett's decision is based more on politicking than anything else.
I suspect that this could very well be true, but I don't have enough first hand knowledge of the situation to come to any definite conclusion.
To see the draft of the "data format" standard, and to send comments to the Massachusetts government agency, go to this url and follow the links:
http://www.mass.gov/Aitd/
The govt web site is not well organized. Here is a separate url that briefly describes the proposed standard.
m l
http://www.mass.gov/eoaf/open_formats_comments.ht
Same way that Java is "open". The specs have been published so that anyone and their family pet can create and/or render PDF. e.g. GhostScript.
It's a very dark ride.
...is open, it was postscript that was license encumbered (IIRC). There exists a multitude of programs that can read and write PDF's.
OpenOffice.org can export to PDF. Evince, gpdf etc. can read them. There are also third-party libraries that output PDF documents (some written in pure PHP, such as FPDF, which wouldn't be as probable without specs.
I am NaN
Techworld did a followup on this story here almost a year ago, and mentioned the impact it had on MS*. Is this from the archives?
*(MS is the same thing as M$, for those of you who never read anything but slashdot commments.)
Unfortunately, when the original poster pasted it into the web form, the non-printable characters weren't included. You'll have to get a
Simply stating [Citation Needed] does not automatically make you insightful or brilliant.