Slashdot Mirror
A Look At MS's MA Talking Points
tbray writes "It may not be a Halloween Document, but one of the lobby groups in the thick of the Massachusetts office-doc standardization fray passed me 'The Other Side's Talking Points', so I've published (and slightly deconstructed) them with a barnyard-animal picture." From the article: "The direction toward interoperability using XML data standards is clearly a good one. However, limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others. The proposed approach and process for use of XML data is quite open to multiple standards, yet the proposed standard for documents is quite narrow, preferential, and may not enable optimal use of the data-centric standards."
First, the format is called Open Document, not Open Office. Open Office is the program. Second, Massachusetts is not specifying any particular software, only that any software must read/write Open Document format. Everything, and I mean everything, that Microsoft claims in their so-called talking points is self-serving rubbish. Remember that reaching a compromise with Microsoft is like reaching a compromise with cannibals that they will only eat your right arm.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Massachusetts isn't using OpenOffice's format, it's using OpenDocument. This is an open format that OOo just happens to use as well. I understand OOo had a hand in creating it, but it's not "their" format. Here's the wiki link explaining it a little further
IT'S NOT OPENOFFICE.ORG'S FORMAT
It's simply an open XML format for storing data that the developers of OpenOffice.org developed and utilize. It would be simple to modify other word processing applications to use this format... or if they stick with MS (who claims an open format in the future) I'm sure OO.o will migrate to that format.
Just because they are considering moving to OO.o doesn't mean that they are giving unfair or preferential treatment to a specific vendor... you could be their vendor if you bid low enough! All they have done is researched and chose the best open format for storing thier data that has a usable application that utilizes it.
I would bet if MS moved to an open format, they would use that instead... their objective is to have readable documents in 50 years... not to get away from MS (yet).
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Openoffice comes with a wizard to do mass conversions. It can recursively sweep through a file structure, creating a .sxw file every time a .doc file is encountered (keeping the same name).
So this strengthens the point made by the author of the article:
.sxw files for every .doc file, why not give give it a test on some smaller portion of your folder tree.
"Unless the cost of conversion right now is awfully damn high, this sounds like a good investment."
To find this insanely under-hyped feature:
File -> AutoPilot -> Document Converter
If your file server has enough room for a bunch of new
Then you can all easily see how good OpenOffice is in it's conversions on your existing data RIGHT NOW, and everyone can learn firsthand how realistic a switch to OpenOffice REALLY is.
Aren't you dying to know first hand if it's actually just that easy and we can all quit theorizing about how viable this whole thing is?
MA is using the OpenDocument format, not OpenOffice's format.
OpenDocument is not vendor-specific. Anyone can use it. The only reason MS doesn't want to support it in Word is because they know that allowing people to use a non-Word format would make it easy for people to switch away from Word.
David Wheeler on why opendoc won: link
You might want to read that again. According to the Wiki, OO.o was in fact a participator in standardization of the specification, and both the latest 1.1rc and 2.0 beta OpenOffice releases support the format. I don't know if the stable releases support it, but if not it's only a matter of time, and government moves slow enough to wait. It helps that there are already other (stable) programs that support it, like Koffice.