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KOffice Developers Reply to Yates
danimo writes "In response to his letter to the Massachusetts administration, the KOffice team has written an open letter to Microsoft manager Alan Yates. It clarifies some false claims that Yates made, such as KOffice, StarOffice and OpenOffice.org being one codebase and that OpenDocument was thus never a real standard. Massachusetts has meanwhile adopted OpenDocument."
Microsoft spreads Fear Uncertainty and Doubt, what a shocker!
Bavarian Purity Law of Rice Krispie Squares: Rice Krispies, Marshmallows, Butter, Vanilla.
Why even bother with word processors these days when LaTeX is more than capable of the vast majority of document typesetting needs? It does take a bit longer to learn that Word, but everyone I know who has learned it has become far more efficient and can produce documents that are far more professional.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I wish my organization would switch to some kind of inexpensive standard. We are starting to feel pressure from problems caused by running different versions of Word, or upgrading from OS9 to OSX and wishing they could take their license with them (without running in classic mode), or some people don't think it's worth the money to switch from AppleWorks (which sucks, by the way) to Word, and then we have to try to read documents in ClarisWorks (which also sucks) format in Word and vice-versa, and we are getting SICK OF IT! And I only work in an elementary school!
I cried real tears when Li Mu Bai died.
This is ridiculous. They are trying to establish a monopoly on the word processor market, even enforcing a standard upon people so they are restricted to their products. Heed my words, and use Microsoft Word instead.
Alan Yates.
Dear Mr Yates,
[...]
You can also write to the KOffice mailing list and ask your questions there.
I can't wait to see his flames on the mailing list!
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
Yates ????? Shouldn't that be Gates ? :)))
...that the response was basically an ad?
In Massachusetts, is it considered criminal to mislead the government or the administration in such a fashion? Could legal action be taken against Microsoft based on these blatantly false claims (ie. that KOffice is directly derived from StarOffice) that were presented to the administration as fact?
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Why is it that despite the enormous popularity of MS Office, Microsoft squeals like a stuck pig when someone (usually a government organization) chooses a competitor or a competing file format? No one else does that - everyone else learns from it and goes back to make their product better so they can win in future. Only Microsoft whines when they lose. It's not that they CANNOT incorporate OASIS into MS Office. It also seems a bit hypocritical when they moan about OASIS only effectively being supported by one product, when their own formats can at the moment only legally be supported by Microsoft thanks to their patents.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
hahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahhawwwwwwwwwwwwwww
So he's not just "trying to save only [his] own face," but is actually pointing out that there are multiple implementations and that OpenDocument really is a standard.
Of course, it wouldn't even be a problem if they were the same codebase, because since they're Free Software they can all share the same code. Certainly, Microsoft could support OpenDocument easily just by copying the same code into Office, right?
...oh, wait.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Translated: Don't listen to Yates. We can assure you that KOffice is its own entity that is in no way shape or form a derivative of OOo.
It's not a bad thing, though. There are certainly people stupid enough to believe a letter sent by Microsoft would have no agenda. This, at least, sets the record straight for all the world to see.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
They say it's "illegal" to standardize on OpenDocument and back that up with the (false) claim that the tools that support it are from a single codebase.
All so they can convince the Mass. gov't to use their own single codebase "standard."
... one of the first things that they teach you is that if somebody calls you an idiot, then duck the response. Don't stand up and loudly proclaim that you're not an idiot, you'll make a headline out of it.
KOffice, or anybody else for that matter would probably have better served their cause by not responding at all to this.
Wallin made statements like:
"KOffice is the most comprehensive of all office suites in existence, comprising no less than 11 different components in one well-integrated package."
Is it really, though? I mean, it's one thing to have 11 different components. But it's another to have all those components working well. While the very core KOffice applications like KWord are acceptable, some of the other components aren't exactly the most usable. To declare KOffice as being "the most comprehensive" office suite might be somewhat incorrect.
"Last, but not least: Within a year, KOffice will likely run on Windows as well."
This could be a very dangerous thing to claim. Let us say that in a year, KOffice is not running on Windows. This claim has now left the KOffice team in a very difficult position. They have no choice now but to include support for Windows within a year. Otherwise Microsoft and others could point to this letter as being a work of deception.
I commend Wallin for attempting to set the record straight regarding the claim that KOffice was derived from StarOffice, but perhaps some of the claims are going a bit too far.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
I'm still amazed that Microsoft is acting like this is a sudden event. The tide in Massachusetts has been turning this way for a long time. Didn't they wonder about Massachusetts being the only state that didn't cave in and settle in the MS monopoly case? Didn't they wonder about the ramifications of the Massachusetts "Open Source Software Trough" when it was first instituted some years ago? Didn't they see the writing on the wall in local Massachusetts community sites like Saugus.net that have been promoting free software and open standards since the '90s? Haven't they noticed that recent Massachusetts-based projects (like the local Teaching American History Grant participation have been embracing open standards?
Wake up Microsoft. This shouldn't be a surprise. What's more, other states have been following Massachusetts' example regarding the open source trough, so I expect that they may also take a good hard look at what's happening here now.
Does anybody know wether there are plans by Apple?
Microsoft pulls stuff like this all the time. In fact, it is their entire business strategy, and has been since the founding of the company. The only thing that's surprising is how they manage to get away with it most of the time.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The Microsoft Office formats themselves aren't that great. I work at a investment company which relies heavily on Excel. Over the years they've been using a few spreadsheets that has been around since Office 2000 at least. When we upgraded again to Office 2003, we had a few sheets exhibiting really, really strange behavior such the sheets wouldn't update unless you do a cut and paste first. We ended up having to simply rebuild those sheets cell by cell in Excel 2003. Once that was done, everything was many times faster and no more strange behaviors. The resulting file was also many times smaller. If we had access to those formats, at least we could have looked at it and see what was going on.
Some of the traders have become so annoyed by the degree of control Microsoft has over what an user can do that they joke, "Microsoft is trying to protect me from myself again".
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Ah, wonderful. I love reading the same thing twice. It makes the internet seem useful, somehow.
This is the first I've seen of Yates' letter from Microsoft. He makes some points, and I'm curious to know how their own format compares.
How many different applications from different vendors already support the MS XML format? How does this number compare to the OpenDocument number?
OpenDocument will be usable on a number of CPU and OS platforms. How many CPU and OS platforms will be supported by MS's own XML format? (I use a Solaris workstation at work and do not myself have access to a Windows PC until I get home, at which point I'm not "working" anymore)
How long ago was MS's own XML standard finalized? And how widely is it in current use today? (I honestly don't know either since MS tools don't run onmy workstation at work, and I don't do this sort of thing at home to be worth buying their stuff myself) Has this been long and wide enough to "prove itself" in comparison to how long and wide OpenDocument's use has been to date?
If MS is losing business due to the choice of standard, why does MS not implement this open standard in their own product?
What are the costs involved with implementing MS's own XML format for 3rd party vendors in their tools such as OpenOffice, KOffice, etc?
MS seems to dictate what capabilities are required for "modern documents". Surely the committee that decided on OpenDocument knew what their own needs are and will be, and could determine if OpenDocument's capabilities were suitable?
The reason is simple. Typesetters/formatters are great for generating splendid output. But most people never produce a hardcopy (or any "final" output) for 90% of their documents. Instead, their documents are workplaces for organizing ideas, bascially pseudo-database records in a filing system stored in their "My Documents" folder.
In short, the vast majority of word processor use is for manipulating, organizing, and retrieving text-based data in a format rapidly parsable by human eyes as part of a workflow or thought process.
For such things, LaTeX, troff, or any other text formatter... sucks. In fact, it isn't even appropriate for the task.
But you're right, if you just want nicely structured, rendered output in hardcopy or PDF, you can't beat 'em.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The idiot here is Yates; and, you are right: he will probably not respond to avoid making this more of an embarrassment than it already is.
But the KOffice team has to get the facts out. MA really does need to know that KOffice is an independent codebase. MA should also know that the argument made by Yates is based on faulty data and weigh his arguments accordingly.
Martin Kotulla
SoftMaker Software GmbH
SoftMaker Office for Windows|Linux|Android
Put up or shutup.
Yes, right now, there are only 5 applications that support OpenDocument.
Yes, right now, those applications do not have a lot of marketshare.
Pray tell: How many applications support MS Office Open XML?
How much marketshare do those applications have?
Oh, thats right, the answer it 0, and 0.
OpenDocument will always be better supported, and right now, OpenDocument has more marketshare.
Will this change with the release of Office 12? Maybe-- My guess is all your customers will continue to use DOC.
Will this change with the adoption of OpenDocument by the European Union, and various governmental organizations in the U.S.? Absolutely. You *do* realize that much of the economic activity in Europe requires working with the government.
Microsoft itself will be forced to submit documents to the EU in ISO-approved OpenDocument. Hilariously, Microsoft will have to use OpenOffice.org to do so.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
in the land of reality tv, why should any F/OSS group be admonished for using the MS media machine to advertise. This was so blatantly sarcastic that I laughed. Offering Yates a link to the KOffice website is hilarious!! I don't think anyone could have called him stupid any more pointedly and not used the word stupid or one of its synonyms.
.pdf format. Ignorance is a real enemy of the F/OSS community. More than just /.-ers need to know.
This kind of media circus brings attention to the KOffice products, and hopefully to other F/OSS offerings. There literally are people that don't know what is available, or that it can / does compete with MS Office. Not just that, there are millions of people who should know, but don't know that Adobe is not the only product that will save/print to a
Getting the information out there in the public view is VERY important. Doing it and making people laugh is even better! Well, I think so.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
I'm a hardcore KDE user and have been since the K stood for "Kool" (in fact, I remember the original project announcement page).
I Konqueror for my web browsing, KMail for my email, etc., and love the application+desktop integration. My one bugaboo is that I still can't use KWord to produce nice output, because it gets the character spacing wrong with TrueType fonts.
Has anyone else experienced this? It's been this way since the first time I tried KWord; the letter sizes and spacings are simply uneven compared to the same document/font output from WordPerfect, OpenOffice, MS Word, etc.
Is this just becuase I'm using KOffice RPM packages in Fedora (and before that Red Hat) and the GNU police have compiled something out? Do I need to compile KOffice from scratch and include some controversial/rights-questioned component to get nice output?
I've tried using both the "real-hinter" freetype library and the "auto-hinter" (in Red Hat systems, stock) freetype library on my systems, but it doesn't seem to change KWord's output. I'd really love to use KWord for my personal work, but I do need it to produce quality output.
Can anyone help me?
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
This is not funny, it's true.
However, most people aren't computer nerds.
Ah, wonderful. I love reading the same thing twice. It makes the internet seem useful, somehow... o.O
Beware, the evil web PDF! Here is the full text of Alan Yates' letter, in good ol' HTML. And yes, it is a very long letter.
-------
September 8, 2005
BY ELECTRONIC MAIL AND OVERNIGHT DELIVERY
Secretary Eric Kriss
Executive Office for Administration & Finance
State House, Room 373
Boston MA 02133
Mr. Peter Quinn
Chief Information Officer/Director
Information Technology Division
200 Arlington Street
Chelsea, MA 02150
Re: Proposed Revisions to Information Domain-Enterprise Technical Reference Model
Dear Secretary Kriss and Director Quinn:
Microsoft respectfully invites you to consider its responses to the proposed revisions to the Enterprise Technical Reference Model-Information Domain published on August 29, 2005 (ETRM) which, as currently framed, mandates exclusive use of a designated office document format within all executive agencies of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts by January, 2007.
Microsoft strongly supports the efforts of the Information Technology Division (ITD) of the Executive Office for Administration & Finance (ANF) to bring the benefits of XML to executive agencies of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. We recognize that governments are challenged to be fully accountable for archived public records well into the future, and for ensuring that government agencies can efficiently handle data and documents across all technical and organizational boundaries. We share the opinion that XML is the ideal format for data interoperability and storage, management, and archiving of public records and endorse the direction to support open and agreed-upon specifications for data interoperability within government via XML standards. We share the proposal's goals for data interoperability across government agencies and for assuring proper storage and maintenance of all public records. Consistent with this viewpoint, Microsoft has been deeply committed to supporting XML within Microsoft Office for a number of years and continues to work with many governments around the world toward these goals.
We have substantial concerns, however, with the definition of "open formats" in the current proposal. This definition mandates adoption of a single, immature format for office documents throughout the Commonwealth's executive agencies and effectively requires deployment of a single office application technology within those executive agencies. As such, this unprecedented approach not only prevents impacted state agencies of the Commonwealth from using many critical and well- established technologies, but also runs afoul of well-established procurement norms without due consideration for the enormous costs and technical challenges that stem from the proposal. We simply do not believe that the proposed mandate for this exclusive document format is the best solution for achieving the Commonwealth's laudable goals.
Microsoft's key concerns are as follows:
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
it is shared fud. Just go look at CAGW, and ACT (or is that act-up, or act-down, or something like that). In fact, simply watch any partner company or any of the analysis companies (idc, gartner, etc).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
KOffice got a lot features lately. Development speeds up. Just get a fresh copy to test it yourself.
Maybe I missed it, but I read the K office reply, and it does not seem to me that the K office person actually addressed the issue at hand, which is the origin of the code base.
In fact, the K office reply was little more then standard PR speak.
Massachusetts wants Free standards so that it can maintain transparency of government, which is essential for the democratic process. Microsoft apparently actually wants governments to be opaque, secretive, totalitarian, and in bed with corporations (namely, Microsoft itself). Microsoft's lies don't just harm KOffice, but they actually try to subvert democracy itself.
Microsoft hates Freedom! Microsoft hates America! Microsoft supports Fascism!
And no, this isn't a troll, because it's supported by the facts of Microsoft's actions.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
This is sad to say, but...
you do realize this is mainly some gratuitous back-patting on the part of the OSS community, right?
I'd like to have some nice graphs to show you, but the 'alternate' office suites represent less than a smidgeon on the pie graph of office suits.
Mr Yates is going to take that letter, and promptly trash it without even reading it. Then he'll return to his real job: lobbying the gov for them to use Office, in the sake of 'interoperability'. And chances aren't ridiculous that he'd win. This IS the gov that basically called off the antitrust suite.
This letter will have absolutely no influence whatsoever on Microsoft. Except if they manage to have it taken up by some major publication, it won't have any readership out of the already converted geek community, us.
The starting point of contention is a 'minor' technical one, about the codebase of KOffice being distinct from Star/OpenOffice...
Back to work, guys.
Misleading titles? Inflammatory blurbs? Keep in mind that Slashdot is a tabloid.
I bet that Microsoft already has most if not all of the code laying around to implement OpenDocument. They'll claim not to support it, of course, in an attempt to kill it so that they can use their Microsoft XML format to put open source office tools in check. (Indeed, Microsoft's vast Windows monopoly in the enterprise is increasingly reliant on their Office monopoly). Assuming Massachusetts isn't the last state to standardize on OpenDocument, though, Office will support it. And I'm sure they'll be ready to play the standard 3 E's - embrace, extend (meaning the open source tools will mysteriously crash / improperly render Office-produced OpenDocument files), and extinguish.
You could call the Massachusetts decision a victory, and I think it is certainly deserving. Just know that Microsoft isn't as dumb as many people seem to think -- you better bet they're prepared to launch their next volley.
The Microsoft Office formats themselves aren't that great. I work at a investment company which relies heavily on Excel. Over the years they've been using a few spreadsheets that has been around since Office 2000 at least. When we upgraded again to Office 2003, we had a few sheets exhibiting really, really strange behavior such the sheets wouldn't update unless you do a cut and paste first. We ended up having to simply rebuild those sheets cell by cell in Excel 2003. Once that was done, everything was many times faster and no more strange behaviors. The resulting file was also many times smaller. If we had access to those formats, at least we could have looked at it and see what was going on. Some of the traders have become so annoyed by the degree of control Microsoft has over what an user can do that they joke, "Microsoft is trying to protect me from myself again".
Pretty much every MSOffice utility has an option to "Save as Web Page (*.htm; *.html)", and they've had this option since at least Office2000.
If you save your document to HTML, you can then open it in a text editor [notepad, vi, emacs, whatever], alter the offending code, and then open it back up in the original MSOffice program [Excel, Word, Powerpoint, whatever] and go about your business.
This method has saved my bacon about a gazillion times. For instance, just the other day, it saved me from the "Word must end in a paragraph, so if your document ends in a table then Word automatically appends an empty paragraph and you get a final blank page that you can't delete" bug: I simply saved the Word document to HTML, excised the offending " <p> ", re-opened it in Word, and, la voila, the final blank page was gone.
Notepad has always been good enough for me and always will be.
Yeah, right...
Oh well, what the hell...
How about something that runs in Windows and OSX (where Office lives now) ? I don't believe there is anything currently that does this. OpenOffice is coming soon but I dont see any other office suite that will for either coming anytime soon.
That might have been Alan's point.
Like Jobs likes to do and like Wallin did here:
"Last, but not least: Within a year, KOffice will likely run on Windows as well."
I hope MS already knew that, but if they didn't, I'd expect that will be the sphintcer moment.
They should be imagining this reaction from managers: We can have (Open) Office running for free (ok - worst case - $30 CD including TFM) on all our existing platforms? Vista who?
Bill tips his hand years in advance, then takes twice as long to implement. While the first one may seem necessary given the corporate customer base, the second is still inexcusable and leads to smaller faster organizations (Allchin's breathless tell-alls nonwithstanding) can do something like this. Make something work, ship sooner, and make the choice pretty simple for managers of comanies mostly much more agile than MS. They can alternately wait for Vista and the MS Office that will ride on its coattails, pay full price for both of them *OR* get a much cheaper version for a platform MS will be supporting for at least a few more years (they carried 98 for 7 years...)
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
Even if they can defend themselves using such wordplay, the fact remains that they were wrong. And being wrong like that in public can have a devastating effect on their image. That's what truly sows the seeds of doubt, even without the involvement of Microsoft in any way. Will people in the future be able to depend on the claims coming out of the KOffice project? Perhaps, but also perhaps not.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Wow, is that a long letter to say M$ is not happy that the Commonwealth decided to use a documented and open standard format available to non-Microsoft operating environments.
Open standards are important, this is why telephones work around the world. It is why if it is Ford, Honda, GM or Toyota we can use the same fuel in out cars. It is why a plane can take off in China and land in the US. It is why Open standards, unlike their proprietary ones are not incubated in a vacuum toward monopolization, but are designed to foster interoperability and longevity.
Microsoft is missing the whole point of open standards. It is inevitable that they occur.
Just checked. Definately not the case with KWord 1.4.1 on Gentoo.
Yes, the filter is an import filter right now, and, yes, we will add an export filter as well. Have you written a filter today?
I don't think it's a good idea to publicly chastise potential customers for raising a very valid point.
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
having read the letter by Mr Yates, it sickens me. it is full of doubtful phrases with many references to already known defunct surveys and viewpoints.
it also attempts to drive them back to using microsoft products under the pretences that 1) they've already bought the software but it'll cost the tax payer more taxes in the future if they stop using such software(!) 2) that choosing OpenDocument would effectively tie them to one software vendor (like they arent badly tied already??) 3) that changing software will void all their current work and cause mass communication problems - and on and on. its a tirade of written tripe masquearding as veiled threats to the commonwealth.
If this is an issue , then why dont they simply write an OpenDocument module for their Office suite? they've got thousands of very capable programmers that could do this in a matter of days(!) or are they so blinded by their own ineptitude that this basic strategy cannot be thought of?
How exactly would a spreadsheet, with formulas and macros and pivot tables, be expressed as HTML anyway?
1) In theory, they could certainly be saved using jscript/vbscript. And if you throw in the W3C DOM, then you can do just about anything you can imagine [the DOM is pretty awesome if you have the time to learn it].
Of course, whether M$FT has gone to the trouble of writing the relevant "Excel -> JScript" or "Excel -> VBScript" translators, I know not.
2) On a more fundamental point, if your only copy of the "formulas and macros and pivot tables" is embedded with the data in the Excel spreadsheet, then you're dealing with a rather egregious violation of a fundamental dictum from Comp Sci 101, Introduction to Database Theory: Thou shalt not comingle business logic and raw data.
Great, so now MS cannot argue that all OS Office suits are based on the same OO.
Seems like the redundancy among OS Linux software projects has showed to be an ace in the poker-hand.
Guess this proves those people wrong that argue that more than one Office (or whatever project) is just a waste of time and duplicate effort.
You never know when one or the other might come in handy...
Yates' objection was spurious from the beginning. Open Document is an open standard, so there's nothing to stop anyone -- Microsoft included -- from implementing a fully compatible Open Document import/export filter for their software. The only reason Microsoft is reluctant to do so is because it might loosen their monopoly grip on the office software market.
Peoples view On Microsoft 30 years on are a mixture of Marketing misinformation and Bills foundation (that has often seemed to favor those countries looking to switch from Microsoft products in the past).
People like Microsoft because they aren't fully aware of the competition or how Microsoft wiped the competition out through illegal practices or just buying them out. Managers like winners (even if they cheat) and there's know arguing that Microsoft is a winner.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Here's a top quote:
"As I observe all the Bill Gates "bashing" from those who benefit daily from what Microsoft has done for the world, I am slightly puzzled."
It's almost as if the computer wouldn't have made it without Microsoft , banks don't run Java and Oracle, Experian doesn't run big iron and all web pages were standards compliant.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
Yates, Gates, Bates
Cut and,,,,
I've found just a few bugs, for example German documents often spill into neighboring French documents, and the Italian and Spanish support needs a lot of cleaning up (especially the Spanish support: it really stinks). But I'm a believer. French software runs much faster!
Even if *every* open document writer applications was all off the same codebase, so what?
Its an open format, so regardless of how its implemented it will remain open.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Where are all of the word processors that do word processing?
When I start writing some awful-or-maybe-even-good stories in OpenOffice.org, it fortunately remembers already the window size and Optimal Zoom, and then I go zap-better font, zap-Online Layout (no damn pagination), ... and sooner or later, I have a word processing that is almost good for - horrors - word processing.
With WYSIWYG, people spend wayyyyy too much time worrying about the formatting of the documents while writing. I wish there would be a word processor that didn't waste time on this. A word processor meant for writing instead of spending time getting the formatting right when it will suck anyway.
In my mind, there's always the difference between writing stuff and publishing it. I want to write the stuff. I have some really, really good software if I want to lay out the text (both LaTeX and Scribus, woohoo); I don't, I repeat, don't need that baggage in the word processor.
LyX is pretty good, it would just great if it was less... er, clumsy at times. And it's pretty much LaTeX only too. =(
<waxing-lyrical>The coolest word processors, which were really good for writing specificially, in my opinion, were found in the DOS era; WordPerfect 5.1 felt so frosty. I used to use that, and also one word processor from some Nordic company (marketed in Finland by Amersoft); cool because I lately found most of the docs I wrote with it and the work files were in mostly-plain text format so no worries here about interoperability =)</waxing-lyrical>
I actually use OO.o only because of style support (ie, I can so not worry about them until later) and automagical typography (like en/em dashes and correct quotes). And also the fact that apparently "soft" wordwrap is an abomination before eyes of Saint Ignucius and thus Emacsen don't do that.
I doubt the "GNU police" have been at work thwarting you. I've been using kword on Debian Sarge to write all of my graduate level papers for the last year or so and have yet to notice your problem. The output is so good that I use the pdf's as demonstrations for Newbies, who have been confused by M$ FUD about not being able to write "complex business documents" without Word.
If you want non free goodies and fonts, try Mepis. They have a live CD with excellent hardware auto configuration as well as non free cruft like swflash, nvidia drivers and all that on top of a solidly configured debian unstable. None of that, however, change much of kword's default behavior.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
They were on the OASIS committee that formulated OpenDocument (MS wasn't). Another member was Corel, makers of WordPerfect. If we can get OpenDocument into Pages, WordPerfect, and Lotus, I think that would be great.
Why not use TeX as your typesetter in a GUI front end? Using LyX or a similar program would allow people to organize their ideas without knowing the underlying LaTeX syntax. I know a lot of people use TeX to get output from DocBook XML. Why not OpenDoc too?
zing?
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
The principal reasons LaTeX hasn't taken over the world are that it is almost unlearnable, and that the instant feedback of WYSIWYG is lost. I've been using LaTeX for almost 15 years, and still feel like there's a lot I don't know and can't do.
That said, the idea that one wouldn't write letters or a CV with it is just silly. My CV and resume are in LaTeX, and it is what I write letters with. It's way easier to get a document that doesn't look like a ransom note, and to get consistent formatting with different content, with LaTeX than with a WYSIWYG word processor. Trust me: when I evaluate the horribly-formatted .doc resumes I'm always receiving from potential employees, it's a strike against them. I'd encourage everyone to explore LaTeX as time permits them.
I hope you realize that your post is a fairly awful example of how to treat your users, correct? Insulting them repeatedly is hardly a way to encourage them to use your product, even if it is open source. I hope you see how terribly your response reflects on the rest of the KOffice development team, and on the entire KDE project.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Don't keep perpetuating that myth. ".doc is not a single format. Each new version of MS Word has some changes to the file in order to keep sales up. Almost every other year you get a new version of MS Word.
Latex is great for CV's, letters etc. Just use a template et voilla, nice output. However it is indeed NO replacement for word processors because of a few reasons:
- afaik it was designed as a typesetting program, i.e. to give a nice PRINTED result, especially for mathematical formulas. Roughly speaking, its target group is academics (and maybe professional typesetters).
- it is not very legible. Writing text is easy enough, but editing someone else's source is no fun (unless using an editor that recognises the directives etc). Alse cut-and-paste is not so trivial because style files can be incompatible.
- The output is great, but it can be a pain when (for some reason) you want to enforce your own layout.
Microsoft seems to be just full of liars or people paid to lie. When capitalistic competition lowers to the point of lying to protect one's market, it makes the corporate world in general look like a stupid pile of puffery.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Sorry about AC.
OOo Writer works with Microsoft Word XML, OOo Calc - with Microsoft Excel XML. This format is open, Microsoft grants perpetual license to anyone, and that includes using any IP related to this format.
that means moderate insightful, dumbasses!
Try the koma-letter2 style in LyX (at least under LyX/Aqua, for the Mac). I defy you to find an simpler letter-writing utility. You'd actually have to make an effort to get it wrong.
Latex isn't an XML varient, requiring specialist tools to do inaccurate transform to and from other formats, most of which are low quality, and many of which don't exist (doc2tex?).
There's no modern Latex editor that allows users to edit their document without having to unnecessarily know the underlying file format.
Latex has no benefits, as structured, transformable documents can be made in OASIS with much less headaches.
It uses TaRdCaPs
OpenOffice and StarOffice are the exact same things. I'm not sure what the hell KOffice is? Is there such a thing?
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
I don't think Microsoft would tolerate Apple moving to OpenDocument; OS X must be really pissing Ballmer off as it is, not because of the numbers sold, but because it rubs in just how late Vista is -- and that you can just buy OS X 10.4 "Tiger" right now if you want Vista's oh-so-cool features. Apple would not survive a frontal attack by Microsoft. Don't look for help there.
However:
The Mac-specific port of OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice/J is very good indeed, though not fully aquafied (yet). What is more, it is GPL. The "Tiger" live search system spotlight doesn't support OpenDocument out of the bo- er, off the website, but the NeoOffice/J people provide a nice plugin called NeoLight that does the trick. I can recommend NeoOffice/J wholeheartedly. It is a bit slow on my iBook 800MHz G4 with 640 MByte RAM, but then most things are, and it hasn't crashed once.
IMHO, NeoOffice/J and OpenOffice.org are Apple's best long-term hope to get out from Microsoft's thumb. I am disappointed that Apple is not doing more to support their work, but then again, I'm sure Microsoft has somebody sitting in the MS Office for Mac department making sure Apple doesn't do anything to hurt their cash cow. The price tag on the full standard retail version of MS Office if you are not a student is $399, after all. Where would Microsoft be if people used OpenOffice and did something else with that money?
We don't expect MS code to actually *work* either. People wait till SP1 and then still patch up regularly. Games come out bugged to hell and back. EULA says tough titty, you already paid and can't get your money.
So, what is your *real* beef?
Another option is TeXmacs, which is similar to LyX, but it does not use LaTeX as a backend, and that gives some other advantages too. (and it is part of the GNU project if that matters to you)
http://www.texmacs.org/
"First, there would be significant, and entirely unnecessary, costs incurred by all state agencies, departments, cities, counties, and school districts to procure new software applications that support the OpenDocument format for their individual users. Many state agencies already have licenses for Microsoft Office and other software products that do not support the OpenDocument format, and the expense already borne by these state agencies for Microsoft Office and such other products' licenses would be wasted by disallowing use of these products after Jan. 2007. As a result, costs to taxpayers would rise as executive agencies would be forced to toss out software they have already paid for, that they already know how to use, and that they can already use for archiving in open standard XML formats."
Aren't MS just confirming that they lock customers in to their products with this statement which is exactly what they're trying to get away from? Further, if the MS formats are "open standard XML formats" why on earth do we have to reverse engineer them to support them in competing products?
We all know MS work like drug dealers by giving away cheap deals to start and then raking in the profit when their customers need to spend so much capital to swap to something else. Is this just their way of sending around 'the heavies' when things aren't going their way??
Haydn
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. - Douglas Adams
Why is Word used where typesetting is what is needed, then? Even worse, evangelising Word where teypesetting is the problem domain.
1) Neither a headache nor a lack of a solid argument is a good reason for him to publically display behavior which tarnishes the reputation and image of the KOffice and KDE projects.
2) While not a KDE developer, I did develop software professionally (you know, where we don't insult our users) using QT for many years. I have a very good understanding of how long software developed using QT takes to develop. In this case I feel a misleading statement has been made, and frankly I think the open source community should be above making statements like that.
3) This wasn't a product announcement. This was a letter to a Microsoft representative chiding him about making misleading statements. It was wrong for the KDE representative to turn around and make statements that were just as misleading. Besides being hypocritical, it gives groups like Microsoft and example of misleading statements to use against the open source community in the future.
4) The only people embarrassed about this situation are the innocent KDE developers who do not go around insulting the users of their software, yet have their reputation damaged severely by a rogue developer who throws out insult after insult in public.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
In the response letter from Microsoft written by General Manager Alan Yates to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts decision to standardize on the OASIS OpenDocument format in addition to PDF, Microsoft are making claims both to the openness of the company's own Office XML formats, and that they are becoming widely adopted in Microsoft's products, and therefore argues that Microsoft Office qualifies as a product supporting open standards.
This "openness" goes only Win-deep in that Microsoft is not even willing to extend its XML support to the company's own Mac product line, where Office:mac 2004 only has fragments of the XML support found in Office 2003. The company also cites lacking XML support in OS X Panther (10.3) as the reason why Office 12 on the Mac will be released significantly later than Office 12 on Windows.
This information is missing entirely in the response from Microsoft to the state of Massachusetts, and is another in a series of misinformation like about KOffice and not representing the full extent of Microsoft's support, or rather lack thereof, for standards and openness. The full story goes here
The future is in beta
I can't hear you!
Alan Yates