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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."
Microsoft Employees themselves are saying that open office formats (at least partially, or for old versions) are a good thing. Others are saying they want to quit soon. Note that this open revolt against their management is being spearheaded by the mysterious Mini-Microsoft.
Will these attitudes finally change MSFT from the bottom up, or just get these guys fired? I suspect the latter, but hey, we live in interesting times...
"limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others."
prohibits others? i know this is obvious to everyone here, but the fact that the oasis format is open and fully documented invalidates this argument. there is absolutely no reason why any vendor cant implement the oasis format.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
Suppose I have an OpenOffice document I need to edit, but I have to use a friend's computer. They're running Windows and have never heard of OpenOffice. I need the job done really fast, but they have dialup internet. Do I download OpenOffice, install it on their computer (OpenOffice, what the heck is OpenOffice)? And then load my document?
Besides: RTF is open and it's easily editable.
Actually the new rules say that Open Formats should be provided in addition to whatever other format of choice is used. But have no fear, the representatives of my state are likely to comply with the wishes of M$ and people like you. Those corrupt bastards are just looking for some backstratching from M$
In light of your sig, I would suggest not posting while drunk as well. Otherwise, you write stuff like this.
the OO format is open. MS does not document anything about their format. Neither does WP or Ami Pro. Every thing that is known about all of them, is from reverse engineering. That is not a good way to preserve data.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Maybe someone should remind Microsoft that they sponsored the development of OpenDocument.
"Yields falsehood when preceded by its own quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its own quotation.
Somebody at one of those associations knows somebody who's on a mailing list with me and thus I got these talking points; I can't say for sure who wrote them, but I can guess. Let's give them a look, then walk through point by point.
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Yep, nothing like first-hand information. So now, I've read this from a guy who posted an article based on information he got from a guy on a mailing list who knows a guy... I'm confused already.
I see that Microsoft reported 7.915 billion profit on $11.013 billion in revenues for "Information Worker" products (i.e. Office).
. .
But (see previous discussion) there will also be some pay-offs; you take the pain now or you support a 72% profit margin forever.
This is rather trivial, but I should point out that profit margin is calculated as profit/cost (cost to the producer, not the consumer). The cost to the producer (Microsoft) would be their $10.013 billion in revenues, minus their $7.915 billion profit.
This makes for a profit margin of 255%. In other words, they're getting back more than 2-1/2x what their paying in. Not a bad return on investment, if you ask me.
Sent from my computer.
Now GET OFF MY LAWN!
"Let's face it, do you want to be the one who has to train all these government employees how to use OpenOffice."
The point of the switch isn't to save money but to support the freedom of information. If commonwealth employees have to be retrained in order to ensure that commonwealth citizens will be able to have access to commonwealth-published documents without being locked into vendor-specific software (or worse, a specific version of said software), so be it.
The commonwealth is there to to serve the citizenry, not sell software from an out-of-state vendor for the sake of saving a few bucks.
MA was there 100 years ago and most likely will be around 100 years from now. What about Microsoft?
Here is the weblog of the Microsoft developer (Brian Jones) who is in charge of their Office file format. These two entries deserve particular hatred for their complete failure to address the issues about openness brought up (repeatedly) in the comments.
Brian has made it clear that he just won't listen, but if you have time it would be good if you could add your voice to the comments on his blog calling for true openness.
if Microsoft doesn't release Office anymore, suddenly their files are pretty much useless without expensive reverse engineering.
You mean, expensive reverse engineering like it's now necessary to open up the Excel Spreadsheet I keep my checking account balanced in? Expensive as in 'install OpenOffice on my NetBSD box' (or compile it there, if you're talking about an obscure arch)?
For most purposes the Reverse Engineering has already been done. And Microsoft's Office is such a 'big target' format, it will ALWAYS be reverse engineered en-masse and for free.
resigned
"limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others."
I think they mean that it prohibits other formats. That is, of course, what a good specification does.
Even this generous interpretation is an exaggeration that reeks of M$'s characteristic dishonesty. Specifying a format for document exchange and archival will not keep anyone from using their favorite editor. They will simply have to copy that document into an editor that will save in the correct format. M$, of course, wants the more clueless lawmakers to arrive at your conclusion - that somehow this is giving a Sun an exclusive fromat franchise. As you pointed out, the standard is free for the taking, so M$ can quickly tack on the format translator and stick it into a Windoze update. Because the standard was developed in the open, M$ has only M$ to blame for their lack of product today.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
#1 is almost a red herring.
Not all of the documents will be checked. The critical ones (i.e., current rules, policies, public documents) will be checked, of course.
Others that most of the users think will be tough to convert will actually convert quite well, because 99% of Word users do not use styles, really know much about using fieldcodes or embed/link to parts of other Office documents via OLE, and a few more might actually use tables meaningfully. So the big problem here then becomes how badly does OO mangle any typeface conversions w.r.t. layout-by-whitespace, especially with regards to forms.
Instead of linking to other Office docs, it's generally just easier and more meaningful to copy-and-paste the information, and it's far easier to distribute that way, because it avoids the "F9 to refresh/can't find parent document" scenario. Especially if you've got a chunk of data that you really want to span a page break (OLE link container cannot span page breaks).
The poweruser spreadsheets might also not convert well, especially if they use user-written VBA functions or add-ins. But that won't be too many XLS files, either.
The rest will be checked when they're opened or when someone tells them there is a problem with them, and at some point, old documents might even just be left as-is.
But, really, #2 is going to be a red herring anyways, because it can be of concern whenever a new version of Office is released as well.
Access databases? Well... The data should be in a server RDBMS (even if it's on a workstation) anyways. Postgres could fill in nicely. Front-end? There are ways around that (even use OO's spreadsheet to do the front-end). This is one tool that will require probably a suprising amount of developer time, but there's always just linking to the data via ODBC, and keeping the front-end part. The data should not be in MDB files, though (this is good Access design practice anyways. move data to separate MDB/RDBMS ).
If MA goes forward with their plans, MS will almost certainly add support to MS Office for OpenDocument.
I will wager that MS builds a special plug-in or module for OpenDocument support, one that is bug-prone, hard to obtain, and hard to install. One that often does the wrong thing, makes crappy documents, and on the whole exists to ruin the intent and name of OpenDocument.
MS will let MA win the battle, but MS will battle openness until Bill Gates is dead.
FYI, I find MS-Office much more unreliable than OpenOffice. No bull. And I use both quite a bit.
The reverse engineering is only about 90% done and will likely get little better. It is good enough for many, but the missing bits are the main reasons corporates attempts to trial OOo etc. fail. And the reason the reverse engineering is not done is because .doc and .xls is not open. Nowhere does Microsoft publish all the document specs. Contrast this with TCP/IP which is an open standard and just works.
"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."
I had to re-read that line twice. I thought they were talking about Microsoft being preferential, narrow, etc, etc... not OpenOffice.
Can someone actually Orwellian-like bend their mind so that 2+2=5 for me, and explain the logic behind that statement where choosing an open standard over a closed-patented-licensed-EULA'd-sign with blood-give up your first born is a bad choice?
Or is this just what I think it is, one of Microsoft's "A Few Good Men" speeches:
"I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a man who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very OS that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather you just said "thank you" and went on your way. Otherwise I suggest you pick up a keyboard and start writing code. Either way, I don't give a damn what open standards you think you are entitled to."
I8-D
Most businesses may mark up their prices substantially *on a single item*.
Most businesses do *not* give a 2X return on investment.
Charge what the market will bear...and in this case we (the market) are deciding not to bear that kind of gouging any more.
Think about it for a minute. Programmers, companies, and governments are so *fed up* with Microsoft, that we're developing our own software to replace theirs. That's got to tell you something about what the market is thinking...
The OpenOffice / OpenDocument format specification is missing some functionality alright -- but not a piece of functionality that any legitimate user or developer is ever likely to notice.
Closed document formats are how the likes of Microsoft introduce built-in obsolescence into a market where there is none. You can design a physical machine with moving parts, such as a VCR, car, printer, air conditioner, washing machine, hi-fi, gas boiler, garden strimmer or fridge to fail after a certain amount of time; and as long as it worked reasonably well up till then and you allowed a fair price per year of service, there is still a better-than-reasonable chance that the customer will buy another one off you. But you can't plant a time bomb in software: once a user has bought {or, even worse, pirated} it from you, then it will just work forever.
The only new feature in any version of Word since '97 {which was the last version I really used} seems to have been a new and incompatible document format. Sure there probably are one or two power user functions. But most people -- and I'm talking the kind who use spaces for doing page layout -- aren't going to notice any of them. All this kind of user will ever see is that they can't open files saved with their friends' newest versions of Word which came with their spanky new PCs, in their old version of Word. That's the only way in which Word 97 is "not good enough" for the overwhelming majority of users.
But the concept of an open and extensible document format, with graceful degradation, totally and unequivocally blows this plan out of the water. There is no way to hold customers' data to ransom if the format is open; and extensibility combined with graceful degradation makes the file format future-proof. Anyone could write an extension to an earlier version OpenOffice.org to support functionality introduced in a later version, or initially implemented in a closed-source derivative.
It's no wonder Microsoft don't like this. They must feel like someone who has managed to steal everything they needed to live on, since time immemorial; but then suddenly got caught and now has to pay for everything.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
I understand this for uncompressed xml files: you can look at the XML text and if some has become garbage you can try to repair it with a text editor by omitting the garbage and matching up the missing element tags.
However, OpenDocument files are compressed Zip files.
Damaged zip files can become undecompressable, or the damage may decompress thoughout the file.
Doesn't that make OpenDocument files an unrecoverable binary format with respect to damage and repair?
(For archive purposes, governments will use other means to protect against damage and to perform repair, such as keeping multiple copies on separate media. I suspect repair is needed more for recent documents not yet archived. )