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Microsoft Lashes out at Massachusetts IT Decision
scoop writes "Infoweek is reporting that the plan to eliminate the use of Office by the Massachusetts state government (previously covered on Slashdot) has not gone over well with Microsoft. Microsoft's Yates said the company agrees with the adoption of XML but does not agree that the solution to "public records management is to force a single, less functional document format on all state agencies." Microsoft also states they will not support the OpenDocument format. Looks to me Microsoft is scared their biggest cash cow is in danger from a free alternative. Soon I'm sure we'll see a Microsoft funded comparison between Office and OpenOffice."
Last time I checked, it wasn't possible to embed "voice-over-IP" in M$ documents either..
Well, I don't understand why they don't want to support it. The Office 2003 XML format is also open (perhaps a bit less "open", but open anyway) It's not open just because it's XML. XML littered with calls to undocumented, vendor-specific libraries isnt any more open than the previous .doc Formats.
And Microsoft is not "stupid" for not supporting OpenDocument. What good cause would you have to use M$ Office for 500$ when you can get OOo free?
Oh sure, somebody might actually make use of an obscure M$ Office feature. Then again, an Office suite that can't handle page counts in the hundrets isn't worth anything to me.
What makes it more humourous is that I believe he meant to say "HTML standards". If it didn't comply with HTTP standards, it might have a bit of trouble connecting to servers. :-)
== Jez ==
Do you miss Firefox? Try Pale Moon.
He also states:
"this proposal acknowledges that Open Document does not address pictures, audio, video, charts, maps, voice, voice-over-IP, and other kinds of data our customers are increasingly putting in documents and archiving."
how would you put voice-over-ip into a word processing document? if it's stored in a file then it's not exactly travelling over ip anymore.. it's merely a voice recording in a file, for which many formats already exist..
As for voice, audio, video, pictures etc, there are already documented open standards for such files, and opendocument will include these files in their original format inside the zip container.. what's the point of converting existing open formats into an xml representation of the same format?
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Just for clarification - what do you mean by 'eats large documents' - do you mean it copes well? I hope not because having had to work on courseware developed by others in Word, in my experience, the software chokes (ie crashes and corrupts files) big time on large documents regardless of whether they are in one large file (ie: >200 pages) or split into chapters. Image placement is very erratic and on most Word-originated projects we move all of the text and graphics into either Pagemaker or InDesign.
If you have ever seen a large Word document where all the image placeholders have become replaced with a large red cross you will know what I mean. Hooray for regular backups.
AT&ROFLMAO
According to the OASIS spec Embedded images (among other things) seem to be supported.
Have you tried OOo 2.0 beta yet? It kicks ass. It's quick, stable, smaller footprint than MS Office, has all the functionality I've ever used from MS Office, as well as features that I need that AREN'T in MS Office.
If all that wasn't enough, it handles almost every oddball, complex previously created MS Office file I feed it. I have some spreadsheets and Word templates that I'd never expect to work in OOo, but all except one work perfectly.
Wanting to print in booklet form, I downloaded a MS Word template, and it works fine in OOo 2.0 beta under Suse. The template in question is at http://rickyspears.com/blog/?p=76 . However, I've found that it may not be necessary -- it appears that the functionality is built in to OOo, in the form of some of it's print options.
Procrastination -- because good things come to those who wait.
They already have. Only they backpedalled away from Microsoft Office XML.
The previous draft of the standard allowed the use of Microsoft's XML file formats. Microsoft even changed their XML licensing in response to Massachusetts initial concerns.
Not to be hood-winked, lots of open source/open data/open information supporters took time to educate the drafters on exactly how Microsoft's format was not free. Take note of Groklaw articles regarding Mass., XML, and OpenDoc.
This is a huge win for open standards and democracy. The MA drafters' first priority has been citizen access to information and, once explained, they clearly understood that Office's formats are not "free" as in "freedom of the people to access government information."
Arguments about any quality or attribute of file formats other than free access to all citizens are not going to fly anymore in MA. Here's hoping other governments learn from this.
How would you put voice-over-ip into a word processing document?
The same way you would put streamed video on a webpage. You'll have some tiny embedded object that lists the application to be run and the file path/url to open.
For voice-over-ip, you would have the application and the telephone address/number of the person/company to be dialed.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Documents saved in OpenDoc format under OpenOffice 2 beta just show up as one file. I have no idea whether there is some sort of seperation inside of that file, and frankly I don't care. As far as I can tell it's just one file even with pictures embedded in it.
I haven't tried to embed any "VoIP" though.
Hope that helps.
Replying to myself here ....
I just opened one of my document files with WinRAR just to see what would happen, and it looks like it is seperate files and folders inside the main file. (including a Pictures folder which had my embedded picture in it)
Pretty interesting stuff!
And obviously these free office viewers work on other systems than windows? No.
You still need to buy MS system to view them.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
Contrast this to Microsoft's poorly-documented new XML format, which is mired in the deep and dangerous swamps of backward compatibility with everything from OLE onwards.
Which would you trust?
I'm not the poster you're replying to, but I've also expressed the opinion that OpenOffice.org is (at least for now) inferior to MS Office in several ways. Here are a few, from direct personal experience, about Writer vs. Word in particular:
I could go on for a long time, but the upshot is that OpenOffice.org Writer is fine for routine word processing where all you need is typing a letter. Then again, so is any glorified text editor. When it comes to the extra stuff a WP is supposed to bring you -- better formatting/page layout, stylesheets/document templates, tables of contents, mail merge, etc. -- it just has too many elementary bugs and usability flaws for me to recommend it over MS Word any time soon. It's a good effort, and with time and some insight from the project leaders, it could easily overtake Word in these areas, but it's not there yet.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
And it is big business. Lawyers, accountants, etc dictating, saved in a word document then sent over IP to a secretary either in the office or in India.
That feature is named "Click To Call"
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
I really don't see how they can justify such FUD
.odt XML file (rename it to a .zip and open it with Winzip or Windows zipfile on Windows) you will see a directory structure which includes folders for embedded objects. The XML then references the images or charts.
It's less FUD and more self-justification. If you open an OOo
Microsoft's Office XML embeds the chart/image data in the XML as binary, and it's that embedded binary data which allows Microsoft to keep Office formats proprietary and retain data lock-in, while giving the appearance of using an open format.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
...is that is was Microsoft THEMSELVES who helped form OASIS - the group that came up with the OpenDocument schema. If Mr. Ballmer can stop throwing chairs and primal screaming for a few seconds, perhaps he can explain why MS pulled out of OASIS at the last minute and why MS Office will not accept that format. Specifically now MS, why is this format less functional? HINT: it's not an answer to say, 'because we don't control it'.
Either way, MS will have a lot of dancing to do to explain why it is that every other word processor will use OpenDoc but them. Expect to see the battle happen over and over again in other states governments, schools, etc.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
OOo puts the images together with the XML into an archive (a simple zip in fact), this not only gives you a self-contained document, but also saves space.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
It doesn't need an email client, because Mac OS X itself comes with an full email client.
...
... Reading in various formated CSV files (different delimiters, different encodings) or writing them.
Pages is a very nice write program for more the home user, or somebody who writes a lot with templates etc.
Keynote is really great and gives PowerPoint kick in the ass. And PP is the most used program in my company. The Mac Users are prefering Keynote over PP
But I really miss a spreadsheet app. Thats what I use most the time. and I really dislike Excel, cause it doesn't do what I want
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
Don't forget that word documents are actually OLE containers, alowing embedding of an OLE object, much like a plugin in a web page. In fact it is that aspect that causes problems sometimes, when the plug-in software is not installed on the platform where it is being viewed.
For my 5c worth, MS Office is a good piece of software, but I just find it a little too expensive for using at home. If it was $200 CAN, or less, as opposed to $700 then I might actually consider paying for it.
I have used the MacOS X version of office, and except for the major issue of not supporting Cocoa data formats, in the copy-paste process, its a very useable piece of software. I just wish they would address the outstanding issues. See this thread for more infor on the copy-paste issue. NeoOffice on the Mac still feels like it could do with a fair bit of GUI refinement.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
OO.o is technically superior. I'll give you two reasons. Draw, and Base. Draw is really nice to have when you want to do page layout with lots of pictures. Coming from a coreldraw background, its' nice to have an application that can do good page layout without having to pay through the nose for coreldraw, pagemaker, or quark. It's also nice to have it integrate nicely with the office suite. Which neither corel, pagemake, or quark do.
Base is also superior to Access. Access is a terrible database system. Base lets you connect to just about any database system. Imagine all those crappy databases strewn all over your organization centrallized on a single computer running MySQL. Access doesn't support some very useful SQL statements, and it scales terribly.
Oh, and if the formatting gets messed in word, you're pretty much screwed. You can't do much to save your document, short of doing a copy, paste unformatted, redo all your formatting. With OO.o, I can unzip it, look at the XML, and remove the unnecessary XML that's causing the problems. Really they should add a "reveal codes" feature like there used to be for Wordperfect 5.1. It's nice to know that I can fix it if I need to though. I don't know why they ever developed a word processor without this. You have to admit, that no matter how good your wordprocessor is, there's always going to be a time when you want to edit the formatting directly. There's always going to be problems. Might as well allow the user to fix them.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
The format is, in theory, compatible. They're all bloated OLE memory dump based files.
Moving from Windows to Mac can screw it up, having different printers can screw it up, and sometimes one version of Word just decides that it doesn't *like* that file from another version. Sometimes Word can't open files that it created itself. Sometimes different versions will render completely different.
Hell, sometimes you have to open a Word doc in OpenOffice, save it, and then go back to Word. If you ever open a document and it comes up blank, Word probably decided it's having a bad day. Try the OOo trick and it comes back.
Basically, OOo is more version compatible with Word docs than Word is.
Also, don't forget the new Office format is XML. That makes it incompatible with all other versions of Office.
These articles are delicious with irony. I sometimes find it difficult to believe these are real! Do any of the Microsoft PR people ever sit down and read statements they've made?
I realize that it's a rhetorical question, but yes, they do. That's why they still have jobs, which they have done magnificently (they haven't been sued for lying, have they?).
Not true.. the OpenDocument format supports OLE objects.
was this a serious question ? :)
:)
yes, openoffice.org supports embedded objects like spreadsheets in text documents, text passages, spreadsheets in presntations and, i think, almost any combination of these in any component.
and it's not something that will be introduced in 2.0 - it has been there... well, for some time - i just can't remember, because it was there when i needed it the first time
Rich