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."

Comments

"simple end users"?

[Yahweh Doesn't Exist]

are they insulting our intelligence!?

New kind of network equipment

[Neo-Rio-101]

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.

Better HTML export?

[Crouty]

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.

Could be a goodie.

[holy zarquon's singi]

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.

OK, so what IS different?

[Moraelin]

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?

Re:OK, so what IS different?

[Uhlek]

Problem is the Microsoft XML format is proprietary to Microsoft. While the standard is "open" -- as in published -- there are restrictions as to who can implement it.

Problem comes 5-10 years down the road, if/when an organization chooses to move away from Microsoft. Maybe they're going to OpenOffice.org 5.0, or maybe they're going to GoogleOffice. Or maybe a whole other developer has come along and revolutionized the office application suite.

But, you're stuck. You have 10 years of data that's locked into Microsoft products, what do you do? Convert everything -- and hope everything comes through unscathed? Buy Office and the new product for everything? Create a "legacy application gateway" with a few copies of Office accessable via Citrix or VNC?

Also, there's interoperability with external organizations. Right now, to do business with the federal or most state governments, your business must use Office to be able to exchange data. No ifs ands or buts about it.

With OpenDocument, this isn't an issue. No matter what product you buy in the future, it can work with OpenDocument. Doesn't matter what product a client or customer uses -- if it's OD-compatible, you can exchange data.

Re:OK, so what IS different?

[ajs318]

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.

OK, first things first; let's have a little lesson on what XML is. XML is not really that big a deal. All it means really is that the less-than and more-than signs are reserved symbols; one writes constructs such as <foo> ..... </foo> to indicate a bounded block of type foo, or <bar /> to indicate a single instance of type bar. The meanings of different foo and bar are what constitute a schema. The HTML used for web pages is actually just a bastardised dialect of XML. End of lesson.

The issues are nothing to do with the schema itself, but rather to do with openness. The OpenOffice.org data format was conceived so that anybody who cares can write applications that speak it, as a right. By contrast, the Microsoft format is closed. If you want to write an application that speaks it, you have to ask Microsoft; they can charge you money for telling you, withhold bits if they see fit, and withdraw the privilege anytime. And if you do anything that Microsoft told you not to do, they can punish you.

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?

You can expect the problem with Microsoft's format that only Microsoft -- and a chosen few appointed by Microsoft -- are allowed to write programs that can retrieve your data once it has been saved in Microsoft's proprietary format. OpenOffice.org's format is better because any competent programmer can help you to retrieve that data, without being beholden to anyone.

Exactly _what_ kind of data gets more benefits from his schema than from MS's in that context?

Any data that belongs to you rather than to Microsoft.

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?

That is not the problem. The problem is if, five or ten years down the line, you decide for some reason to move away from Microsoft. There are any number of reasons why you might want to do that: for argument's sake, let's say MS have kept cranking up the cost of Office to the point where you now have to decide whether to try to save money on software licences or lay off staff. Now someone else's document converter may well not be able to handle Microsoft's proprietary format correctly. Your data might become inaccessible! There is also a very real possibility that Microsoft may not exist 10 years from now, and they may take their proprietary formats to the grave with them.

In five, fifty or a hundred years, any competent programmer will still be able to obtain the schema which will enable them to make sense of an OpenOffice.org document, because no one person or organisation controls that schema. No such guarantee can be made in respect of Microsoft's schema.

Or, let me put it this way. Imagine you buy a new car. The bonnet is fastened shut with a tamperproof seal, so only authorised dealers can make repairs -- and they have to use the manufacturer's original specified parts and procedures. You have to buy petrol from the manufacturer's specified filling stations {who will check from time to time that you haven't been tampering with things that do not concern you}. When the car reaches the end of its life {which may come sooner than you think, since the manufacturer can order their service centres not to repair it on a whim} you have to replace it with another one from that same manufacturer; otherwise everything and everybody you ever carried in that car will be left in limbo somewhere, and not fit properly in your new car.

Re:Patent license

[zonix]

The XML Schemas are freely downloadable, you don't have to sign anything. They are just patenting their own software implementation that processes those XML documents. You can still make your own implementaiton.

Ok, so you don't have to actually sign the patent license, but still the legal notice is provided within the downloadable MSI:

There is a separate patent license available to parties interested in implementing software programs that can read and write files that conform to the Specification. This patent license is available at this location: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/format/xmlpaten tlicense.asp.

But let's look at the article you linked to:

The patent application states: "The present invention (word processing document stored in a single XML file) is directed at providing a word-processing document in a native XML file format that may be understood by an application that understands XML, or to enable another application or service to create a rich document in XML so that the word-processing application can open it as if it was one of its own documents."

Broad, non-specific. This could include any kind of use of the schemas.

Microsoft spokesman Mark Martin denied that the recently discovered patents contradict Microsoft's fall 2003 moves to open up its XML schemas. [...] Martin said it would not make sense for Microsoft to block or hamper XML development -- "something it has been working to establish as a standard and get broadly and consistently developed."

Embrace.

However, Microsoft will "innovate above the standard -- just as other companies will do in an effort to seek differentiation, address customer needs, add competitive value, etc.," he explained.

Extend. You know the next word.

This isn't the first time that Microsoft has sought patent protection for technologies that are W3C standards. For example, the Redmond software company was granted a patent for the W3C cascading-style-sheet technology in 1999.

No, and that pretty much pissed off everybody at W3C. They filed for the patent in secret while developing CSS with the other members of the W3C.

I'm not convinced by this article.

z