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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."
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
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
Being a LaTeX fan myself I agree with you for the most part. The problem is for some things like, say, writing a 1 page letter or memo, it is easier to pull up a word processor (in the style of Word/OO etc) and get it done with quickly.
The other problem, as always, is some people/places requiring Word. As a graduate student I had to supply some papers in Word format. I could'nt get away with doing it in LaTeX even though Word was a pain.
So, yes, there is a requirement for GUI based word processor, even though I think the effort required to learn LaTeX pays back a hundredfold in terms of efficiency (for anythjing more than 2 pages) and professional looking documents
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"
Even if it was illegal, I seriously doubt anyone in their government would ever follow up on it. Massachusetts may be tired of Microsoft and ready for freedom, but I doubt that they're zealously trying to destroy the company.
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.
c'mon man, this is stupid. I am a power user; I know LaTeX, as i used it to write down my master thesis; I really like typesetting with it, but I would never use LaTeX to write down a curriculum vitae, or a brief letter, or whatever is not larger than few pages. In fact all of these things can be done in few seconds with a quick&dirty WYSIWYG word processor (a.k.a OOWriter, or Word). LaTeX can do everything, but it's mostly suitable for long and structured documents, not for my mum's recipies. And it is not by any means easier to learn.
1. Learning curve.
2. Most people will never be as productive with it as with word?
3. Most people will try everything to avoid having to think when performing some task.
Or... not everybody is a geek.
LaTeX rules!
Does anybody know wether there are plans by Apple?
Because your granma can't use LaTeX.
KOffice, or anybody else for that matter would probably have better served their cause by not responding at all to this.
KOffice team quite simply pointed out a false statements made by a Microsoft executive about their applications, and in the process they grab some good PR as well. I think they payed better attention to the PR course than you did ;-)
Calling somebody an idiot is an opinion. I agree that it's dumb to stand up and try to defend yourself against an opinion.
However, Microsoft's claim that KOffice was the same code as StarOffice wasn't an opinion. It was a false statement of fact, or in other words, a blatant lie. How is it a bad idea for the KOffice people to stand up and say "no, you are blatantly lying (to the government, no less!) to serve your own interests?"
You know, if it weren't for the facts that computer issues are hard for people to understand and that Microsoft is part of the media, I would think that people would be shouting "Microsoft hates Freedom! Microsoft hates America!" right about now -- and they'd be right!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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
You have greatly under-estimated the power of the word "likely".
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.
This is, quite simply, a remarkably stupid comment. I use LaTeX. For pretty much all my documents and presentations. I write my own document classes. Previously I have written LaTeX document classes reproducing the format of company Word and Powerpoint templates so I could produce my documents and presentations in LaTeX instead of MS Office - and yes, I did get that cleared with marketing. I am quite intimately familiar with all the power, flexibility and benefits that LaTeX has to offer. The fact remains that word processors are remarkably fast efficient and easy to use and entirely suitable for the majority of users. Most of the real benefits of LaTeX simply aren't of sufficient importance for most casual and business needs to bother - and it's not like word processors these days don't have their on benefits (usually relating to integration with the rest of an "Office Suite" package.
LaTeX is truly wonderful, and if you know how then by all means use it. But don't pretend that it's a replacement for a word processor - they are really filling different niches, and have quite different areas at which they excel, and at which they are weak. The right tool for the job and all that.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
You may argue Inge's usage of the word 'comprehensive', but he plainly spelt out his _intended_ usage. Thus any claim that he was trying to mislead is, in itself, misleading.
As for Inge's statement that KOffice will likely run on Windows within a year. This is not a statement of courage. It is an entirely reasonable and obvious assumption. Plans are afoot as we speak to do just that. KOffice, much as all of KDE, will be ported to Qt4. Qt4 is now GPL'd on Windows. The internals of kdelibs are being redesigned to acknowledge this fact and allow us to target non-X11 desktops.
KOffice will be coming to Windows/Mac OSX desktops in the near-to-mid future.
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
Also, of course, I could never share documents with others at work.
I think the beauty of a text-only format like TeX and LaTeX is that you can share it with everyone. In fact, more people can make small additions to a TeX document than they can a Word document. There's also nothing for them to install, you can store the document in a revision control system and get meaningfull history (diffs), there's no hidden information inside of it, etc.
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.
I am amazed they have the gall to suggest it might be illegal to specify a format they don't choose to support. It is as if they were a manufacturer of nuts and bolts, that only made non-standard sizes. Then along comes a buyer who specifies that all future nuts and bolts must conform to the published standards - and they think they are being discriminated against. As soon as the standard formats are more widely used, many new and original applications will appear, both proprietary and open-source.
The problem is for some things like, say, writing a 1 page letter or memo, it is easier to pull up a word processor (in the style of Word/OO etc) and get it done with quickly.
... is a bother, why not write a trivial bash script to prompt for the requisite To, From, Subject, etc. fields? Or use a dummy text template?
Oh, come on. If typing \begin{tabular}
As for the original +5 Funny comment that wordprocessors are easier to learn than LaTeX, I would point out that no one really understands the wordprocessor they're using, least of the typical non-technical user, and that training programs for secretaries to learn or update their skills from one version of Word to another are expensive and time consuming as they are commonplace.
I've pointed this out before, but once upon a time no so long ago, secretaries in large organisations would regularly draft everything from the simplest letter to large complex documents in WordPerfect. The "markup" was no more complex than that of LaTeX, and the professional-looking memos, letters, etc. that went out the door were generated using simple pre-written macros that even little old ladies in accounting could use. Today, it seems, the approach is to have everyone spend their time endlessly "drawing" their documents (using toolbars and menus that even Microsoft has admitted are unwieldly), instead of writing them.
Obviously, LaTeX is hardly the ideal solution in many environments, but it's worth pointing out or at least reminding people that things can be as simple or as complex as you choose to make them, whether the subject is file formats, or the tools used.
And word processors are pretty fucking useless when you can't even expect to be able to give a saved file to another user and have them open it without problem. At least LaTeX gets around this problem by using a plain text format.
How is opening a raw LaTeX file really any different from opening the XML zipped inside an OpenDocument file? In practice both use a program to render the raw file into a more presentable format. if you don't have the program then you can't get the presentable format. Both are readable in the raw if that's required though.
Just because MS made a particularly fucked up closed binary format for their word processor doesn't mean that word processors are evil, it simply means MS isn't particularly good at making portable formats.
Jedidiah.
Craft Beer Programming T-shirts
The point of an open letter is to convince the public, not the person it's ostensibly written to.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
In Massachusetts, is it considered criminal to mislead the government or the administration in such a fashion?
Why would it be?
There are valid reasons to put restrictions on authoritative speech, particularly to the government or the public. Two of these are:
Perjury: lying under oath, such as in court.
Libel: Harming a reputation through written words.
The check and balance of harmful speech is especially important in cases where you have an "expert" opinion. Microsoft's comments on OASIS compatible software could be analogous to Bayer saying their antibiotics (Ciprofloxacin), while more expensive, is the only one that works. We do not want Bayer, or Microsoft, lying about these things.
Interestingly, the more broadly the statement was made, the more likely it is to be considered a "puffery", an accepted norm of bullshit in advertising. If it was made directly to an official's office, in court, or in any situation analogous to 'under oath', then maybe it could be considered perjury. The hyperbole of this would be lying about the capacity to cheaply produce an influenza cure on the brink of a pandemic; there is a general public policy consideration to honest statements in general, and in particular in situations of potentially grave risk. That opens up liability in fraud.
So a couple of things of importance. First, the context of the statement: under oath, or an analogous situation, opens liability to perjury for false statements. Second, a concise and defamatory statement can create liability in libel. Finally, there is a public policy consideration to the impact of the statement, especially if it can have grave ramifications, that we deter by incurring liability for fraud.
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.
Dear He-Who-Blathers-Inanely-On-And-On-Out-His-Ass-On-T opics-About-Which-He-Knows-Nothing,
... you know shit, but feel comfortable talking out your ass on something you know nothing of. Feel comfortable getting into an argument with KOffice developers about our project roadmap do you? Feel you know our codebase better than us?
You've already been told that the statement that KOffice will be ported to Windows within a year isn't a statement of courage. This is likely only a few man months worth of work. Inge knows this. I know this. Why? See... because we actually work on KOffice. You?
Typical... Slashdot... IDIOT.
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.
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 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.
In other news, the Free Software community continues to ponder why the general public still views them as blithering moonbats.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
In short, they're a solution looking for a problem.
Seeing how much they are being used, I would say they already found the problem...