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A National Archive Moves to ODF
Andy Updegrove writes "The National Archives of Australia (NAA) has announced that it will move its digital archives program to OpenOffice 2.0, an open source implementation of ODF. Unlike Massachusetts or the City of Bristol (which announced it would convert to save on total cost of ownership), the NAA will deal almost exclusively with documents created elsewhere in multiple formats. As a result, it provides a "worst possible case" for testing the practicality of using ODF in a still largely non-ODF world. If successful, the NAA example would therefore demonstrate that the use of ODF is reasonable and feasible in more normal situations, where the percentage of documentation that is created and used internally is much larger."
I'm wondering if this will be the start of the use of Open Source in more business applications. Most companies use M$ Office, since it is mainstream, even with it's large cost. Maybe the Government's example will be the beginning of the revolution.
echo YOUR_OPINION >
Is this the first time a national government has switched to odf?
This has the potential to go horribly wrong. Without checking every document how can they be sure the conversion has worked successfully? Let's hope they keep the originals.
it will move its digital archives program to OpenOffice 2.0, an open source implementation of ODF
Wow, OOo 2.0 supports ODF? That's great news, I've been using one of the other myriad programs* that support ODF.
*Note: Said software doesn't exist.
OMG! Wau!
Wouldn't this sort of test be a more or less good test case for switching to ODF and dealing with non-ODF outside documents? Maybe I just misunderstood the comment.
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Bristol, UK? If so, I missed that.
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Years ago when Novell switched over to Linux operating systems, one of their largest fears was the trouble integrating their documents in a Microsoft stardard based world. It turns out that Open Office was more than adequate concerning reading/writing various document standards.
Which of these applications, exactly, don't exist?
Try Abiword.
OOo is slow because it's still largely impelemented using a Java VM-based architecture with bytecode and all that entails. I really think these guys should reconsider. MS is moving toward an XML-based file format which shouls be open enough for anyone. And MS Office is a client app written completely in optimized Windows assembler code. That should help with performance hemi-dramatically.
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Ahh, I see. If NAA can use ODF, would they continue and go the route of FOSS? Or should they stay with ODF-only for the time being and then migrate to FOSS from MS? Of course, if they're on BSD, the transition to ODF via FOSS would pose a problem with ASAP implementations unless, they're hired IBM to implement their FOSS, ODF, BSD, Linux migration. OTH, using SAP in conjunction with ODF and FOSS would possibly lead to ...oh, I'm cross-eyed.
All documents were made with a flavour of Word or another, from word for MacOS 6.0 to the latest (at the time) word XP for windows. As you'd have already guessed, the only word processor able to make sense of all the documents at once was Openoffice.org. Of course, I faced issues (bulleting appearing "funny", for instance), but as I was applying a style I created, that was not a problem as long as the text was there.
No single version of word in my possession was able to open all the documents, some documents even crashing word XP with thunder and lighting.
Well Since I just do not know this AT ALL. I work at places where at times (I am a commercial artist) where I have to use MS Office. Most of the time these places have all kinds of macros set up to do given tasks. MANY MANY MANY Macros because of the freelance pool they use they just want the macro's to take care of all heavy lifting so that people don't have to try and figure out how to input data for a week before you get it right. Anyway the question is. How can these be implemented into Open Office.? Also templates templates templates. Its great the MS comes with them and I just use them NeoOffice on my Mac. But if you don't own MS office where do you get all those templates? Some one needs to set up a source forge project of something like it that is just a repository for templates for OOo. OK why is the little o included in the name? Its just Open Office. OOo is a website that Has OO. I don't get it.
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I wrote the original version of the National Archives software that does the conversion. The current version of the software is available here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xena
If anybody wants to ask any questions here I'll try and answer.
OpenOffice is mostly a C++ or C program.
Ha! Got you.
OOo is slow because it's still largely impelemented using C++ with all that entails.
I just wanted to get you to admit that.
OK why is the little o included in the name? Its just Open Office. OOo is a website that Has OO. I don't get it.
If this Wikipedia article is to be believed, then the name of the web site, project, and product is "OpenOffice.org" because "OpenOffice" was taken.
Most templates don't contain a large ammount of macros. So Open Office can open them. Minor format correction need at times.
MS Macros are loaded by Open Office but rem out because they contain calls not compad with Open Office. Star Office has a interface layour.
Ie Buy Star Office it will use MS Macros move across macros over time. Update VBA macros to SBA Macros Ie Visual Basic Star Basic. Then switch to Open Office ie it runs SBA.
I almost thought you were joking about the templates, because what you described is pretty exactly what some people have done. It's called OOextras.
I don't think they match up to the beauty of (some) MS or Corel templates , but StarOffice has some templates you could steal from I bet. Would those be freely distributable under their license?
Anyway, http://ooextras.sourceforge.net/
that's the
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Those which run under Linux probably wouldn't require new hardware either.
Find me a Linux driver for my paid-for yet unsupported Microtek Scanmaker 4850 flatbed scanner, which was purchased long before I thought of switching this computer to Linux, and I'll believe you. Unless you are working with a computer that was built from the ground up for Linux, including buying a printed copy of a distribution's hardware compatibility list to carry with you to the computer store, I am 90 percent sure that you will have issues with at least one piece of hardware if you switch a computer from Windows XP to a common Linux distribution.
And what about vertical-market proprietary software intended to run on the same computer, which is either available only for Windows or (if you're lucky) available for multiple platforms but priced such that using multiple platform versions in an organization is cost prohibitive? You would have to use Wine (significant overhead and less than full compatibility) to run your existing licensed software for Windows on a Linux box.
What does [promotion in traditional media read by management] have to do with anything?
It's the same reason most listeners prefer payola'd major label music to independent music: repeated exposure builds familiarity.
I have seen relatively few MS Office, OO.o, or Corel WordPerfect ads either.
Which magazines and which TV channels are you looking at? In the news magazines and cable news channels, I see a whole bunch of advertisements for Microsoft Office software.
People giving away software usually don't spend money to ensure you'll take it from them.
Then why doesn't Sun advertise its StarOffice software, the official commercial distribution of OpenOffice.org? Or by "giving away software" do you also mean "we're practically giving it away", that is, budget software?
Well This stuff is not so easy to find unless you really know what you are looking for. I barley have time to learn and keep up with graphics packages I have to know. I really think there should like a beginners guild to OOo. I mean this page has so many links that I just go never mind when I see it. http://www.openoffice.org/about_us/new.html I would like to see something like a side by side comparison with little check boxes like you get when you are buying a new cell phone or laptop. You know like the comparison pages on any wireless provider has for there phones. http://onlinestorez.cingular.com/cell-phone-servic e/cell-phones/cell-phones.jsp?v=1&q_categoryId=171 7200027&WT.svl=com2&q_compareIds=%22cdsku9870076re g3%22%2C%22cdsku9870089%22
It might seem really simplistic but UH it should be. Then you can have all the techie wordy long ass description once I know what it does and doesn't do and I want to know more about what it does do.
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lol
I really hope SVG gets the boost it needs to become mainstream.
This could really be the thing that separates content from
implementation in business presentation software.
In my opinion, this is the last area to solve for the computing public to
break free of implementation handcuffs in the desktop and productivity tools
marketplace.
I would be so excited to see an SVG based destop implementation in pure SVG
(when it matures). I know that Apple used a postscript implementation but this would be free and standardized.
Graphical content could be almost drag and drop onto the workspace!
I say again, Go SVG!
First, open it in the original app. Use "Save As" to export the file in every possible way. (txt, rtf, ps, pdf, html...)
Second, open the original in OpenOffice 2. Do as above, for every format that OpenOffice can create.
Third, open the original in KWrite...
When done, save the data on many different types of media. Be sure to use long-term-stable storage formats like GNU tar with GNU zip. Be sure to choose media from different manufacturers. Store the data at several different sites, preferably on opposite sides of the Earth.
As the years go by, spot check the data for errors. Keep statistics. If you find that a particular type of media is failing, make new copies.
Our use of the OpenDocument format will be quite important, but it's only one facet of what we do. The Xena software has been developed with a plugin architecture that lets us use various external helpers to 'normalise' or convert to open formats any data objects in our care. For each data object, we use Xena to create a base64 encoded copy so that we can embed some metadata with it, and separately for a conversion to an open format. Much of the data ends up as XML, while images for example are png or jpg. We're currently investigating open audio formats. Xena is also used to 'present' data objects that it normalises.
Until now, Xena has made use of OOo 1.1.x for the normalising of office documents into flat XML. Other development priorities have kept the move to OOo2 in the background. I must stress that we have not yet released Xena with OOo2 support, there is more testing to be done and we feel that the release must be accompanied by good user and developer documentation.
The 'current' binary of Xena available at sourceforge is waaaaay out of date and will shortly be replaced by a much sleeker and more intuitive version. For the curious, anonymous cvs is pretty up to date. If you have a java 1.5 sdk and apache ant, check out a pile of modules and go nuts. Anyone who wishes to become involved in the development effort is more than welcome.
For anyone else, keep an eye on the http//xena.sourceforge.net/ for the upcoming binary release.
I have just sent a letter to Episoft's Chief Software Architect and offered him venture capital. I tell ya, this is all going to make us richer then the Sultan of Bahrain.
If your documents are stored in MS Office formats, and you upgrade Office a few times over the years, who knows how many of your documents can no longer be opened, or displayed correctly?
With the open, fully-documented ODF formats, any problems down the road can be analyzed, and corrected, but with the secret, proprietary MS Office formats, when a problem occurs, you're stuck!
Thus, if you store your documents in MS Office formats, it means that you have to re-examine your entire archive, every time you update your MS Office software, or add a patch release.
Ahem. MOd parent UP.
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So there's nothing in that regard keeping small businesses on Windows, unless they happen to like the extra mainenance.
It's also useful for recovering corrupted MS Office files, which you will get eventually. One thing that people tend to forget is that you can install OOo along side MS Office or anything else you may already have. The 'rip and replace' theme is just a bunch of scare mongering from Redmond. Having both means you can swap between them as you like or even just keep one in reserve in case of problems.OpenDocument is definitely the way to go, especially for spreadsheets. Being a zipped XML file means that you can massage large data sets alternately with a comfortable gui or with home grown perl/python/ruby/whatever scripts.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I was unable to find a bug report on the bug list requesting the ability to import those files. Though that may be my inability to use the database. Have you tried filing a description of the problem ? If it's not on the list of things to do, it can't be addressed. However, realize that this would mean reverse engineering the old MS formats. MS, despite court orders from courts on both sides of the Atlantic, has not turned over any documentation for its file formats. So it's not a clear cut task.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
As much as I like the principle of using standards-based formats, I am not 100% sure that ODF is well suited to the archiving business. Even PDF itself is not well suited, therefore the existence of the PDF/A standard. PDF/A defines a subset of PDF, leaving out features that present a risk for the long-term capability of reading the document; for instance, audio or video content, non-embedded fonts, javascript, etc... I would not be surprised if a format as rich as ODF also included such features.
But at least they get rid of MS Office....
Wow so if you ask for something to be explained in a simpler cleaner fashion for those no techie people you get called a troll. That Makes a lot of since. Its so obviously a troll to ask that the information be provided in a manner that doesn't take 2 hours of reading just to get the basic knowledge that could be provided in a few minutes with a comparison chart. The reason one of the companies I was working for would not switch to OOo was that the Head of IT. A guy in his 50's did not believe that OOo could do everything we needed and be compatible with the people that he said Had to use MS ofiice. I tried to find a nice quick comparison chart or list of feature to show him. Couldn't do it. So we dropped for 10 seats of MS Office for us artist to beable to do nothing more then open office files and read them. JUST TO READ THEM because I could not find a feature chart for OOo. Yes that is for sure a troll to ask for the tool necessary to get people to pay attention to OOo. Nice. funny the confirm word is strangle. Very appropriate.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Normally I use Linux, but in this case I'd definitly use Windows with the original app. Usually these apps aren't very scriptable in any sane way; embedded BASIC probably isn't sane.
If I had to convert lots of documents I'd write a command-line tool... which ships the file off to a foreign land where I hire poor people to click "Save As..." all day long.
I'd also use other tools, each time converting from the original document. I can then be fairly sure that at least one of the documents, original or converted, will be readable far into the future.