Slashdot Mirror
Interview with Sun's Florian Reuter
silentbob4 writes "Mad Penguin is running a series of three interviews with people in the trenches working to bring you OpenOffice.org 2.0. The first of these interviews, with Sun's Florian Reuter, covers some of the differences between the truly open XML found in OpenOffice.org 2.0, and the closed MS Word ML found in the upcoming Microsoft Office 12. He also discusses the importance of simple end users in the process of improving the code with bug reports."
are they insulting our intelligence!?
Hey Maud, look at all 'em purty lines of XML!
OOo 2.0 is really different from Microsoft Office in a way that makes a difference. If MS comes up with same antics what would make it stand out. I've been saying it again and again. WebOffice will stand out and be adopted widely. (and quickly). Before the OOo2.0 is out we'll be ready for another revolution. So hurry Google with the WebOffice!
Scott McNealy to Michael: "Suck my Sun!" Michael Dell to Scott : "Lick my Dell!"
Interview with Sun's Florian Reuter
I read the title of that article and the first thing I thought was that Sun had developed a new piece of networking hardware and were actively interviewing it.
It's late here, I should go home.
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Am I missing something here? He doesn't seem to cover any of the differences other than restating that OOo XML is "more open". MS may as well post a rebuttal stating that MS XML is better because it leverages more synergies.
Was this an interview, or a chat facing the wall in the men's room?
I only hope the new document format makes it easier for them (and third-party application) to convert an OOo document into readable HTML with style sheets. Whenever I write a documentation that is among others to be published on the web I am tempted to write it in OOo because I like it. I still end up writing it in HTML myself because I don't like OOo's HTML output.
On se Internetz nobody noes your German.
With the critical mass that the adoption of the open document format by Massachusets, google and others implies, the embracement of standards like XML and Xforms in OO.o that makes it pretty easy to create organisational workflows, this could be a real microsoft hobbler. Particularly if as seems likely, Microsoft keeps failing to adapt to an open standards world, and the price tag of OO.o stays lower than M$O.
Bring it on, I say.
"...we should just trust our president in every decision that he makes and we should just support that." B.Spears 2003
SOA (in Dutch) has the same meaning as the English abbreviation STD (sexually transmitted disease). kinda funny to read this in an article on software ;-)
This post is the newest addition to the '$ProductName is dying!!' series.
Collect all ++Quantity!!!
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
I've actually RTFA, and I'm still at a loss about exactly _what_ is better about OOo's XML Schema, or wrong about MS's.
In TFA the guy just goes on about how his own XML Schema is, you know, lovingly handcrafted and how he _cares_ about your data. Which is just a content-free judgment call. Yeah, so he likes his own XML Schema better. Whop-de-do, that's such a total surprise.
It's not like if I went around the office and asked 10 guys I wouldn't get 10 different schemas, and each loves his own more and is convinced that everyone else's sucks. Just the proper way to use attributes alone has everyone polarized in three camps, with everyone in one camp arguing that the other two are awfully wrong and against the very idea of OOP or of XML itself. Handling validation and showing which fields are wrong to the user who filled the form? Yep, another clean three-way split, and I've actually had to implement three different ways to handle it, to please all three camps. And so on.
So that he loves his own more and thinks it's a better way to store my data, is very much expected there. I was already sure he thinks that. In fact, I'd be worried if he said he didn't.
What really interests me is exactly which concrete problems should I expect with MS's, that supposedly aren't there if I use OOo's format. If I try to retrieve that data in 5, 10 or 100 years, as in his answer, exactly in which way is OOo's format better? Exactly _what_ kind of data gets more benefits from his schema than from MS's in that context? In which way, and for what concrete reasons does he foresee that MS's own converters (which so far still import Word 6 documents with no problems) will break down and cry like little girls if fed a Word 12 document some 10 years from now?
No, really, it's not a flame. I want to know. If I'm to go there and pester my boss to switch from MS Office to OOo, I damn better have some very concrete arguments and use-cases. If my whole argument is "but some guy from Sun likes Sun's format more" and "but Sun's format is lovingly handcrafted with love and care for your data", chances are I'll get laughed out of his office.
So can anyone shed some more light on that issue?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Genuine stupidity perhaps, but artificial intelligence???
Riiiiiiight.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
The enthusiastic rambling on "Web 2.0" in the opening paragraph is quite unrelated to OpenOffice, an old-fashioned stand-alone application. It's probably related to a mistake Florian Reuter makes throughout the interview. He speaks of "formulas" where he actually means "forms" - He's a native German speaker and mixes up the two words because the German word for "form" is "Formular".
gopher://cramer.plaintext.cc http://cramer.plaintext.cc:70
Well, that's exactly what I'm asking. If the XML Schema for it is published, why can't I write a simple XSLT to convert it to some other format?
There's one important point most people seem to have forgotten so far. IIRC, to have the MS Word XML schema you have to sign a patent license. In essence what this means is that Microsoft want to retain control over how you use your data (ie. how you handle your documents, parse them, etc.). This should concern you. It goes against the purpose and the openness of XML, in my opinion anyway.
The questions people should really be asking are:
Or am I just spreading FUD?
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
I for one can't wait for OOo 2.0 to be released. Version 1.1.4 is great but it looks awful (MSO 95 era quality looks) even with the KDE L&F installed. More importantly for me it doesn't compile for 64 bit (at least not on Debian) which 2.0 should.
The worst problem with 1.1.4 though, for me anyway, is that when you step off the well beaten track of common functions you very quickly get into areas where things only "sort of" work. The core is good and solid but the edges are like a jungle full of deadly snakes. This, I believe, is the key difference between MSO and OOo. MS has had 10 years to get the edges right so while they might not be as polished as the core they are pretty good.
I suppose time will improve the quality of the edges. There are already some serious MSO killers in 1.1.4 that have been greatly improved in 2.0. I love the mail merge for instance - it's harder to use than the one in MSO but so much more powerful.
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
He's suggesting that if OO.o isn't opening a .doc correctly, I should submit it? Does he expect all the users to just throw their privacy right out the window? Maybe if they wrote a utility that scrambled non-whitespace characters (although they'd have to be careful with width) both in the document text and metadata, and stripped out embedded pictures and graphs and such, and replaced them with blanks of the same size. I'm not the paranoid sort, but I'm a little concerned he's pushing this "all your .docs are belong to us" strategy without even a regard for user privacy...
Telltale Games: Bone, Sam and Max
... I'd like to give an example. Everybody has filled out a form with a request for vacation holiday to submit to your boss. You have to fill out the starting date, the end date, how many days you want to be gone, and who is responsible when you are gone. You first have to get the form, you download it, you print it, you fill it out. Then you mail it or you get it to your boss in some other way. Then the request gets granted, then somebody has to maintain the data base of how many holidays you have left, and so forth. It is slow and inefficient.
:)
With web services and service-oriented architectures and X-forms, this process will be entirely different. You'll download the forms from your company's website, fill out the form, press submit button, the data will be sent to a web server which maintains the holidays left, and everything will get done automatically. It will tell you if you have enough days left, a notification will be sent to the person who has to approve the holiday application, and the whole process will be much smoother. This is how web flow will be done more and more over the next year or two. Having support for the end user this way will be a big deal, and will change how we think of collaboration with forms.
No offense to anyone involved here, but I worked at a company that was doing that over a year ago with Sharepoint/MSOffice. The backend technical details were probably slightly different than what they're talking about here, but lordy this is nothing revolutionary. The fact that OO is now offering a way to do it - maybe. The thing that bugs me is that reading things like this, I get the impression that people working on things like this (I don't mean vacation request systems, but many open source projects in general) is that features like this area touted out like they are something new or revolutionary. It indicates that they're probably not keeping up with with other vendors/platforms are doing. I wish I could put this in to words better, but I don't have any more time right now.
creation science book
I do hope that the creators have plans to develop a nice install binary for OO 2.0 as was done with 1.x.x. Recently, I went to download and install OO RC2 and found only RPMs inside. That leaves many users of particular distributions (like mine) unable to use it. IIRC, Debian or Debian-based users do not have a package as well (within the download or in the repositories); thus, they are stuck as well.
And to answer the question I know I shall hear: have YOU compiled OO 2.0 from source? It isn't worth the time and effort.
In addition, I do not mind paying for software alternatives such as the new StarOffice or buying MS Office for a seperate computer. But I *like* OO 2.0: plain and simple.
Well, it's a good question. I don't know why they need a patent there, especially since it covers a very specific process, and not the XML Schema files themselves.
But the better question is: ok, so exactly what _can_ big bad MS prevent me from doing? Again, I'm genuinely curious. I want to know. Any lawyers in the house?
Can they prevent me from running an XML file through Xerces/libxml and Xalan/libxslt? I like to think they can't have patented that. At any rate, that would also affect anyone who's ever used XML and XSLT.
Even if they could somehow get a patent as broad as "reading XML data into a word processor" (they didn't, or not yet, but let's take the worst case scenario) can that stop me from just running the file through Xalan and getting a different file, with no word processor involved at that point?
Can they stop me from using Cocoon to automatically transform/convert the files, on demand? Because that's just the kind of thing I'd do, if the company I work for needed to access old files. Dump all those documents on a big fileserver, or into a database so I can also store metadatam including whose file is it. Then just set up a simple intranet web site, that you point at the document you want, and you get the transformed result as a download. It's not even a complicated Cocoon pipeline: a generator that just reads a document and parses it, a transformator that just applies a XSLT to it, and a serializer that just spits another XML (e.g., in DocBook or OpenDocument) or a HTML or a PDF.
Can that MS patent stop that? Because it's something so generic that it would mean forbidding Cocoon completely.
Bear in mind that at no point does it need to even access MS's XML Schemas. It just applies an XSLT to a generic XML. How's MS going to use patents against that?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Bear in mind that at no point does it need to even access MS's XML Schemas. It just applies an XSLT to a generic XML. How's MS going to use patents against that?
Unless they had a patent on XML itselt (like CSS?), I can't see how they could prevent you from doing that. What I'm suggesting is, that Microsoft, down the line, may be able (or wish) to license how you use their schemas. Read: charge you money. That's all.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
This is natural for monopolists; it is in their interest to not be compatible.
I don't believe you when you claim to not understand why people are nervous when there are known (and maybe more unknown) Microsoft patents around their XML data descriptions and they refused to support alternative XML standards.
It is too much like a big wooden horse that coughs from it's legs and stommach..
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Sorry, that didn't come out right - obviously Microsoft is able to license their products in anyway they see fit.
What I meant was, that Microsoft with the current Word XML schema license, may be able to charge people, down the line, for specific use of said schemas, because of the patent license clause therein.
I mean, if they have an honest interest in the adoption of these schemas, and there are patents covering some specific use of these, why not state this and grant royalty free license on those patents? What if they patent some specific use of the schemas in the future?
The Word XML schema license is somewhat open-ended because of the the patent license clause. You might say, it's a trap.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
I will speculate on your question if you answer, this time:
Again, why do Microsoft refuse support alternative XML standards if they are going to be open anyway?!
Oh, hell. I'll guess. It could be a combination of some of these. (together with some "call home" tech so they are really followed?)
A law?
More patents?
Remove XML support before releasing?
Cripple the XML? (Or even cancel it before release?)
A 2nd, 3rd, .. Nth version of the XML data spec that isn't quite backwards compatible?
Some real innovation in the important area -- lockin -- that is neither a legal thing or just bundling to cut the oxygen supply of a competitor?
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Do you think traps to catch monkeys work if the monkeys understand how the traps works when they see it?
What if the monkeys have seen monkeys get caught in that kind of trap many times before?
Now, consider lockin from monopolists in an application area where everyone has learned that it's a lot of pain.
If the monke.. buyers realized how the lockin would work, it wouldn't work. They must be trapped with something that doesn't look like a lockin.
And M-soft refuse to support open standards -- while claiming to open their products -- and people believe it?!
It just screams bait and switch, or something.
If you really say you can't smell it, then I think you're a troll. I have a bridge to sell cheap, if you need a good home? I can get you a good price on the Eiffel tower, otherwise?
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
What we can take away from this story is that Sun is finally taking a leaf out of IBM's book (5 years too late IMHO) and having vacuous but important-sounding articles pertaining to "innovative technology" that might appeal to the technically illiterate posted on the web and reported on Slashdot where the slashbots will lap it up producing a populist wave of "grass-roots" support.
Sun may kick IBM's posterior when it comes to high-end Unix servers, but when it comes to marketing, they're half a decade behind.
It's a shame. The sales, revenue, profit and share price could have been so much higher.
Stick Men
I read the headline quickly and thought they were interviewing a router. Now that would have been interesting.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Sorry, but this is bullshit. You, as pretty much everyone else who I've seen spouting on this issue
haven't even considered what it means for a format to be open and why it's supposed to solve the interoperability problem.
An open document format is a format described by a freely avaailable published standard. If your software conforms to such an open standard, it guarantees that the documents it reads and writes have the form and meaning described in that standard (as far as form and meaning are described in that standard).
This helps with interoperability because you can now define your format in terms of a particular version of the standard, instead of having to rely on a particular version of a particular set of software tools. So in 2145 when a document is needed the courts will be able to use it with whatever software also conforms to the standard, rather than having to dig up an old computer and a couple of contemporary versions of OpenOffice, hoping to somehow find one that appears to be compatible with the format of the document in question, and pray.
Microsoft's Office formats *are* open: http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/default.mspx
Open Office's are *not*: they do not have a published specification, although work is underway to address that.
Of course open standards only work to the extent that they unambiguously describe all the features needed by the projects that use them, and to the extent that users only rely on features described by the standards. For example, Word documents can contain arbitrary macros and ActiveX controls, which aren't covered by the standard, so don't use them if you need to rely on the standard for interoperability, or write your own standard that does cover them, and then certify the Word you use to conform to it. (And it's really really hard to describe anything of interest unambiguously in a standard.)
Of course OpenOffice has a different advantage: the software itself is free, so it's generally easier to obtain when needed to open a particular document. But that has nothing to do with whether the document format it uses is open.
And it won't make much of a difference in 2145.