ODF Offers MS Word Plugin to MA

Goalie_Ca writes "Groklaw just posted that the OpenDocument Foundation is offering Massachusetts a plugin that could 'allow Microsoft Office to easily open, render, and save to ODF files, and also allow translation of documents between Microsoft's binary (.doc, .xls, .ppt) or XML formats and ODF ... The testing has been extensive and thorough. As far as we can tell there isn't a problem, even with Accessibility add ons, which as you know is a major concern for Massachusetts.'"

Comments

Don't worry

[suv4x4]

Microsoft will make sure this plugin won't work well for a long time ;)

Re:Don't worry

[Anonymous Coward]

And if not by technical means, perhaps by legal means.

Who knows how many microsoft patents (and eolas patents) you're violating when you write a plugin for Office.

Isn't that pretty much what the whole Open Doc format debate was about after all? While there may be technical ways to get through Microsoft's bullshit formats, the patent threats may make it illegal to do so. Unless Microsoft indemnifies it, this plugin is not really any better than the patent-encumbered Microsoft XML format.

Re:Don't worry

[hotspotbloc]

Microsoft will make sure this plugin won't work well for a long time ;)

From the old days: "DOS ain't done 'till Lotus won't run".

Re:Don't worry

[andreyw]

Actually you got it wrong - its "DOS ain't done 'till Lotus runs".

http://www.proudlyserving.com/archives/2005/08/dos _aint_done_t.html

Which is really the reason why Windows is so buggy and unstable - they have/had to support all the OLD bugs and undefined behaviors exploited by other software vendors. You can't really sell another version of Windows if say, Adobe Acrobat, doesn't run anymore - even if its Adobe's fault!

Re:Don't worry

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

you're violating when you write a plugin for Office.

Not that Office invented the concept of plug-ins, but it probably is one of the most used targets for plug-ins there is. From CRM systems, advanced securities pricing models, Adobe Acrobat, etc, etc, etc, etc. There are TONs of plug-ins and MS explicitly built thier framework to encourage this.

Isn't that pretty much what the whole Open Doc format debate was about after all? While there may be technical ways to get through Microsoft's bullshit formats, the patent threats may make it illegal to do so.

Not an issue in this case. Just like Adobe's plug-ins which can convert and Office documents to thier format, this plug-in I'm sure won't even bother messing with the raw binary data. Just open the document in the Office application and then each application exposes a friendly API to be able to play with, convert, ect, etc the document all you want. No need to even consider the underlieing documents format (in fact would be quite silly to) just use the API provided.

Re:Don't worry

[Luctius]

It matters most for existing documents I recon.

Re:Don't worry

[speedphreak]

I'm not following your logic? Wouldn't Microsoft benefit from this plugin? It allows the state to use their office suite (cha-ching $$$), and still give them the open document format that they are after. On top of that, Microsoft didn't have to do any work to develop it.

Re:Don't worry

[Mithrandir]

If this is written for the US government, remember that they are immune to patent claims. Since the offer came from MA government to pay for someone to develop this, I'm sure the ODF foundation can tweak their offering to fit to the letter of the offer and law such that they too would be immune to any patent shenanigans that MS may try to pull.

Re:Don't worry

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

But ulitmately it [odf plugin for Word] undermines an important USP for MS Office, namely, compatibility with MS Word documents! Microsoft specifically do not want people to use an open format such as OpenDocument because if they do, it makes it easier from them [the customer] to switch to a competing product, such as StarOffice or OOo.

If MS wanted to, they could very easily have added such functionality to Word themselves. The fact that they haven't offered to do so highlights to importance they attach to keepinig people locked into *.doc and now OpenXML.

In some ways, this plugin might undermine OpenDocument since it might provide a way for MS to keep their foot in the door, which they will likely exploit to "convert" customers back to using proprietry formats.

However, I think that whilst it helps with using OpenDocument with MS Word, Excel is still a "killer app" that makes switching to competing office products difficult. There are a lot of companies that ship products that include Excel documents with macros as part of their product. Whilst these don't work with competing products (such as StarOffice/OpenOffice.org), then Excel retains the upper hand.

[going off on a tangent here...] it might be better to build an OpenOffice.org API wrapper for MS Office? That way, a company wanting to produce a spreadsheet with macro functionality, could create one for OOo, and use this [hypothetical] API wrapper to make the macros work with MS Office.
Or somthing!
(I'm thinking out loud here).

Re:Don't worry

[Phillup]

Unless Microsoft indemnifies it, this plugin is not really any better than the patent-encumbered Microsoft XML format.

Not that I've seen the plugin, but...

Would using MS Visual Studio and all MS dlls count as indemnification?

Re:Don't worry

[pitdingo]

No, Microsoft would not benefit from this plug-in as they would loose control of the format. If everything is in a truely open format, you will be able to use the Productivity Suite of your choice and not be forced to use Microsoft's. So instead of paying $499 for Office, you could download Open Office for free.

Re:Don't worry

[plague3106]

But ulitmately it [odf plugin for Word] undermines an important USP for MS Office, namely, compatibility with MS Word documents! Microsoft specifically do not want people to use an open format such as OpenDocument because if they do, it makes it easier from them [the customer] to switch to a competing product, such as StarOffice or OOo.

Anyone could have written a plugin for ODF or any other document format they wanted to well before this. MS even provides a plugin API and API to word itself to do so. In that respect, people could have freed themselves from 'lockin' ages ago if they so chose.

If MS wanted to, they could very easily have added such functionality to Word themselves. The fact that they haven't offered to do so highlights to importance they attach to keepinig people locked into *.doc and now OpenXML.

Why would they want to though? It doesn't sound like any of their customers (until MA came along) really asked for it. Even if they did, the people asking for it could have written it themselves. Isn't that what OSS people tell someone that asks for a driver to support their currently unsupported printer? 'Go write it yourself.'

In some ways, this plugin might undermine OpenDocument since it might provide a way for MS to keep their foot in the door, which they will likely exploit to "convert" customers back to using proprietry formats.

How would it undermine ODF? It may undermine OOo, but if you're using ODF for your format, I'd say its a success. As long as a plugin architecture exists, there really isn't a way for MS to force people back to their own format.

However, I think that whilst it helps with using OpenDocument with MS Word, Excel is still a "killer app" that makes switching to competing office products difficult. There are a lot of companies that ship products that include Excel documents with macros as part of their product. Whilst these don't work with competing products (such as StarOffice/OpenOffice.org), then Excel retains the upper hand.

Perhaps Excel is still a 'killer app' because it provides features that people want, but are not available in competitors. Shouldn't people be allowed to chose MS if they want?

Re:Don't worry

[amliebsch]

If this is written for the US government, remember that they are immune to patent claims.

I think you forgot a "not" in there somewhere.

35 USC 296. Liability of States, instrumentalities of States, and State officials for infringement of patents

(a) In general.
Any State, any instrumentality of a State, and any officer or employee of a State or instrumentality of a State acting in his official capacity, shall not be immune, under the eleventh amendment of the Constitution of the United States or under any other doctrine of sovereign immunity, from suit in Federal court by any person, including any governmental or nongovernmental entity, for infringement of a patent under section 271 [35 USC 271], or for any other violation under this title.

(b) Remedies.
In a suit described in subsection (a) for a violation described in that subsection, remedies (including remedies both at law and in equity) are available for the violation to the same extent as such remedies are available for such a violation in a suit against any private entity. Such remedies include damages, interest, costs, and treble damages under section 284 [35 USC 284], attorney fees under section 285 [35 USC 285], and the additional remedy for infringement of design patents under section 289 [35 USC 289].

Re:Don't worry

[shotfeel]

One of the reasons many people upgrade Office is because they need to be able to open documents from other people who may be using a newer version. MS not only has people locked into their format, but by changing their format, they push people into upgrading too.

Now, along comes a plugin that allows all the different versions of Office, plus many 3rd party applications to work with the same document. Suddenly nobody needs to upgrade an entire Office suite just because someone somewhere bought a new computer with a new version of Office.

So now people only need to buy MS Office if they feel compelled by the features offered, not because they need to be compatible with someone else. IOW if forces MS to compete more on merit.

Re:Don't worry

[Typhon100]

Covenant not to sue
The same deal goes for the 2007 open formats, afaik. So...what patent threats are you talking about?

Re:Don't worry

[Typhon100]

So now people only need to buy MS Office if they feel compelled by the features offered, not because they need to be compatible with someone else. IOW if forces MS to compete more on merit.

Except that the features offered are exactly what necessitates a new format. Furthormore, ODF has no way of understanding the new features that MSOffice has. People won't upgrade for features either, since ODF won't retain any of them.

Re:Don't worry

[rseuhs]

No.

(Almost) nobody uses MS Office because of it's features, (almost) everybody uses it because - well - everybody uses it and the file format is the standard.

So the standard is the most important thing here.

This plugin eases the migration path to ODF a lot because:

• No interface changes, so even the dumb employees will be able to use it without retraining.
• You still have 100% Word compatibility, which is one worry less when you still have a huge amount of Word documents.
• You can still use the old infrastructure, for example it is possible to start with a .doc template but save the finished work as ODF.

This makes it possible to just install the plugin, set ODF as the default file format and continue without much interruption. After 1-2 years, when almost all files in current use are already ODF and you only need some odd .doc file from the archive now and then, you can migrate to OpenOffice, which much less hassle. (And why shouldn't you? As I said above, the format is the main reason why MS Office is in use, without the format, there is absolutely no more reason to periodically spend money on MS Office)

Great work, I hope the plugin will be available for the public, this would be a big boost for the ODF file format.

Re:Don't worry

[Cal Paterson]

I'm not following your logic? Wouldn't Microsoft benefit from this plugin? It allows the state to use their office suite (cha-ching $$$), and still give them the open document format that they are after. On top of that, Microsoft didn't have to do any work to develop it.

Microsoft aren't interested in the Mass thing for fiscal reasons. The problem is that if the Mass. authority can do ODF, then many other public authorities could follow. Microsoft could've written this functionality at any point, and virtually no cost. If they wanted it to happen, they would have done it long ago.

Re:Don't worry

[The Spoonman]

Silly you, pointing out truths to slashdotters. Don't you know they hate that? :)

Re:Don't worry

[moochfish]

...which would prove to all the non-techies, once and for all, just how dangerous it is to put your data in a proprietary format owned by a corporation.

Re:Don't worry

[jusdisgi]

Perhaps Excel is still a 'killer app' because it provides features that people want, but are not available in competitors. Shouldn't people be allowed to chose MS if they want?

I think what he's getting at is not that oocalc lacks the functionality, just compatibility with Excel macros. IIRC calc has the macros, but you'd have to rewrite them for the platform. But I'm not really 100% sure, that's just how I remember it. I barely ever use spreadsheets, and never with macros...

So, the point is, it's not better functionality that entrenches Excel here, but effective lock-in because the macro structure isn't portable.

Re:Don't worry

[plague3106]

I think what he's getting at is not that oocalc lacks the functionality, just compatibility with Excel macros. IIRC calc has the macros, but you'd have to rewrite them for the platform. But I'm not really 100% sure, that's just how I remember it. I barely ever use spreadsheets, and never with macros...

So, the point is, it's not better functionality that entrenches Excel here, but effective lock-in because the macro structure isn't portable.

Ah, well if macros are the cause, then its a more valid point. Of course I don't know of any macro language that is standard across different companies products. MS uses VBA in just about everything; I don't know what other vendors use for their macro solutions.

Re:Don't worry

[hpa]

That applies to States, not to the Federal government.

Re:Don't worry

[killjoe]

MS is not mean, they would never sabotage their competitors products. I know because I asked them and they told me. Why would they lie?

Re:Don't worry

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect this will continue. Working with the new Analysis Services product we're finding we're having to exploit bugs or behaviours just to get our product out of the door, because the documented behaviour doesn't always work. Database drivers in Dot-Net-2 are another big area for concern. I'm sure JDBC didn't have these kinds of trouble.

There were some features in the pre-release analysis services which were good, but had to be taken out because they changed once buggy behaviour in older software - so it's back to the old bugs.

Re:Don't worry

[aminorex]

Have no fear, this plugin is vaporware.

I think it's bundled with Duke Nukem' Forever.

Re:Don't worry

[jonwil]

What is Excel using for macros these days? Still using VBA?
Is there any reason that OO.o couldnt implement a compatible implementation of VBA if some hacker wanted to take the time to implement it?

Re:Don't worry

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Plenty of Excel documents do contain macros. Additionally, plenty of organisations make use of Excel Add-Ins. And yep, probably most are VBA (I'm not quite up to date with things these days in terms of development, so I don't know if all the .Net languages are available).

Is there any reason that OO.o couldnt implement a compatible implementation of VBA if some hacker wanted to take the time to implement it?

OOo does have its own "basic" language which (to me anyway) appears identical to VBA. However, I believe the document object model is different! I suspect this making OOo compatible is very much "non-trivial" else it would've already been done. Hence my slightly OT suggestion of instead adding an OOo API compatibilty wrapper to MS Office... although this may be just as hard. :(

Re:Don't worry

[Anonymous Coward]

...they have/had to support all the OLD bugs and undefined behaviors exploited by other software vendors.

I see this argument allll the time. And it is a lie! Anyone who has been in the business of maintaining Windows systems for even 2 revisions of Windows is well aware of the software which just quits working and needs an upgrade to the latest version (more money) before it will work with the latest version of Windows. Now, if you are well connected with Microsoft and you pay enough money, maybe this is true. Everyone else can just go pound salt!

Re:Don't worry

[Anonymous Coward]

...Excel is still a "killer app" that makes switching to competing office products difficult. There are a lot of companies that ship products that include Excel documents with macros as part of their product.

Another load of crap! I have written many, many macro based apps for customers that dealt with Excel and Word. The unfortunate thing is that every new release of Office breaks macros in some stupid way that usually requires rewriting the majority of them. I finally got fed up with arguing with customers that decided it was my job to fix them for every release of Office for free and quit doing it! Anybody that releases products based on macros in Office is stupid!

Re:Don't worry

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct in so far as "[t]hat applies to States"... States (capital 'S'), in general, are federal enclaves created by the Buck Act (defs, 4 USC 110). The 50 [sovereign] states (lowercase 's') are different entities entirely. Furthermore, the District of Columbia, along with "federal territories" (Buck), is defined as a State throughout US ("federal") statutes and regulations (e.g. 26 USC 7701), and the United States as, generally, "the States and federal territories". The United States -- not United States of America -- is the exclusive legislative jurisdiction of the US Congess, which has limited law making ability outside of that jurisdiction (i.e. effective within the 50 states; US Constitution). Where it exercises that jurisdiction (iow, where Congress specifically means "not the Federal government"), it uses the term 50 States (e.g. 26 USC 4612). Don't presume to know the law until you've actually gone to a library and read it.

Re:Don't worry

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Another load of crap! I have written many, many macro based apps for customers that dealt with Excel and Word. The unfortunate thing is that every new release of Office breaks macros in some stupid way that usually requires rewriting the majority of them. I finally got fed up with arguing with customers that decided it was my job to fix them for every release of Office for free and quit doing it! Anybody that releases products based on macros in Office is stupid!

lol!

The Microsoft way isn't generally the "best" way from an IT perspective. However, from a business perspective it "works", thus, your business model is:

1. Sell office macro to customer
2. Sell "on going maintenance" to customer (this is a large number for doing essentially nothing)
3. When customer upgrades to newer version of office, make as few changes as possible to make it work even if it now looks fugly
4. If customer requests an update to make product fit better with the new Office, charge them again
5. Back to step 2

So you see, if you'd written a rock solid macro, you'd get paid far far less! ;)

Typically, some of the addional revenues can be pumped into glossy promotional material that will include a Microsoft Certified DooDah logo which will assure your customer that your solution is far better than the competition. Don't let facts get in the way of a sale!

Sounds great...

[DaHat]

Sure there isn't the same victory for OSS in having them switch to OpenOffice as some would like, it instead shows that OSS can adapt as needed and allow the state to continue to use the same front end app and not have to deal with the cost and hassle of retraining countless workers with a new system.

At the same time though... this does conceivably give more power to Redmond as there is now less incentive for MA to leave the Windows/Office platform.

Re:Sounds great...

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought the point was to eliminate a barrier to entry. So workers could use either, not be forced to use Word.

The desired effect would be to allow a gradual trasition that would be easier to swallow than a all-at-once changeover.

Re:Sounds great...

[jmv]

At the same time though... this does conceivably give more power to Redmond as there is now less incentive for MA to leave the Windows/Office platform.

Not necessarily. I may also make the transition easier. First everyone just save to ODF, then the switch is easy to make because you don't need to get everyone to make the transition at the same time.

Re:Sounds great...

[Vegard]

For me, it's not so much about getting everyone to use Open Source as to ensure that *I* have the freedom to use it, and still be a part of society (i.e be able to communicate with government etc).

It's definitely true that it's open STANDARDS that matter. There is, however, a large pitfall: Don't let vendors like Microsoft redefine what an open standard actually is. They tried a little while ago, with their previous office XML standard...

- Vegard

Re:Sounds great...

[OglinTatas]

I read it differently: This completely blows Microsoft's lame argument out of the water that MA considering ODF is unfair to the millions of people who already use MSOffice, because it is impossible to rewrite office to use this "crazy new format."

If a simple plugin can allow MSOffice to use ODF, there is then no argument whatsoever for MA to use Microsoft's proprietary formats, which really do shut out all non-Microsoft users.

Re:Sounds great...

[theguyfromsaturn]

I disagree. The idea behind an Open Format is that I can use the program that I choose to produce it. It would be ludicrous to pretend that most people aren't using Word today. We should be happy that this plugin exists as it makes it more likely that people will use ODF. Once ODF is well established, then people will see that they can choose whatever software they want to create such documents. In the long run it benefits the user and other office suites (not just OO.o)

Re:Sounds great...

[east coast]

Not trying to be trollish but doesn't Open Office and the like support RTF? I mean, while this new open document format may be more flexible than RTF the bottom line is that Microsoft has always and will probably always ship MS Word with universally accepted formats. Hell, Windows comes with a "free" RTF editor.

So what's so great about this new format? Unless this format can convert every single style of MS's ".doc" format than it's really nothing more than another universally accepted format.

I guess what bugs me is that there are tons of people on here shouting "Now we can convert to OO while using MS Word".... I thought you could all along...

I'm looking for serious answers to this.

Re:Sounds great...

[gid13]

Preach on, brother. I'd give you mod points if I had them atm.

Re:Sounds great...

[CastrTroy]

I would like to know who came up with the idea of using binary files to store text documents. If Microsoft used something more sane, like the ODF format, we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place. fewer people are pushing for 100% standard HTML everywhere because it's not such a hard task to figure out what the blink tag does, and how to implement it.

Re:Sounds great...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all very well, but the beta office uses a new formats to save in, such as docx, xlsx, etc(x).
I've tried to convert xlsx to xls, had no joy at all.
I know it's only a beta version, but it may well impede this plugin quite a bit when the retail version hits the shelves.

Re:Sounds great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Binary files made a lot more sense when every CPU cycle and bit of space counted.

These days, you can just use XML and zip it, and have something with good enough space efficiency and much better interoperability.

Re:Sounds great...

[arodland]

RTF has no standard (other than various halfway-compatible implementations from Microsoft and open-source products), and has extremely little support for any useful formatting or metadata that you would want in an office format. Choosing RTF as your common-denominator standard format would be a lot like choosing HTML 2.0 for the same task. ODF, on the other hand, is flexible, with a complete and open spec, and one of its design goals is feature-compatibility with existing software.

So while I haven't tried this plugin, I find it entirely possible that it supports all or very nearly all Word features, allowing for open-standards interoperability without compromising the quality of the document. It also doesn't hurt that it's apparently implemented in terms of XSLT transforms -- translating OOo XML to Word XML.

Re:Sounds great...

[east coast]

OK Again, not to sound trollish but...

[RTF] has extremely little support for any useful formatting or metadata that you would want in an office format.

I was always of the impression that metadata is normally considered evil by the people of slashdot. I'm not going to claim to be an expert but I see little real world use of metadata in Word. This is one of the few things that I agree with the slashdot crowd on.

ODF, on the other hand, is flexible, with a complete and open spec... So while I haven't tried this plugin, I find it entirely possible that it supports all or very nearly all Word features

OK, here is where I'm going to come off as completely trollish but I'm having a problem getting my head around this: It's a standard that you praise, you say is flexible and complete but then turn around and say that the plugin (that is ODF comlient and which you haven't tried) should support all the features of Word? Maybe it sounds like I'm splitting hairs but this is along the lines of you asking me about the Rolls Royce Ghost and me telling you: "It's a fantastic car, it rides great. Granted, this is only from what I know of the specs but I've never driven one yet, but it'll work just fine."

I guess my problem is that the more I learn about the wonders of open source the more I'm left scratching my head saying "that already exists and exists for free". While I can understand the desire to see the source code and modify it I see this plugin as little more than a new document format that is more flexible. Maybe it will help to port over documents between MSO and OO but it doesn't seem to be "the missing link" that everyone seems to be shouting about. I'd still like to see the plugin for myself and I'm seriously considering putting OO on one of my machines so that I know a bit about it. I just still have a problem as to why so many hype this plugin. Maybe I just don't use Word enough...

Re:Sounds great...

[cremat]

Check this:

http://diaryproducts.net/for/geek/microsoft_rtf_sp ecification_nightmare

and this:

http://www.fileformat.info/format/rtf/egff.htm

Re:Sounds great...

[NutscrapeSucks]

I doubt Microsoft really cares what file format you use, so long as you keep buying MS Office.

The whole issue in MA was forumulated as Either-Or debate (by both sides, "Hairy Guys" and MS) in order to force an artificial choice between OpenOffice and MS Office. That's why the political stakes got so explosive.

At least now CTOs can consider the merits of ODF without having OpenOffice brought into the equasion -- because for most shops, a fileformat is not worth switching your office suite over.

Re:Sounds great...

[m50d]

RTF has no standard

O RLY?

And considering how well the ODF documents I'm sent tend to work in KOffice, I'm not sure how much of it is a standard and how much is "do what openoffice does" (The bugs are mostly documented as places where the spec is ambiguous). Finally, for me at least, a grepable format counts for a lot.

and has extremely little support for any useful formatting or metadata that you would want in an office format.

Huh? The formatting is there, and styles would appear to be kept. I've done thirty-page reports with graphics, styles, automatic TOC etc., and I don't remember losing anything saving them in RTF.

Re:Sounds great...

[plague3106]

I thought the whole goal of MA wanting ODF was to allow the readers of documents to do so without buying MS products (and I agree; you shouldn't need software from one company to read your tax instructions, for example).

If the state sees benefits in keeping MS office to create these documents (because of better support, more familiarity among state employees, etc), then they should continue to do so. But the end goal is that someone with a Linux box or mac can read the documents published by the state, not to cut costs for the state.

Re:Sounds great...

[plague3106]

How would you like to store images in your document? Documents are more than just simple text. Which is faster for a machine to parse?

This is my optionNextOption

0x343This is my options0x34NextOption

Re:Sounds great...

[plague3106]

This completely blows Microsoft's lame argument out of the water that MA considering ODF is unfair to the millions of people who already use MSOffice, because it is impossible to rewrite office to use this "crazy new format."

Where did they say that? Could you site your quote please.

Re:Sounds great...

[arodland]

Hey, you're right! It's an RTF spec. Well, maybe it is. The website says it is. But it's a Windows EXE file, so I have no idea what it actually does or contains.

Re:Sounds great...

[Anonymous Coward]

But if the government uses MS formats, everyone who wants to deal with the government has to use MS software. If the government uses an open format, then even if the government continues to use Office MS can't force the sale to people who need to work with the government.

Re:Sounds great...

[CastrTroy]

You can store the images after the text, and then put a placeholder in the document for where the image goes. This is what ODF does. The text is stored in one file, and the image is stored in a seperate file. Then they are zipped together into 1 file.

Re:Sounds great...

[Typhon100]

You mean like this?

Re:Sounds great...

[krygny]

But why would MA or anyone continue to pay 100s of $s per license/upgrade to work with the ODF?. The only reason you'd stick with MS Office is to continue to use the few unique features and its native proprietary file support.

Re:Sounds great...

[DaHat]

You must not have read my comment very carefully as I clearly mentioned the biggest issue... training.

Sure, they could ditch MS Office tomorrow and roll out OpenOffice across the board... problem is that you will have a fair number of people (we are talking about government employees here) who will not know how to use the new system.

Until the cost of retraining and transition can be brought well below the cost of an MS Office license... Microsoft will win this battle as people are very familiar with their products and anything else is strange and unusable until they can be brought to a similar level of familiarity which is never free either in lost productivity or outright training.

Re:Sounds great...

[nine-times]

I'm glad someone said this. We shouldn't be investing in getting people to stop using Microsoft Office. Why should they stop, so long as that program suits their purposes? The issue here is that, ideally, no company will be able to hold my data hostage, punish me, or blackmail me for choosing not to use their product.

It's an issue of freedom. We should all demand open standards be used for data exchanges so that we have the ability to do with our data as we choose. Microsoft should not be in a position to use market forces to force people to buy products that they don't want.

Re:Sounds great...

[m50d]

So use a windows installer unpacker. Seriously, if you're going to be a dick about it I can say "WTF is this ungodly format called PDF that your supposedly open specification is in" (the pdf spec is only available as a pdf, and guess what I have to do to read those? Yep, run a random executable, and it won't work on my alpha either).

Re:Sounds great...

[Vegard]

I didn't mean this. I'm dead sure that a significant amount of important customers have to switch to open formats before they themselves turn to open formats. Their history proves it.

There is also another inherent danger in choosing the Microsoft standard - who's to say that Microsoft, once getting it approved by a standard, will actually *follow* their own standard? What's to prevent them, once having an ISO-standard that's widely accepted, to implement small but important, non-open extensions in their next version?

I'm not saying they will, I say that I don't think it's beyond them, if they think that it'll benefit them against their competitors, and that they can get away with it. And what good will their once so open standard be then? It will be worth *nothing*, once again.

I might be paranoid. But in some cases, I think you just have to be.

There is of course also a danger that the same thing happens to ODT. The difference is that the reference application here is an already quite known and wide-spread Open Source-application, and it's already implemented in several products by several vendors. The opportunity for any of those vendors to get away with it without losing customers is just so much less. History has shown that Microsoft can get away with a lot, and nothing, not even lawsuits, can really prevent them.

Re:Sounds great...

[moochfish]

If a simple plugin can allow MSOffice to use ODF, there is then no argument whatsoever for MA to use Microsoft's proprietary formats, which really do shut out all non-Microsoft users.

This argument has never been about *now*. Lots of people might be shut out of this "crazy new format" currently, but in *10 years* those same people will be very happy to see that their free version of Open Office 5.0 can still read those documents. Or say the state budget gets slashed and the departments can no longer afford licenses of Office... big deal, no problem-o.

But today? Yes. There is probably an issue with reading and writing ODF documents in TODAY's market, especially Office users. But that's short-sighted.

Re:Sounds great...

[vux984]

:and has extremely little support for any useful formatting or metadata that you would want in an office format.

Huh? The formatting is there, and styles would appear to be kept. I've done thirty-page reports with graphics, styles, automatic TOC etc., and I don't remember losing anything saving them in RTF.

Perhaps he should have said 'meta-meta-data' :)

The automatic ToC is a good example. The actual contents of the ToC are retained. (The "data"), the tabular formatting of the ToC is retained (The "metadata"), but the the fact that that table is an automatic ToC is gone (the "meta-meta-data"?).

Saving it to rtf is in some sense, like saving it to html, pdf, or even rendering to a jpeg image. Even if it looks perfect, it loses a chunk of the metadata describing how it works. The jpeg might look perfect, but when you open it back up to modify it - its just an image, there is no paragraphs, no table of contents, not even any text.

The same is true for rtf, html, and pdf... these all at least hang onto the text, and can usually manage to make it it *look* right, but it doesn't work anymore if you try to edit it... it won't know if the image X is supposed to be right -there- or if its supposed to float down as you add more text, the automatic toc won't update page numbers, and so on.

Finally... (and I don't know offhand if this is true of word-rtf or not), but I've seen several companies export to "open formats" while storing additional meta-stuff inside it... e.g. exporting to html, while storing a pile of meta-information in html comments... so the html looks right in a browser, and if you re-open the html in the application that created it is able to completely restore its meta-data -- by using the meta information it hid in the comments.

That sort of trick is actually pretty handy for end users; it allows for the format to be a lot more portable. People don't have to save in special formats to let others read the documents... its veiwable by any browser, and simultaneously the software is limited by htmls lack of meta support, because its stuffing the comments with all the information it needs to properly recreate the document.

The downside of course, is that while its viewer portable, the format is not INTEROPERABLE. The only application that can reliably *edit* the files is the application that created them. Sure another html editor can open, and see the contents, and even edit them. But then they become regular html files, and all the extra 'proprietary meta-information' hidden inside gets lost, and the original application treats it as a just an html file, instead of being able to 'automagically' preserve revision history, automatically updating tocs, vector artwork, and whatever else it had hidden inside.

Re:Sounds great...

[bufalo_1973]

RTF might be a "common format" for MSO and OO.o, but it lacks some things .doc and .odt have. And remember it's not only about text. There are spreadsheets, presentations, ... And those can't be converted to RTF.

Re:Sounds great...

[east coast]

There are spreadsheets, presentations, ... And those can't be converted to RTF.

They can't be done in Word either so they don't apply here. You might be able to make that arguement for OLE but beyond that...

Re:Sounds great...

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone is switching to ODF to make sure he can read his docuement when MS stop seeling MSOffice. What about the 1000 of programs you write which depends on Win32API when MS will stop selling "windows"?

Re:Sounds great...

[m50d]

The automatic ToC is a good example. The actual contents of the ToC are retained. (The "data"), the tabular formatting of the ToC is retained (The "metadata"), but the the fact that that table is an automatic ToC is gone (the "meta-meta-data"?).

IIRC it remained a TOC, and had gone in and out of kword. But this could still be an example of the embedded comments thing if kword keeps them in there (I have no idea if this is the case or not)

Re:Sounds great...

[Firehed]

Well, however it works, a page of standard text takes about 10k in .odt and 21k in .doc (and maybe 2k in .txt, probably less). While this makes squat-all difference with today's hard drives, especially seeing that clusters are 32k in size so both take up equal space on disk, sending a million .odt files via email is going to take half the bandwidth of word docs.

Re:Sounds great...

[DeafByBeheading]

Because if there's one thing MS Office is known for, it's the lean formats? Nice try...

Re:Sounds great...

[miniver]

A data format specification is only useful if the applications that implement it do so correctly. What the parent poster was trying to convey was how little respected the RTF specfication is, both in the FOSS community and by Microsoft. RTF, as a document specification, is almost as useful as CSV is for spreadsheets: it's a guideline, but the devil is in the details, and Microsoft doesn't publish the implementation details for its applications.

Re:Sounds great...

[Cousin Scuzzy]

RTFW?

Re:Sounds great...

[jZnat]

How would you like to store images in your document?

How does Usenet work again? Oh right. You could uuencode (or base64_encode) the binary data and put it in as ASCII or Unicode.

Re:Sounds great...

[m50d]

A data format specification is only useful if the applications that implement it do so correctly. What the parent poster was trying to convey was how little respected the RTF specfication is, both in the FOSS community and by Microsoft. RTF, as a document specification, is almost as useful as CSV is for spreadsheets: it's a guideline, but the devil is in the details,

Really? Because I have *never* seen an RTF look different in different programs, something I see all the time with doc and even sometimes with odt.

Re:Sounds great...

[krygny]

I think you are exagerating the learning curve that goes with a relatively simple migration such as this, and you are not considering the learning curve that occurs every 2-3 years when workers find a new version of MS Office on their PC. From what I understand, that will not be insignificant with Office 2007.

People's thinking about this just has to change. Would you use an email application that could only send/receive email to/from other users of that same email application? Why use a document format that only can be read, edited and exchanged with users who happen to have the application that natively supports it?

Re:Sounds great...

[miniver]

How long have you been using RTF? I saw my first copy of the RTF spec in 1993, and it was roughly 50 pages (most of it optional) at that point, and there were lots of grey areas then. The fact that you pointed to the "Word 2003: Rich Text Format (RTF) Specification, version 1.8" (now 211 pages) should give you a hint that RTF has been a moving target for a long time now. Another hint, from page 3 of your linked document ...

RTF version 1.7 included many new control words introduced specifically for Microsoft Word for Windows 95 version 7.0, Microsoft Word 97 for Windows, Microsoft Word 98 for the Macintosh, Microsoft Word 2000 for Windows, and Microsoft Word 2002 for Windows, as well as other Microsoft products. Version 1.8 includes new command extensions specifically for use with new features available in Microsoft Word 2003.

Re:Sounds great...

[m50d]

I've been using it at least 7 years. All that quote says they're doing is adding extensions for new features - which is the only way to support up to date features, ODF has extensibility as a big marketing point too - and how many features that weren't in word 6 do you normally use?

Re:Sounds great...

[nine-times]

There is also another inherent danger in choosing the Microsoft standard - who's to say that Microsoft, once getting it approved by a standard, will actually *follow* their own standard? What's to prevent them, once having an ISO-standard that's widely accepted, to implement small but important, non-open extensions in their next version?

I probably wasn't clear, but my point was, it's not Microsoft Office that's evil, per se, but the use of any closed standard by Microsoft Office that makes Microsoft Office evil. If Microsoft Office were opening/saving ODF by default (and really conforming to the standard), I wouldn't really be trying to convince people to switch, so long as MS Office met their needs. Because what would be the problem then?

However, once there is full interoperability between MS Office and OOo, I think most people's needs will be met by OOo. And who will use MS, given the difference in price tag?

I just think it's more important that everyone adhere to open standards rather than trying to insist that every piece of software be open source.

Open standards preserve a level playing field, presenting a strong hurdle to any company trying to abuse it's position and market forces to force people to use a specific product. For any specific product, all anyone needs to do is follow the same data-exchange formats (which would be open), and you have a drop in replacement-- no one needs to know the difference. Then, it all becomes about who is providing the best product, not who is in the best position to get away with anti-competitive practices.

So what I'm saying is, we shouldn't take the approach of being completely anti-Microsoft. Every reasonable person should be demanding of Microsoft that they use real, open standards, or that they really open their own standards with no funny business. (I think that should be one of the restrictions put on them by the anti-trust case)

Once they do that, I say let the best man win. If Microsoft is making better products at a better price, but using open standards and not engaging in anti-competitive practices, then of course you should buy their products. Until they're doing those things, and whenever they break from doing those things, I think we should all work towards not quitting their products, and be clear about why.

Re:Sounds great...

[nine-times]

Sorry, "I think we should all work towards quitting their products, and be clear about why."

Hilarious!

[Vengeance]

Microsoft can't/won't provide interoperability tools, but the ODF (an organization with far more money, right?) is able to do it.

I love it.

Re:Hilarious!

[SCHecklerX]

I don't think 'hilarious' is the right word.

Heh..

[the_skywise]

Embrace and Extend...

Re:Heh..

[Anonymous Coward]

Only now its us doing the embracing and extending! Just wait for phase three.

Opensource creeping in like this is not a bad thing. I know if I hadn't spotted Gaim and firebird some years ago, I might have not moved to Linux.

Re:Heh..

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Embrace and Extend, I think that's the name of some porn flick i saw in the East Village a few years back...

too easy?

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as we can tell there isn't a problem, even with Accessibility add ons, which as you know is a major concern for Massachusetts.

I've met plenty of people from Massachusetts. I can imagine the Accessibility add-ons would be crucial there.

Re:too easy?

[llvllatrix]

As far as we can tell there isn't a problem

Did they actually test MSOffice?

So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[Anonymous Coward]

No one posts a link?
wtf is the point of posting something like this without a link?

wtf good is a plugin if no one can get it...

eesh

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[jbeaupre]

You're right, it's not useful. And for those wondering, the plugin is not yet availible for download (ref:Groklaw article).

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[dominator]

From TFA:

Authored by: gary.edwards (of the Open Document Foundation) on Thursday, May 04 2006 @ 04:15 AM EDT
Don't bother hunting for a download. It's not available. The ODF Plugin came
out of testing last week. I wish i could say we did this last night, but it's
been at least a year in development.

The first stop for the ODF Plugin will be Massachusetts, followed by the EU and
California.

...

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[ronanbear]

well that's just great. In the meantime anyone who uses word but is interested in switching to ODF is on their own. The sooner people are using ODF the less work it will take in the end to transition. They should release this as beta software now so that people can see for themselves how well it works. There are people transitioning to ODF now. They shouldn't be holding this back.

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[MORB]

I think they want to be sure that the thing is rock solid before making it general to the available public, so as to avoid to be more exposed to FUD attacks than necessary.

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[Daniel_Staal]

It may also be they want to be sure their server is rock solid...

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: your sig

"That's not how it's pronounced"

"It's not the pronunciation that bothered me."

heheheh.

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[jbeaupre]

I laughed so hard when I saw that bit, I just had to put it in a sig (without giving myself the title). Thanks for catching the reference.

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[jeffphil]

Actually, it's posted now:

OpenDocument Fellowship Software page has a link to the SourceForge OpenOffice filter to Microsoft Word XML plugin project.

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[OrangeDoor]

They've done enough testing to release it to the government, I'd think that it would be ready for a public beta too. There isn't a place to sign-up to test the plug-in? I just don't see a reason for withholding from the public, especially just for testing purposes.

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[albalbo]

That's a different project.

Fellowship != Foundation.

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[Anonymous Coward]

When we are talking about anything more complicated than hello world, it makes absolutely no difference how much you test your software in the lab; In the end, only real-world usage with real-world, non-techie people will reveal some of the most significant and embarrassing bugs that the software will have at that point. Getting some of this real-world usage (trial by fire, if you will) done in an environment where the public perception is not going to laugh at its many shortcomings can go a long way of keeping FUD attacks in check.

Well, that might be their feelings about this issue, at least. I certainly understand that this logic seems backwards to most OSS -advocating slashdotters who swear by the "more eyeballs - the better" -anthem. But we should remember that this is a bit of software that tries to look like a reliable and easy-to-use thing for Joe Sixpacks. This makes things little different.

This, or they do not want to make this thing a largely public thing in the first place. What if they really just want to show that MS Office CAN be made to support .odf format easily to put more pressure on MS to do it themselves?

Then again, this strategy might be dangerous... do we _really_ want to let Microsoft to do ODF support for their own platform? Just look what they tried to do with Java... OK, I suppose we can take the tinfoil hats off now.

Re:So how the hell do we get the plugin?

[drinkypoo]

That plugin only allows importing of OO.o documents into Word, at least AFAICT (I just installed it, I have office 2003.) It's precisely the opposite of what we're talking about here.

This time with help from ODF,

[towsonu2003]

Microsoft wins yet again:

FTFA: So, to Microsoft: never mind. You don't need to lift a finger.

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[Billosaur]

Microsoft wins yet again:

FTFA: So, to Microsoft: never mind. You don't need to lift a finger.

Prior to that quote: Some people might wonder why the Foundation would be interested in "extending" the life and vested value of these Win32 bound desktops?

Our reply is that this isn't about "Windows" or MS Office. It's about people, business units, existing workflows and business processes, and vested legacy information systems begging to be connected, coordinated, and re engineered to reach new levels of productivity and service. It's also about the extraordinary value of ODF and it's importance to the next generation of collaborative computing. And it's about ODF rising to meet the needs of key information domains as they are represented by desktop productivity environments; publishing, content and archive management systems; SOA efforts; and the Open Internet.

Microsoft doesn't "win" anything. ODF realizes that even if people switch to an open document format, they are going to have legacy files (Word, Excel, etc.) that are going to have to work with the new open system. People are going to want to be able to edit and revise those documents, or even just be able to read them, without having to go through some lengthy and costly conversion process.

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[chill]

Microsoft wins yet again.

No, this is not correct.

The Office division of Microsoft has long been one of their major profit centers. MS Office is also a bigger monopoly than Windows, having greater penetration in the market percentagewise. These facts stem from the ability to lock-in customers by holding their data hostage to a closed format.

This plug-in is a door to the world of non-MS Office products -- a way out, if you will. Yes, other office-type products exist, but none of them have gained serious traction because of the perceived lack of totally compatibility with MS .doc and .xls. This one will solve the .doc issue and, if widely distributed, have two effects:

1. It will increase the market share of non-MS Office products at the expense of MS Office;

2. It will cause Microsoft to lower the price of MS Office to compete, thus lowering their profits on what is widely rumored to be their LARGEST profit center, Office.

  -Charles

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[chill]

Okay, I know I read that wrong...

This will supposedly address .doc, .xls and .ppt. Though the big issue with .xls wasn't the format, it was converting macros, etc. so I'm not sure how this helps in that regard. I do know Suse is working on a macro-translation utility.

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[towsonu2003]

This plug-in is a door to the world of non-MS Office products -- a way out, if you will. Yes, other office-type products exist, but none of them have gained serious traction because of the perceived lack of totally compatibility with MS .doc and .xls.

I thought Office was the #1 product because everyone knows how to use it and no one wants to use anything else (habit, addiction). I do not know anyone who want to change his/her Office suite (except myself).

It will cause Microsoft to lower the price of MS Office to compete

Although plausible, I am not sure about that. Office being monopoly as well as a product of addiction, I don't see a business-wise reason to lower prices. This goes to my first point though.

Anyway, this was pretty much irrelevant to what I wanted to say in OP. Microsoft won because they didn't have to do anything to prevent Massachusetts from changing their Office Suite...

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[towsonu2003]

ODF realizes that even if people switch to an open document format, they are going to have legacy files (Word, Excel, etc.) that are going to have to work with the new open system. People are going to want to be able to edit and revise those documents, or even just be able to read them, without having to go through some lengthy and costly conversion process.

So you are suggesting that a Microsoft product user will
-download plug in
-install plugin
-convert all Microsoft documents to odf
-uninstall MS Office
-install OpenOffice
-be willing to learn how to use OpenOffice
-use OpenOffice?

ODF needs to plug the plugin to OpenOffice, not to MS Office. Without any legal/evil action from Microsoft, Massachusetts can now keep MS Office, while OpenOffice will continue enjoying its small userbase and lack of any real recognition.

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[tehcyder]

having greater penetration in the market percentagewise

Or, in English, "having a greater market share."

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[kfg]

to Microsoft: never mind. You don't need to lift a finger.

Yes, but not having a finger lifted was Microsoft's optimum strategy.

If there is something your enemy would be a complete idiot to do, make them a gift of it. (This is where the phrase White Elephant comes from)

Their hand has been prised from their cold, dead monopolistic format by interoperability. The issue is choice vs. monopoly, not my monopoly vs. their monopoly.

Microsoft has been very publicly denouncing the move to ODF as a my monopoly vs. their monopoly issue. Not only does this blow that argument out of the water, it makes MS look like complete assholes in the process.

KFG

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. Too much caffeine this morning...

  -Charles

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[NutscrapeSucks]

The idea that ODF was going to drive people start using OpenOffice was ridiclous -- it's not a goode enough reason and it never would have worked.

But more importantly, this lame office suite advocacy tactic was a hijack of the ideals behind a standard file format. The whole point of ODF to let people choose their software from Microsoft/Corel /Sun/Apple/IBM without discriminating against someone who made a different choice.

I'm glad this plugin is finally here so that people can stop conflating ODF with OpenOffice. OOo is going to have to do better than government mandates to get adopted.

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[erveek]

Microsoft wins yet again:

FTFA: So, to Microsoft: never mind. You don't need to lift a finger.

They don't win. There's still work to be done. Breaking compatibility takes effort.

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[NutscrapeSucks]

2. It will cause Microsoft to lower the price of MS Office to compete,

This is happening. MS has announced a $100 entry version of Office 2007.

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[alanQuatermain]

Hmmm.....

Microsoft ... penetration ... market

I think those terms imply a different meaning to me than what you intended...?

*childish giggle*

This karma-burning Viz (NSFW?) moment brought to you by the letter:
-Q

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[nmos]

I thought Office was the #1 product because everyone knows how to use it and no one wants to use anything else (habit, addiction).

That's part of it but compatability is really the keystone. In my experience:

A. Most people (maybe 80 - 90%) don't know what they're doing in MS Office either. They get by but asking them to do something simple like saving a document in another format is like asking them to do brain surgery.

B. Consider an office of 100 workers. Even if 80% could be just as happy with OO they still have to buy MSO for everyone in order to stay comapatable with the 20% who actually need what MSO has to offer.

I do not know anyone who want to change his/her Office suite (except myself).

I say that every time a new version of MSO comes out and yet over time people do switch. Usually it's because customers with new versions of MSO that came with their shinny new Dell's send them documents they cannot open and they feel (sometimes rightly, sometimes not) that upgrading to the latest MSO themselves will help. I don't remember the last I heard of someone who upgraded to the latest MSO because they actually wanted one of it's new features. That's the power of incompatability + Monopoly.

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[MrCool80s]

I just want something that gets me into all my .wps files...can't wait to re-read my report on Illinois from grade school.

Re:This time with help from ODF,

[bufalo_1973]

The point is "to unlock" the documents. When the documents are unlocked MSO doesn't have any more advantage than its quality and has to "fight" in a leveled field.

Let me see....

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft built Word/Office with Plug-in support, did they not? In fact, they built their OS with every intention that other companies would offer services on their platform.

This foundation has decided to do so.

Kudos to them. They just proved that there is none of that so-called vendor lock-in.

Sure, it takes effort, but if you can be bothered to do it, it pays off.

Re:Let me see....

[Anonymous Coward]

And how long do you think it will be before a patched or newer version of MS office fails to handle it correctly?

Re:Let me see....

[Short Circuit]

Such plugins, being independently developed, aren't necessarily up to the same quality standards as the system they plug into.

And by "independently", I don't just mean separate companies. Microsoft's own Works plugin for MS Word is an unstable POS.

Re:Let me see....

[towsonu2003]

mod OP up
Score:5, Funny

mod me down
Score:-1, Offtopic

Re:Let me see....

[node 3]

Kudos to them. They just proved that there is none of that so-called vendor lock-in.

Lock-in doesn't have to be absolute to be lock-in. Otherwise, all MS would have to do is support *one* other format (like .txt, or .rtf) and they could say, "see, we don't lock you in".

This plug-in actually is an attempt to break the lock-in, and I really hope it helps, but the fact that the plug-in is necessary *proves* that there is lock-in, not the other way round.

Re:Let me see....

[morgan_greywolf]

Offering plug-in support isn't the same as having no vendor lock-in.

Think of it this way: plug-ins are like little apps that run on top of an existing application to extend its functionality in some way. If extrapolate that for a moment and say that applications are like operating system "plugins" -- they are apps that run on top of the OS and extend its functionality in some way. If we take this analogy to its logical extreme, then Windows doesn't do any vendor lock-in because it runs apps from other companies.

Don't be ridiculous -- if you run Windows application then you are stuck with Windows. The ODF plugin might allow cross-compatibility between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org -- but just like the Word plugin for OOo, don't count on the translation being 100%, supporting all of the features and functionality of Microsoft Office. For instance, plugin filter or no plugin filter, I guarantee you that a document that depends on VBA macros contained in it is *still* not going to work on anything but Microsoft Office.

Critical Update

[Galston]

I expect a critical update to all versions of office sometime this year which will stop the plugin from working.

Re:Critical Update

[sbrown123]

I see less of this but rather Microsoft doing one of two things:

1) Embrace the plugin and create it as a standard feature of MS Office. Make sure this integration solution falls behind the standard and start including special Microsoft initiated ideas. When standards people complain about the new features, yell at them stating that the standard people are holding the product back from its true capabilities that customers keep demanding of Microsoft.

2) Include a warning message when loading or saving documents to special plugins that they may include viruses, have missing features, or that data may be lost. If people complain, Microsoft will state that feature X in Word is not in the standard.

Re:Critical Update

[larien]

Include a warning message when loading or saving documents to special plugins that they may include viruses

Urm, aren't Word documents the major source of viruses in documents (not executables) ever?

Maybe..just maybe.. M$ is starting to see...

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

the light. Eventually every company in M$'s position has to realize that ultimately that you have to transform from being a company that makes standards, to being a company that contributes to them.

IBM was the M$ of it's day and now look, open source darlings. :-)

Re:Maybe..just maybe.. M$ is starting to see...

[sydb]

IBM sells hardware, services, and despite their image here, a shitload of proprietary software licenses. Not that they don't do some good things, but they are not Saints of the Church of Emacs.

Re:Maybe..just maybe.. M$ is starting to see...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we go at least one Slashdot article about Microsoft without some retard improperly using a dollar sign? Sometimes I wonder if these people hunt around for opportunities to use "M$" in a sentence. Grow up!

Re:Maybe..just maybe.. M$ is starting to see...

[Xtifr]

Mmmm....I see no signs that MS is starting to realize anything like that. On the other hand, it is this sort of thing that will, I am sure, eventually drive them (like IBM before them) to that realization. The main question in my mind is: will they learn from IBM's mistakes? IBM went through a great deal of pain learning these lessons, first making products that nobody wanted (MCA bus anyone?), then an ugly period of layoffs and multiple restructurings, and, finally, acceptance--reluctant at first, enthusiastic later on as they began to see the opportunities provided by a cooperative, rather than monopolistic, role.

My guess is that they probably won't learn from IBM's lessons. IBM spent decades in a competitive market before earning their monopoly position, so switching back to being competitive was not too great a leap for them. Microsoft, on the other hand, was handed their monopoly position on a silver platter, and has never really had to cope with a competitive market. They have no previous experience to fall back on.

On the other hand, Microsoft was very close to IBM at one time, and even played a fairly major role in IBM's downfall, so it's quite possible that they will have learned something from IBM's experiences, and will make the inevitable transition more smoothly.

On the gripping hand, it's hard to say what will eventually undermine MS's position and lead to their transition. Back in the day, many people were sure that DEC was poised to be the IBM-killer, but, in fact, it turned out to be their junior partners, Microsoft, and, to a lesser extent, Sun, who provided the one-two punch. So I'm always cautious about predicting just what will be the straw that breaks the camel's back. A lot of people think Linux will be the MS-killer, but I think it's too early to say.

Finally, I fully agree that whatever happens, Microsoft is unlikely to actually die or go out of business. They're a big company, with a lot of money and customers, and they're not stupid, and they'll find a way to cope with the coming changes, even if it means transitioning their company into one that isn't evil. :)

Re:Maybe..just maybe.. M$ is starting to see...

[doktor-hladnjak]

Microsoft, on the other hand, was handed their monopoly position on a silver platter, and has never really had to cope with a competitive market. They have no previous experience to fall back on.

That's simply not true. For example, Excel didn't just drop out of the sky one day and instantly become the leading spreadsheet program. Over time it gained market share from Lotus because it had more features that customers wanted. Back in those days, it was a race at both companies to get more and better features into the product.

"The job's not done..."

[dpbsmith]

...till ODF's plugin won't run.

Watch for this, in an automatic "security" update coming soon.

I imagine several confirmation boxes asking you to engage in a binding legal agreement saying that you understand that Microsoft did not write the plugin, and holding Microsoft harmless in the event that the plugin does not translate documents correctly, damages your computer, or directly causes terrorist attacks on the United States.

Re:"The job's not done..."

[NineNine]

I imagine several confirmation boxes asking you to engage in a binding legal agreement saying that you understand that Microsoft did not write the plugin, and holding Microsoft harmless in the event that the plugin does not translate documents correctly, damages your computer, or directly causes terrorist attacks on the United States.

No, you're right. MS (heck, any company), should voluntarily accept legal liability for an add-on to their poroduct that they had nothing to do with. I *knew* that I should have sued Toyota when that lift-kit that I bought at CarQuest fucked up my truck. Leave it to the Slashdot Hive Mind to come up with great ideas!

Re:"The job's not done..."

[Kjella]

I imagine several confirmation boxes asking you to engage in a binding legal agreement

Oh, I think you signed that when you clicked "I agree". This will just be your friendly reminder(s). It's down on page 47, subsection 3, second paragraph.

Re:"The job's not done..."

[denis-The-menace]

I see your point but the parent's point is that if Toyota was like MS, Toyota would issue a recall on your truck to put in a warning system in case you put in that said liftkit.

Imagine something like you turn the ingnition key for the 1st time after you install your liftkit and through the radio you here:
"We have detected a non-Toyota accessory. Please honk twice to engage in a binding legal agreement saying that you understand that Toyota did not magnufacture or install the liftkit, and holding Toyota harmless in the event that the liftkit does not function correctly, damages your truck, or directly causes terrorist attacks on the United States."

Re:"The job's not done..."

[Software]

Well, you can imagine it, but I rather doubt it's going to happen. The plug-in interfaces are fairly stable, and MS is not going to change them and break compatibility with one plugin out of spite. There are a lot of third-party providers of Office plugins, and MS doesn't want to annoy them.

I know that MS has done similar things in the past (DR-DOS comes to mind), but usually that's only when a) they have a technically plausible reason for it and b) they think they can get away with it. This issue is too much in the public eye.

Step program

[jbeaupre]

Can you feel it? It's the tide of inevitibility.

Why? The Catch 22 has been solved (we need MS vs. can't convert while using MS). And it's the bean counters that ultimately sway government decisions.

1) Plugin will be installed on gov pc's
2) Documents will be handled in ODF
3) Gov bean counters will be suggesting to managers everywhere they can save $XXXX if they use OpenOffice instead of MS Office

Re:Step program

[Anonymous Coward]

Can you feel it? It's the tide of inevitibility.

Oh, you mean the latest "microsoft killer" in the long line of microsoft killers that just never seem to go anywhere?

Re:Step program

[westlake]

Can you feel it? It's the tide of inevitibility

There is more to building a successful office suite than a choice of formats for storage, output and exchange.

Re:Step program

[Volante3192]

4) Profit!

Re:Step program

[jbeaupre]

A friend told me a little story that may apply here (forgive me if I mangle it):

After losing the "look and feel" lawsuit, Jobs said to Gates "But it will never be as good as ours." To which Gates replied "I doesn't have to be."

"Good enough" is pretty powerful. And whereas MS could bond things to windows to fend off free stuff like Netscape and many others, it will be very difficult (impossible?) to bundle MS office to fend off OpenOffice.

For the record, I use MS Office. But I used to use Word Perfect. I just have a gut feeling that I'll be switching to OO someday.

Re:Step program

[marcosdumay]

"There is more to building a successful office suite than a choice of formats for storage, output and exchange."

Yes, but Microsoft showed we lots of times that all those other things really don't matter.

Why isn't this available to everyone?

[IANAAC]

I'd be passing the plugin along to everyone I knew.

Seriously. I don't use MSOffice all that much, but have to constantly exchange .doc, .xls, etc. formats all the time with other people. For the most part, OO.o saves in these formats and opens in Office fine, as intended. Sometimes it doesn't though. If I could save in ODF format and include a plugin with the document itself, I would think that would be far more helpful in getting people to at least look at open source, rather than just pointing them to OO.o and saying "Install this".

Re:Why isn't this available to everyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can understand wanting to keep development closed until the codebase shakes out a bit; but after that, why not open up and put it out there? I hope we don't end up in the ironic situation where a closed shop tries to take advantage of the pent up demand for an open file format. Greed could completely discredit the whole idea. "Open formats are the future! Here's some proprietary code to get you there!" I'm not saying this is happening, but I don't understand the motivation for keeping this so close to the vest.

MOD PARENT

[Anonymous Coward]

it comes packaged in the same box as Duke Nukem Forever and the phantom console

Brace for an [Office] upgrade

[bogaboga]

We should expect the following from Microsoft. Microsoft are going to prepare a patch that will eventually disrupt the working of this plugin in all Office versions.

Or even better, they could change the license to every new shipment of office to specifically prohibit installation of plugins that are not Microsoft approved. This plugin will fall in this category of course.

Re:Brace for an [Office] upgrade

[Dcnjoe60]

We should expect the following from Microsoft. Microsft are going to prepare a patch that will eventually disrupt the working of the plugin in all Office versions."

Of course, if MA passed a statute stating that government agencies had to use open document formats, then if Microsoft to action to prohibit the plugin from functioning as you suggest, they would be eliminating Office from being suitable for use by state agencies. As such, it would not be in their best interest to take action to disable or hinder the plugin from working now that it is available.

A much more likely scenario is that they will need to do everything possible to keep it working and others will also start to adopt the the plugin and the proprietary Microsoft format, while maybe the default in the software, will no longer be the default used by the people.

Once that occurs, it will be much simpler for competing products to come to market (commercial or open source) and challenge Office. The competition might not be good for Microsoft, but will be for the consumer.

Re:Brace for an [Office] upgrade

[Allnighterking]

That actually would be a good thing. Since there are a large number of office version outside of support yet still in use (like office 97) that this plug-in is supposed to work with. It could well backfire if MS makes it not work with the new versions. One more reason for users not to upgrade. Since 9 times out of 10 the reason people give seems to be "I use doc files because everyone else uses doc files" Now you change that so you have a single iso standard (yes odf is now an iso standard) that everyone except the new users of MS Office can use. The the pencil pushers go. "Spend money, less compatability" "Don't spend money, get compatablilty" With a switch to OOo they save money (costs to pay techs to install and then need to deal with productivity drop while people learn new software.) With this plugin they don't spend money. (user installable and they already know how to use the product.) Later during a normal upgrade cycle they can make the switch or stick decision as appropriate.
Now MS is in a corner. Do they fight and risk loosing or do they not fight and risk loosing.

Re:Brace for an [Office] upgrade

[jc87]

Or even better, they could change the license to every new shipment of office to specifically prohibit installation of plugins that are not Microsoft approved. This plugin will fall in this category of course.

Sure , after all is not like the UE would ever appreciate even more proofs that M$ is a monopoly that kills free (as in free market) competition

Re:Brace for an [Office] upgrade

[Aranth Brainfire]

I'm really, really, really surprised you didnt spell it "Micro$oft"

Or even require that everyone change.

[khasim]

If everyone's app can read/write to the same format, with no loss of formatting and such, then different departments can use whatever works best for them.

This would also include any vendors or contractors that they use.

Standardizing on the format gives everyone the Freedom to use whatever app they prefer. Some companies might prefer MSWord95. Others like MSOffice 2000 pro. While various governmental departments are migrated to OpenOffice.org to save taxpayer money.

And they all work together, seamlessly.

Freedom.

Yeah but WHICH VERSION of office?

[gentimjs]

Office 97? Office XP? Office 2002? Office 2000? Office 2007? Forward-portable to future versions? I'm quite sure this is a good thing, but at the same time I'm quite sure it wont work well for many many MS Office users...

Re:Yeah but WHICH VERSION of office?

[Gat0r30y]

FTFA: all versions of MS Office dating back to MS Office 97. RTFA!

Re:Yeah but WHICH VERSION of office?

[ratboy666]

Given that the plugins do not work at the file format level (at least of the MS formats), but at the level of normal MS Office integration, I would imagine that the plugin will work across most current MS Office versions.

There are plenty of vendors that offer MS Office plugins that work across most versions, and the existence of these plugins is one of the reasons for the "MS Office lock-in". The plugins are NOT offered for other office suites (and this was one of MAs concerns; disability support plugins for MS Office that didn't translate well into other platforms).

The existence of these plugins makes MS Office a platform instead of simply a program. This plugin simply allows continued use of the platform where needed; yet allows competing product and platforms to coexist.

Note that conversion accuracy is no longer a concern: .doc &etc. files will be handled by the NATIVE application, and the ODF format is clearly defined. As long as ODF supports the feature set needed by the plugin (and, given the plugin can be made, it does), which must be reasonably feature complete, things will work.

Now, the plugin layer MUST be (reasonably) feature complete -- simply because if it is NOT, other plugins would suffer badly (eg. screen reader wouldn't be able to determine formatting, thus rendering difficulty to blind users of MS Office).

If you are paranoid about Microsoft, and think that the feature completeness of the plugin layer will or can be compromised -- that is very unlikely. Other plugins would also suffer, and government users would be forced to start looking at alternatives.

The existence of this plugin means that an ecosystem with both Microsoft and alternate vendors can be supported. Which is a good thing. Previously, the only way to use .doc (officially) on many Unix platforms was to use the limited Microsoft viewer. So this is a very good development.

I don't think it will hinder or improve MS Office sales at all, but it will make things possible that have been VERY difficult in the past.

I will start seeding the plugin as soon as I can!

Ratboy

More likely

[Anonymous Coward]

1) Plugin will be installed on gov pc's
2) A copule Documents will be handled in ODF
3) Gov bean counters will be suggesting to managers everywhere they can save $XXXX if they use OpenOffice instead of MS Office
4) Microsoft salesguys take gov bean counters' elected bosses out to lunch and donate to their campaigns
5) Govt agencies standardize on the latest MS Office as the only authorized program to read ODF docs

Re:More likely

[jbeaupre]

Darn you! And it would have worked if it weren't for you meddling Remond kids! Yes, you've definitely seen the biggest flaw. The main difference may be that in the past users had a legitimate concern about losing MS office. As that fades, and with budgets always being tight, MS has to win the smoozing game every time, over and over again. At the state and local level. But you're right, MS can forstall or slow things significantly.

Wait a minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

...I thought RTF was the "universal" format already.

Re:Wait a minute...

[kimvette]

Er, no. Have you ever read a textpad file in an editor? There is no real standard for margins, embedding images, padding, or anything else. It's also fugly as hell and a pain in the ass to write a proper parser to handle the various implementations of RTF, and if you open a document in an incomplete RTF implementation and save it back out, or copy & paste between two different richedit controls, you can run into some curious formatting glitches. XML is a heck of a lot more logical for a document format.

Pardon my disdain for RTF, I've had to edit "mission critical" documents in textpad for a past employer when M$ Word broke an RTF for which there was no backup (why was there no backup? The IT department at the time consisted of a paper MCSE who thought he was God. Need I say more?)

Re:Wait a minute...

[shis-ka-bob]

and ... I thought RTFM was the 'universal' Slashdot comment.

Insensitive clod.

[Anonymous Coward]

which as you know is a major concern for Massachusetts.
How dare you assume that I know anything? Don't you ever consider the fellings of those who know nothing?

Smart Move

[Tom]

Very smart move. It allows the office workers to continue as if nothing had changed, for the moment. But when M$ comes knocking and tries to sell them an upgrade to Office200x, the answer will be "if we have to upgrade anyways, as you have just elaborately shown, then we'll upgrade to OpenOffice, thank you".

Especially if the new Office they release with Vista changes the interface considerably, and requires re-training anyways.

Of course, the next Office update will break the plugin. It'll be a cold day in hell before M$ can let this stand unchallenged.

A great disturbance in the stock price,

[khasim]

as if millions of investors cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced...

Microsoft will have to compete on a level playing field now.

They have the money, they have the programmers, they have the marketshare. Competition should not hold any fear for them. We'll see how it plays out.

Re:A great disturbance in the stock price,

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Microsoft can compete with OO.o on a level playing field just fine. Office 2007 makes OO.o and all other office apps look like antiquated garbage. And Office 2007 uses open formats by default, so there is no lock in regarding format anyway. When Office defeated WordPerfect, Lotus, and others, it wasn't based on format lockin; they all used their own formats. Hell, Microsoft invented RTF to allow interchange of rich text formats. I know that it's slashdot doctrine that Office is only used because of its format, but its not the case.

Speaking of competing on a "level playing field", how about OO.o being "free as in beer"? OO.o is the app that isn't competing on a level playing field.

Re:A great disturbance in the stock price,

[msuarezalvarez]

Speaking of competing on a "level playing field", how about OO.o being "free as in beer"? OO.o is the app that isn't competing on a level playing field.

So you think to level the field, OO.o should charge for the app? That's probably the most idiotic idea I've read around here lately.

BTW, read up some more on how good an interchange format RTF is before commenting. There are relevant links posted in comments in this thread.

Re:A great disturbance in the stock price,

[Stephen Ma]

I know that it's slashdot doctrine that Office is only used because of its format, but its not the case.

(Emphasis mine.) Strawman argument alert!

No one is claiming that Office is used today only because of the format. The document format lock-in is one of the reasons -- maybe the major reason -- but not the only reason people use Office. And the lock-in is absolutely intentional on Microsoft's part.

And .doc format is not why Microsoft won in the wordprocessing / office market. Remember the forced bundling of Windows 3.x with every computer sold with MS-DOS (i.e. with practically every computer on the planet)? Remember all those DOS + Windows + Office bundles? Who could compete with that? This was part of the reason why Microsoft lost the anti-trust case. MS would have been in a world of hurt if a newly-installed and thoroughly bribed Bush administration hadn't called off the government lawyers and wimped out on the anti-trust settlement.

Open documents good

[DesertWolf0132]

Currently my office runs on M$ Office 2k3. We could easily switch to OpenOffice save one luser who creates every one of his spreadsheets using M$ specific formatting that throws the OO conversion tool for a loop. I would switch the rest of us but we all have to be able to access his documents as he is the shop manager and he gets cranky when people don't read his crap. Had I been here when the network was set up in the first place this would be a M$ free shop as Linux has all of the tools these lusers need in a default workstation install. So I am going to sit here patiently waiting to move everyone to Linux immediately after we can get ODF translations for all of his crap. At least I can move the website to a Slack server soon (after I weed out the useless ASP code). IIS is killing me

I am Microsoft Certified, which is why I use Linux.

Re:Open documents good

[mopslik]

one luser who creates every one of his spreadsheets using M$ specific formatting that throws the OO conversion tool for a loop. I would switch the rest of us but we all have to be able to access his documents as he is the shop manager and he gets cranky when people don't read his crap.

If you just have to read his crap, you can always download the free Excel 2003 Viewer.

Of course, if you need to edit, you might be SOL.

Re:Open documents good

[Allnighterking]

Seriously, have you tried his spreadsheets in gnumeric. I've not run across anything our office M$ bigot can do that this won't read. (He tries hard to get me to stop using Linux.) Or you can move everyone to Linx and the use wine to run the Excell reader. (since you only need to read not edit.)

Re:Open documents good

[Blakey Rat]

Wow, spell it M$ *and* call users "Lusers." I bet you're really popular around the office, huh?

Out of curiosity, though, what formatting is "M$" specific? Does only Microsoft offer boldface or something?

Re:Open documents good

[Anonymous Coward]

I really hope you don't call them "lusers" to their faces. And I really hope you are just enjoying a geekish joke, and not thinking of them as "losers".

You and they will be happier if you don't have an adversarial relationship with them.

Re:Open documents good

[drinkypoo]

I'd sure like to know when we crossed the watershed line that dictated that calling Microsoft "M$" was no longer cool. I know this dates me, but Micro$oft only makes sense in a world with Compu$erve. Even in the earlier days of slashdot it was both normal and accepted. Personally, I believe that you people fell for some Microsoft shills astroturfing - they convinced you that it was "hip" to bad-mouth people who refer to Microsoft as "M$".

All well and good

[Anonymous Coward]

Now we just need a plug in for excel, publisher, powerpoint, etc!
Hopefully it is on the way.
Can't wait until people realise that openoffice doesn't crash half way through writing that important report like certain office software does

Re:All well and good

[bufalo_1973]

odf = odt + ods + odp + odg + odm + ott + ots + otp + otg (anyone more?)

Re:All well and good

[Xtifr]

> Now we just need a plug in for excel, publisher, powerpoint, etc!

From the /. summary (you didn't even have to RTFA, FF Sake!): "[...] allow translation of documents between Microsoft's binary (.doc, .xls, .ppt) or XML formats and ODF".

Do you even know what a .xls file is? Or a .ppt?

Publisher, I don't know--I don't even know what it is (have never used Office in my life), but at least two of the three that you list are obviously already covered. Even someeone like me, who has never used MS-Office (and has barely ever used MS-Windows) was able to figure out that much!

Is there a blurb that one can post in the office?

[bertramwooster]

Hi,

I work in a fairly technical group, but many of my colleagues are quite ignorant about the problems of using proprietary standards (e.g., office) in their day-to-day life. When Firefox was released, I put up the copy of the New York times ad in the lounge and people noticed. I wondered if there is a similar blurb for ODF (or OpenOffice). Now seems to be the ideal time to make people aware of the choice and alternatives.

Is there a nice one-page (non-technical) write-up that clearly states why open standards (ODF) is better than closed standards controlled by evil monopolies (Microsoft's doc format)?

Aravind.

Uh Doesn't OO already do this?

[llbbl]

Open Office will natively read Microsoft propetary document's like .doc, .xls, .ppt and then all you have to do is save them as open office document type. What is all this nonsense about a plugin when Open Office already does it.

Re:Uh Doesn't OO already do this?

[SoumyaRay]

openoffice's conversions of ms documents to odf ain't so hot. anything beyond a very basic document has glitches. i've tried word and ppt documents this has been the case for me.

my guess is that the new plugin can see the onscreen formatting and make a faithful representation of that in ODF, without ever having to decode the .doc format.

Re:Uh Doesn't OO already do this?

[SoumyaRay]

to add to my previous comment, i guess the simplest (and crappiest) analogy i can come up with is this: its not easy to translate what you say in english, faithfully in to chinese without some loss of meaning. but if i could read your mind (plugin!) i could more accurately translate the nuances of your thoughts.

So, just like Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever used an extension with Firefox that stopped working right when you upgraded to the latest browser version?

I wonder why.

I'm sure all this paranoid worry about Microsoft deliberately seeking to foul up extensions is important to you. To me, it's just silly. If Microsoft did that, eventually it would come out and they know it. So it's best for them to just make the changes they think are important and say to any plug-in developers that they'll need to fix their own software to work with it.

Seems normal to me.

Re:So, just like Firefox?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Microsoft did that, eventually it would come out and they know it.

What then? A slap on the wrist? What would they care?

Corel, Ami Pro, Apples word thingie?

[WindBourne]

very cool that they did this for Office. I wonder if they can produce it for the other offices. If there is one format that is accessable from ALL the packages it will make very easy to argue that it is the format to go with.

Re:This time with help from ODF, We have a winner!

[erbmjw]

Charles very nice summation - you've hit the proverbial nail right on the head ... and Sorry but I've got no mod points.

Re:"MA" is a postal code, but...

[IANAAC]

.."Mass." is the abbreviation for the state of Massachusetts. Yes, it matters.

The US went to two-letter state abbreviations a LONG time ago. Where've you ben?

You miss a key fact...

[tgd]

There is a LOT of stuff MS Office does that Open Office doesn't do or does poorly.

There are also a LOT of people who have tried OO, and hate the interface and overall look and feel of it.

Its funny with this whole ODF thing that there are two camps here -- those who want document access, and the anti-Microsoft people. The former win big in this case, and the latter get laughed at -- they hitched their wagon to the wrong horse train.

This is the perfect solution -- it shuts up the vendor lockin crowd, and lets businesses and governments continue to use the best product out there without pressure from the masses.

(I should add before the slashbots mod me into oblivion that I happen to use OpenOffice on my systems at home, but I just can't see a business that really uses office being able to ever switch to it without a HUGE amount of work around the product.)

Re:You miss a key fact...

[iabervon]

If the business switches to ODF, there's relatively little they can do with MS Office that they can't do with OpenOffice, if they want to be able to have it persist when they save and load their files. And businesses can save money by having everybody who doesn't care or prefers OO use that, while only users who insist on MS Office get it.

Personally, I think OpenOffice is a terrible piece of software, and is only surpassed in sucking by everything Microsoft makes except for Visio. The reason I want ODF to catch on is so that you can use the tool appropriate to what you're doing, rather than having to struggle manually with some office program. You want to know the exact color used in a drawing in an office file? If it's in ODF, you can unzip it, and search the XML for "color", and you find it.

Maybe non-technical users aren't going to be capable of doing stuff by hand on ODF files, but they can still use programs created by more technical users who aren't intimidated by ODF, but who aren't quite up to writing a GUI office software plug-in. ODF is a huge win for anyone who wants to do automated document manipulation.

Re:You miss a key fact...

[twistedcubic]

Very Insightful.

Why this is important

[maggard]

MS Word isn't going away, at least, not any time soon.

My sweetheart works for a non-profit health agency in Massachusetts. Nearly all of his paperwork is in MS Word. Not that he has any particular feelings for or against MS Word, but because the Massachusetts Department of Public Health requires this.

Nearly every grant application, mandated report, etc. must be in MS Word "doc" format. Not plain text, not HTML, not SGML or XML or anything else, MS Word "doc" format. If it's not in MS Word "doc" format the state won't accept it and your grant application won't be received, your mandated reports not accepted, etc.

Sure other levels of state government are talking about adopting ODF, but that is just theory, until the state converts all of it's huge library of forms and applications, the paperwork that it all runs on, to something other then MS Word "doc", this is all theory. For that there will need to be a huge transition, and this sort of plugin is what can make it possible.

In the meantime all of the elaborate integration many of us take for granted, and that there are islands of in the state, and pockets of in state contractors, affiliated agencies, and the huge range of state-government dependent organizations, will be able to continue using MS Word in their established workflows.

Back to my sweetheart's agency, they do have a considerable investment in MS Word. Not just in licenses, they know MS Word. Their staff aren't computer geeks, indeed most of them only tolerate the crappy PCs they have now (running Windows 98) because they have to. But at least their fingers are trained to the keystrokes, they know the menu options, the more ambitious can even do a mail merge, lay out a flyer, etc.

Yes readers of /. think nothing of staring at an unfamiliar screen and working out how to do something with it; for a case manager trying to find a spot in a detox program for a 65 year old homeless woman who wants to get clean that is just not a hassle they want. Therefore anything that eases adopting open formats is a huge benefit, and critical to the process being painless and positive.

While many would like to hurt MS more of us really just want a level field and files that can be properly read a hundred years from now. Let applications and vendors come & go, lets at least have some durable file formats.

Re:Why this is important

[Dcnjoe60]

So exactly which version of Word are they mandating people use if they are still running Windows 98? Word 95? Word 97? That's the problem with proprietary formats, they change and force everybody to change too. If they truly are running Windows 98, which I do not doubt, then they must be mandating that people submit grant applications in one of the older Word formats, because they can't be running the latest version of Word.

As such, it sounds like this grant office would be a prime candidate for something like this plugin as it would allow them to continue to use their old software of whatever version of Word regardless of what the rest of the world moves on to. It would also mean that they wouldn't have to convert their old documents, but could start accepting documents in odf formats.

Re:Why this is important

[statusbar]

But WHICH version of Microsoft Word doc format do they specifically mandate?

ie. Can I give them a doc file from word v6? or v2?

--jeffk++

Re:Why this is important

[maggard]

To clarify:

1. My sweetheart works for a non-profit health agency; not the state DPH but as a vendor (and grant recipient) of the state. His agency is the one actually giving pelvic exams, basic health care, getting folks into shelters & detox programs, out on the street distributing bleach kits. They have had to invest in MS Word for all of the office staff so they can communicate with the state. They've no specific need for MS Word beyond incoming staff having some proficiency with it, rather they have to pay the "MS Tax" in order to do business with the state.
2. The requirement is MS Word "doc" format, not any specific version. While there are subtle incompatibilities between versions of MS Word they're often grossly overstated. These are about as vanilla documents as you can get with at most a few tables, no fancy embedding or formatting, any slightly-off margins aren't a concern. Having heard about some of the grants he has reviwed while on panels they're happy to see paragraphs, pages, and spellchecking.

Re:Why this is important

[Orrin Bloquy]

While there are subtle incompatibilities between versions of MS Word they're often grossly overstated.

Dead wrong. Until version 6, Mac and PC didn't use the same file format, and the PC format was essentially a core dump (unless you disabled fast save).

This isn't trivial. Current versions of Office on both platforms don't consistently open documents predating Word 6.x, and those documents are not WordStar/WordPerfect-like text with binary markup, they're gibberish to a text editor. Mac users uniformly rejected Word 6, so the bulk of documents composed on Macs during the early 90s are Word 5 documents, which OpenOffice cannot read and Sun has gone on record that they will not support (whereas StarOffice quietly appears to be able to).

When Word 4 came out, it was almost blasphemous that its documents weren't backward compatible to 3 but used the same creator/type as Word 3 (meaning that Word 3 owners could open them by mistake).

Word 4 Mac lasted as a standard for at least three years and cemented Word's place as a standard on Macs. At the time, the equivalent DOS and Windows versions could read that format and transparently translate international characters, bullets, em dashes, all before Unicode made this moot. The Mac version handled many of the DOS extended characters gracefully as well, and there had to be charset table mashing going on behind the scenes in all versions. Word 5 dominated from the mid90s to 2001, when the first OS X compatible version of Office was released.

Currently, these 4.0 documents are unreadable by the two most recent versions of Office and OpenOffice on either platform, and I've run the tests to prove it. These aren't complex technical documents, they're single-page resumes with some style sheets, and the documents haven't been corrupted, either.

To reiterate: the format is a complex run-length binary stream like GIF which does not equate to ASCII in a text editor.

Some asshole in a tie decided the .doc extension constitutes a format because the program name didn't change and it came from the same vendor all these years, but that doesn't make it so. Counting both platforms from the first version of Word, it's at least five or six separate formats, and even Windows users are discovering that current Office versions aren't fully backwards compatible with the documents written more than ten years ago.

If Office hadn't penetrated twenty years ago, this wouldn't be an issue.

Re:Why this is important

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure that you can use rtf as the format and just rename the document to ".doc".

It will be openable by all and not give any indication that it is not a true ".doc".

Re:Why this is important

[maggard]

Reading for comprehension: Try it.

... there are subtle incompatibilities between versions of MS Word...

MS Word can open MS Word .DOC files, backwards & cross-platform, albeit with some errors in some combinations of versions & platforms & features used. I made that clear. However some people prefer to overstate these incompatibilities and exaggerate them as "unable", when in fact it is almost always "imperfectly".

Third party tools, as you noted, are markedly less successful at reverse engineering these formats, to the degree that many simply can't usefully extract material.

There is a huge range of difference between saying MS Word can't at all, can't without some problems, and can't do so perfectly; and a 3rd party tool can't at all, can't without some problems, and can't do so perfectly. Apparently this complexity confuses you.

In the context I'm writing about the minor problems MS Word has opening previous & other-platform MS Word "doc" files isn't relevant. As you responded to my clarification it should have been obvious the files involved are only the most basic ones and the tool is MS Word, not 3rd party ones.

That 3rd party tools often choke on MS Word files is the point of these open formats, and an issue already blindingly obvious to everyone reading this thread. So thank you for restating the obvious and adding a lot of irrelevant trivia, now please try and contribute usefully in the future.

Oh, and to add to your History of MS Word, make you feel all warm & informed, the file format differences between older version of Word on the Mac & Word under Windows are primarily because of the differing text conventions between the two platforms. The pseudo-code used to generate MS Word was for many versions almost identical on both platforms. It was based on Apple's MacApp tool, which MS continued to develop in-house for many years after Apple dropped it, and upon which MS Word was based. It is only in recent versions of Word that they have evolved into separate code bases unique to each platform.

Yes the binary formats these old versions of Word emit are nearly impenetrable, but again the differences in these binary excretions are platform-relevant, not MS just mucking about. They could have indeed created a single 'standard' for the files but instead chose to have each flavor imported, a decision probably based on short-sightedness, expediency & (surprise!) lock-in.

Re:Why this is important

[killjoe]

Well this is a great first step. Pretty soon (in the next year or so I would think) MA is going to mandate ODF. Your SO (significant other) is going to download the ODF plug in and continue to use word.

If there are new employees then the state agency is going to save money by not buying them an office license but instead using OO or a cheaper office suite from IBM or SUN or whatever.

Everybody wins, the agency saves money, the taxpayers save money, and documents are available to all forever.

Re:Why this is important

[qortra]

How about Office XP which runs on w98? It isn't the newest version, but I'm sure it's good enough for state/non-profit agencies. Or, in any case, I don't think there are people crying themselves to sleep wishing they had office 2003 file format compatibility.

Re:Why this is important

[twistedcubic]

Have you never failed to open a Microsoft Word document in Microsoft Word? Lots of people have experienced this. This is not a "minor" problem, even if it happens only once in a while. Your disagreement with the previous poster is probably based on your different characterizations of this problem-- no need to suggest the poster can't read, lest someone might be tempted to comment on the comprehensibility of that last pragraph you wrote. I've been in an office where, after a recent MS Ofice upgrade, we couldn't open certain resumes. Our solution wasn't to suggest everyone upgrade their version of MS Office. We just told them to save their resumes using RTF, and re-submit. Other companies might just ignore the resumes without bothering to contact the applicants. This is not a minor problem.

Re:Why this is important

[Dcnjoe60]

You miss the point. The state agency in the original post is limited to versions that run on Windows 98 (and we would assume Windows 98 vintage hardware, too). Yet, groups applying for the grants to be issued are not limited those versions and most likely, many of them will be running Office 2003. So, unless the state is mandating people save the grant applications in the older formats, which the original poster did not indicate, they are already creating compatability problems for themself.

Or maybe, they just deny any grant requests that they can't open. Hopefully, they would but that in the proposal requirements, but you never know.

Re:Why this is important

[maggard]

No, the non-profit agency is running Win98, and has in a melange of MS Word versions (they always have a final-format meeting where they fix the margins from each contributor to the grant application so they all match.) However exactly what version of MS Word this final version is created on varies depending on who does the cleanup.

I've no idea what the state is running, for OS or MS Word version. Their only requirement is that materials be in MS Word "DOC" format, no version or platform specified. I expect they're running, or at least has someone who is running, recent versions. Keep in mind that MS didn't change "DOC" file formats for their 2003 release.

Again however, contrary to some of the FUD, recent versions of MS Word are likely to be able to read the MS Word "DOC" files submitted to them regardless of source version or platform. These are fairly basic documents; typically without embedded material, stylesheets, etc. and so margin & minor layout issues aside they typically open "well enough".

Discussion is premature

[rmcd]

This sounds promising but there is not enough information here to discuss anything. A big issue with MS Office files has always been conversion of a small but important subset of features. How does this plug-in handle equations? How does it handle a document that's been marked up using the "track changes" feature? What happens when a document contains VBA?

Just this week I sent a LaTeX document and the pdf'ed version to a journal editor. It came back in MS Word format for my final approval, and I'm using the track changes feature as I make revisions. Moreover, equations have apparently been created using MathType, a proprietary and relatively costly ($99) plugin. OpenOffice can't handle the equations and it does a so-so job with change tracking (although I'm sure that will improve).

*Archiving* of documents in an open format is a great step forward, but document *creation* uses a lot of software services that won't be easy to circumvent or recreate.

Re:Discussion is premature

[belmolis]

I'm very curious, how did your document get turned into MS Word format at the journal? Did they convert it manually?

Re:Discussion is premature

[rmcd]

I'm not sure. I experimented with a few things such as LaTeX2RTF and finally sent them a version converted using the 30-day trial of Tex2Word (from Chikrii software). It wasn't a great conversion and I got it to them after some time had elapsed. I suspect they did a lot of retyping.

Re:Discussion is premature

[belmolis]

Interesting. I emailed Chikrii software a year or so ago with questions about Tex2Word and never got a response.

Re:Discussion is premature

[rmcd]

They don't seem to have revised their programs recently though they're still available for download and purchase. I wonder if they've stopped developing.

Re:Discussion is premature

[killjoe]

"What happens when a document contains VBA?"

If the state decrees that ODF is the only format acceptable then documents with VBA will not be accepted.

The idea of ODF is not be locked into a format that's only available from one vendor.

Not a Total Loss

[Nom du Keyboard]

Some might call this a loss for OO, since the requirement to switch to it to support OD is now missing. Not completely true.

Now, rather than being locked into either Office and the Doc format, or OO and the OD format, they can run either. This makes it into an issue of costs, convenience, and features -- may the best system win.

Who knows, maybe it will work.

[Nazo-San]

All I can say is that I love opensource and the only reason I don't use OOo for most of my work is the fact that I know most of the systems I'll take that work to will have MS Office, but, unfortunately, most won't have OOo. I tell as many people as I can about the advantages, but, in the end, I can't control people and make them install something they don't want to install. Of course, I've always felt that if they'd just add an official standalone viewer I could at least do things that don't need editing on those systems in ODF (in particular presentations, but, obviously a standalone viewer would be useful for documents as well.) Heck, I REALLY want to switch to ODF 100% right now -- especially after finding out the hard way that Office 2003 won't let you edit files that have embedded fonts (even when you embed the full font) if it detects that you do not have the font installed (and in my case, I did.) I was nearly screwed when I found out that my presentation due in just a short time was completely uneditable via PowerPoint even though the font it said wasn't installed was installed.) Who knows what kind of stupid crap they'll put in Office 2007.

An ODF import filter could also solve this issue. Actually, MS is probably going to have to add one anyway. With ODF growing in popularity rapidly lately and even looking at being an ISO standard, MS is going to have to support it or they risk becoming what OpenOffice is to people like me now (eg the one no one uses because even though it may be good, you can't count on it being installed on the target machine.) Ok, atm, that would hurt them since it would make it easier for people like me to switch away, but, if they aren't careful it will hurt them worse if they make it hard for people to switch TO them.

Re:"MA" is a postal code, but...

[kimvette]

Aside from addresses on envelopes, we massholes refer to Massachusetts as Mass. Thank you for playing though. ;)

That New Office Interface

[buckhead_buddy]

Tom wrote:

But when M$ comes knocking and tries to sell them an upgrade to Office200x, the answer will be "if we have to upgrade anyways, as you have just elaborately shown, then we'll upgrade to OpenOffice, thank you". Especially if the new Office they release with Vista changes the interface considerably, and requires re-training anyways.

On the topic of Office 2007's user interface, the recent promotional movie published on the Microsoft web site seems like they're trying especially hard in this next release to be different for the sake of being different. So hard that some of their innovative ideas may prove better in concept than implementation. Here were some of my thoughts on this 12 minute video.

• They've done away with cross-application familiarity by doing away with the menu bar. With one exception, they put everything in tab like toolbars at the top of the window called the "ribbon". The one exception is the Microsoft Office logo icon in the upper left corner of the screen that, when discovered you can click on, opens a menu with unimportant options like "Save" and "Open".
• The "ribbon" has some sets of checkbox buttons (for settings like applying bold and italic styles) but mostly it's littered with icon popup buttons where your choice causes an action to happen. There's text labels on some buttons but text is minimized as much as possible including removing keyboard shortcuts. Perhaps they've been placed in the "tooltips".
• Speaking of tooltips, the video touted that Microsoft has revolutionized tool tip technology by making them larger providing fuller explanations of what you're looking at. The demo looked suspiciously like Apple's horrible Balloon Help feature from System 7.1. This was useful for about the first five minutes of using an application but quickly became obtrusive and annoying. Unlike balloon help though, they they showed no way to turn these new "wordy" tool tips off.
• Can't find which button you're looking for in the ribbon? That's probably because it's contextual. If you drop a photo into word, a special toolbar appears that gives you options you can only see if the photo is selected. Or rather, you must see if the photo is selected. Now we're looking at the days of 1998 with OpenDoc that promised to give you custom options for your web browser embedded in your MacDraw document: any accidental context selection or de-selection will drive you crazy looking for options that don't apply. Additionally you have duplicate options that would apply to all contexts, but in different places of the ribbon.
• Big features like Footer, Header, and Cell Format have been reduced to action popup buttons with about a dozen Microsoft designed templates in each. There's an option for you to customize your header/footer/cell format, but that was apparently not demonstrated. Like the Microsoft clip art that came with Word For Windows I think you'll get pretty sick of seeing many of these templates pretty fast. Hopefully there's a way to add 3rd party templates instead of the Microsoft defaults, but the size of those popup menus just won't show more than a dozen or so options in a comprehensible way.
• Changes from those popup action buttons happen automatically. You don't even have to select the option, just hover over it in the menu and the change happens automatically. The demonstration of previewing changes to typeface and typestyle just seems easy. Apart from performance issues. Apart from making concepts like style sheets even more abstract. Apart from accidental selection issues. But you can't see your whole document at once so your hip red and grey Microsoft excel template may look fine on the selection you can see, but look awful on a part you can't see. This isn't a new problem with the new office, but it easier than ever to do now.
• They claim these new popup action icon buttons in the ribbon does away with the need for "Undo".

Re:That New Office Interface

[man_of_mr_e]

Your comments appear to be based merely on your observation of the demo, and a lot of (largely incorrect) assumptions.

Undo, for example, is not gone. There are toolbar buttons in the "quickbar" by default next to the big round button you seem to dislike so much. It also doesn't "do away" with the need for undo, but it does significantly reduce it since most actions have live-previews that go away as soon as you move off it.

The "shy" toolbar doesn't appear when you're typing, but rather when you make selections, so your hand is already on the mouse.

There's actually a lot MORE text on the toolbar than there is today. A hell of a lot more, except when the visual image is what's important (such as with templates).

I'm also pretty confused by your comment that the toolbar is "littered with icon popup buttons where your choice causes an action to happen". Isn't that precisely what "buttons" are supposed to do? Isn't that the purpose of a toolbar?

Changes don't happen automatically. You have to select them (not obvious from the video, i'll admit). PREVIEW happens automatically, but is removed when you move off the button if you don't select it.

Word is already contextual, so your arguments that the button won't be findable if it's not selected is pretty silly. Notice how the actions in the Table menu in word 2003 aren't usable if a table isn't selected.

Also, keyboard shortcuts aren't removed, but rather follow the new style guidelines that they only appear when you press the alt key.

You really should try and get ahold of a copy to try out before jumping to all these conclusions. You seem to be looking for reasons criticize it, and are inventing them wherever a demo doesn't explicty show you something.

Re:That New Office Interface

[rseuhs]

If I get the correct impression about the new interface, it will surely backfire badly.

Nobody really wants a "new interface", people want to use what they are accustomed to use. (That is one of Microsoft's big selling points)

Many people still use Word97 and are perfectly happy with it and see absolutely no reason to upgrade. If Microsoft wants to introduce a new file format (Office XML) and a new interface at the same time, I see a huge opportunity for OpenOffice to pick up the ball.

It will be friendly to new users (perhaps much more friendly than to power users)

The thing that so-called "usability experts" don't seem to grasp is that you are a "new user" just for a few months, but an "experienced" (or whatever you want to call it) user for the rest of your life.

And especially when it comes to Word and Excel, I don't see many "new users" - most have used computers for many years.

Actually I think Microsoft's biggest problem is that they believe too much their own marketing. Recently they seem to market almost exclusively to the "new user" group, but today, in the 21st century, that group is neglectibly small, as the market is already pretty saturated and the only "new users" are adolescents. (At least in the developed world)

Lately Microsoft seems on a big suicidal rampage (WebTV, Passport, Xbox, Windows Mobile, Vista, XBox360, now this - nothing seems to work out as planned at Microsoft)

Re:That New Office Interface

[Blakey Rat]

Except that Microsoft has actually done usability testing on it, and they've found that existing Office users can adapt to it very quickly and new Office users can figure things out much more quickly. Usability testing, where they actually watch *actual users* use the product and record the results scientifically. I'll take that over some random Joe spouting crap on Slashdot any day of the week.

Re:That New Office Interface

[Gorshkov]

Many people still use Word97 and are perfectly happy with it and see absolutely no reason to upgrade. If Microsoft wants to introduce a new file format (Office XML) and a new interface at the same time, I see a huge opportunity for OpenOffice to pick up the ball.

Word97? Let's be honest here, folks - 99.99999% of all "documents" are still standard memos & letters that except for the typefaces, don't look any different than they did in the 1980s when the IBM Selectric was the big thing, and CP/M was something that geeks couldn't wait to get their hands on.

And those 99.99999% of all documents could STILL be generated just as efficiently on Wordstar under CP/M, on a Z80 with 64K of memory, as what it is today on a 3.2Ghz XP machine with 2 gig of memory the secretary plays solitaire on during her lunch hour.

Re:That New Office Interface

[Anonymous Coward]

The "shy" toolbar doesn't appear when you're typing, but rather when you make selections, so your hand is already on the mouse.

You use the mouse to select text? Interesting. I've seen inexperienced computer users do things like that, but never someone who knows as much as your other comments suggest you do. Do you also use the mouse to navigate menus and dialog boxes?

Re:That New Office Interface

[buckhead_buddy]

man_of_mr_e wrote:

You really should try and get ahold of a copy to try out before jumping to all these conclusions. You seem to be looking for reasons criticize it, and are inventing them wherever a demo doesn't explicty show you something.

I'd love to get a legal, unencumbered copy of Office 2007 to play with before it goes live, but because that's not an option for me I have to rely on screenshots and marketing materials such as the Microsoft movie. The goal of this video is marketing rather than education and Office 2007 comes off being easy, approachable, and fun. But my impressions are through a critical eye and having dealt with similar interfaces like this in the past is a feeling of dread at the help requests I'll get with the debut of this new interface.

Hands on interfaces (like those of Kai Krause) are fun for a new user, and the ribbon takes a lot of inspiration from interfaces like this. The down side is that it they are very spatially dependent. These interfaces make it very hard to jump ship to a competitor's product, but besides locking the user in to "the one true interface" the app maker locks themselves into backwards compatibility problems when they try to change things in the future (or perhaps the Office interface is perfect and will never change). Spatial buttons make phone help difficult ("No the button on the left that looks like a box with arrows on it. No the one on the left side.") If the app maker moves a button from the one side to the right you'll disrupt what people have learned even if all the features are still there on the same tab. If you insert a new tool in the midst of others you'll break a lot of people's spatial habituation. "Darn it! I keep hitting that ligature tool they added next to the style options rather than the word count tool that used to be there" This happens a bit when you rearrange the top level menu items in a menubar (like exchanging Insert and Format) but that's minor compared to making everything spatially dependent in such a wide and tall area like the ribbon. While these types of interfaces benefit the illiterate or novices to a new tool (like photo enhancing or character animation) I certainly hope literacy isn't a problem with Microsoft Word users.

My problem with popup action menus is the difficulty differentiating them from very similar popup data menus. Are you choosing which printer you want to send to when you print or will you actually fire off a copy to the printer right now? I see little in the video that shows how to differentiate one type from the other and unless they've done away with popup data menus completely I think this will bite people. This isn't specifically an Office 2007 problem, but it is a problem that doesn't appear to be addressed in their GUI elements.

I really tried not to be baited by the marketing hype in the video like "We've done away with the need for Undo in your workflow" and "We've expanded tooltips". Sorry, but if they can throw out the menubar they can certainly throw out the evolved interface elegance of these long time tools as well. I'm glad to know they may not be as dead as implied in the video.

• Paragraph length balloon help seems like a great idea, but it has already been tried and received very nasty complaints. Maybe they've added transparency, maybe it expands based on how long you hover. At least in the video it was not explained why this will work when past implementations were extremely problematic.
• I'm glad that undo isn't gone from the workflow all together as the woman in the video implies, but they do seem to be obfuscating it a bit. In addition to the act of undo and redo, the verbage itself helps tremendously in learning the vocabulary of a new application. Was the work I just did cell formatting, table formatting, or text formatting? Undo text helps me know what vocabulary the app makers used when I'm looking for help. Hopefully this helpful text will still be present in the status area when I hover over the undo button on th

Re:That New Office Interface

[man_of_mr_e]

From what I've read on Channel 9 and the like, the reason for the new UI was scalability. Because of 2 decades of feature creep, the menus have just kept growing and growing. They tried many things to bring this under control, such as "personalized" menus, and menu remapping.

They're argument is that the ribbon is a truly scalable interface. Some of your other arguments about muscle memory, and support are also not very well thought out. On the surface they make sense, but they don't take into account that office has allowed you to rearrange toolbars, menus, and everything else for almost a decade. So the "click the picture with the double arrows on the left side" argument doesn't work.

Muscle memory might be a different story, but i've never actually seen anyone but a professional mac user who has trouble with muscle memory.

As for trying Office 2007, I guess there's supposed to be a public beta very soon.

Re:That New Office Interface

[twistedcubic]

Do you think Clippy was the result of "usability testing"?

Re:That New Office Interface

[Blakey Rat]

1) A lot of people enjoy clippy (or one of the other office assistants) and keep them on all the time on purpose.

2) What does Microsoft's usability testing process in 1995 tell us about their usability process today? Nothing.

Re:That New Office Interface

[ledow]

"A lot of people enjoy clippy (or one of the other office assistants) and keep them on all the time on purpose."

To state my credentials, I work in half a dozen schools in the UK. Firstly, clippy only ever gets used by the children and those staff who don't know how to turn him off. Occasionally, the children will load him up (they are asked to turn him off at each login) but never to DO anything with him, just to move him about the screen or wait for him to talk.

Secondly, I have NEVER, repeat NEVER, seen any student, staff, visitor or admin worker ever USE Clippy (as in give him a question, click anything he suggests other than to turn him off or use him to load up wizards etc.). Similarly for F1, the Help menu, or indeed any sort of non-paper-based manual. Nobody use help nowadays, probably because of the horrible mess that early Windows help files made of simple tasks. Nobody uses Clippy because he just gets in the way and asks stupid questions when you DON'T want him to.

Mail-merge is TAUGHT from person to person or out of books. Nobody is ever taught to use help or do anything BUT disable clippy and his friends (in the UK, RM supply most of the computers to schools and have a similar Peedy pop-up on their most common applications. He is similarly disabled. Children as young as 6 know to turn him off because he just gets in the way and is no help to them at all).

Enjoying Clippy is not the same as USING Clippy which few people do. Experienced people find things out for themselves, beginners are just misled by him into doing stuff they don't want to do until they get disillusioned and turn him off. I know long-standing admin staff who have christmas falling snow desktops - not because they USE it but because they like the look of it. Clippy's going the same way.

Re:"MA" is a postal code, but...

[XzQuala]

Aside from addresses on envelopes, we massholes refer to Massachusetts as Mass. Thank you for playing though. ;)

In a conversation concerning the requirement of systems to use standards in order to be conisidered acceptable, it helps to not counter your entire culture by declaring unilaterally that you choose to ignore your own mandated standards.

DMCA

[dkmj17]

Correct me if I'm wrong... but isn't that technically illegal under the DMCA? I thought cracking or curcumventing proprietary formats was not allowed.

Re:DMCA

[amliebsch]

No, for many reasons. First, because it uses a published plugin API that Microsoft provides specifically for third parties to create Office plugins. Second, because the DMCA doesn't prohibit circumvention of file formats, but of encryption implementations. Third, because the DMCA only applies when circumvention is done for the purpose of copyright violation, and since you own the copyright on the documents you create, this would not apply.

Re:DMCA

[dkmj17]

Ahh... thanks for the clarification.

Re:DMCA

[Orrin Bloquy]

Which troll are you on Fark? I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Re:DMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

And it's idiots like you who made it possible for the calm speaking lawyers of people like the RIAA/MPAA to manage to weasle the DMCA law past those who should have stopped it at the beginning.

That said, the DMCA is quite restrictive and does indeed apply to a surprising amount. I believe that it specifies bypassing PROTECTIONS though. The use of a published API to create a plugin allowing the use of a published documentation format doesn't really qualify obviously. There is no protection whatsoever at any point in that process. Neither one which gets bypassed, nor one which is followed through normally.

Re:DMCA

[amliebsch]

BULLSHIT!!! The DMCA makes it a felony (25 year in prison!) for me to play a DVD I bought on Linux.

You own the DVD. You do not own the copyright on the DVD. Therefore CSS is a system for protecting a copyright that you do not own.

Re:DMCA

[RecycledElectrons]

>>> Third, because the DMCA only applies when
>>> circumvention is done for the
>>> purpose of copyright violation...

>> BULLSHIT!!! The DMCA makes it a felony (25 year
>> in prison!) for me to play a DVD I bought on Linux.

> You own the DVD. You do not own the copyright on the
> DVD. Therefore CSS is a system for protecting a
> copyright that you do not own.

I suggest you re-read the comments.

I'm looking forward to the day that IP laws generate the Second American Civil War.

Andy Out!

They have done so

[A nonymous Coward]

They have upgraded in ways that broke existing competition, intentionally, they have been caught, and it made so little impact that you don't know it even now. I bet you are even too lazy to look it up. I am not going to do so; it is well known history to a lot of people, and those who don't care enough to look it up also wouldn't care even if I provided links.

It ain't paranoia if it's true.

can't help it

[Anonymous Coward]

As far as we can tell there isn't a problem, even with Accessibility add ons, which as you know is a major concern for Massachusetts.

... what with all their retarded residents.

Presidential debates, software allegories

[Spy der Mann]

I live in Mexico. Here, the extreme left-wing contender didn't go to a debate because he said he would be attacked for no reason by the other contenders, and other lame excuses. (The real reason he didn't go is because his proposals would be bashed and squashed and spitted over - he's been a terrible mayor, to say the least).

So he didn't go. The result? He lost a great deal of supporters, and now the officialist candidate is on the lead

The same could happen to Microsoft. All the excuses will vanish once they get the ODF plugin. What excuse do they have now? They're left with no choice but to shut up and agree.

Re:"MA" is a postal code, but...

[analog_line]

In a conversation concerning the requirement of systems to use standards in order to be conisidered acceptable, it helps to not counter your entire culture by declaring unilaterally that you choose to ignore your own mandated standards.

You're not from Massachussetts, are you. We invented the gerrymander here for goodness sake.

A lot of you seem confused...

[Typhon100]

about MS's plans for Office documents. The next version uses an open format, in xml, which is in the process of being standardized (meaning MS loses control of the format).

I suggest that before everyone continues yelling about closed binary formats, patent litigation, compatibility, or really anything else to do with this subject, that you understand what MS is actually doing

Re:A lot of you seem confused...

[I'm Don Giovanni]

Better links regarding Open XML (the default format for Office 2007, which is going through ECMA standarization process as we speak):
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/default.aspx
The 2006-05-04 entry provides the most recent update on the ECMA standarization process, including revised spec, and notes on a Novell dev working on an open source spread sheet that can read/write Open XML format (so there is no "lock in").

http://openxmldeveloper.org/default.aspx
The home page of the OpenXML group that's pushing this format through the standardization process. Includes Java sample code that manipulates OpenXML documents, again demonstrating that there is no "lock-in").

Re:A lot of you seem confused...

[twistedcubic]

Don't be offended, but I think you're being naive. Microsoft releasing an open format does not solve the problems we've been complaining about for years.

Re:A lot of you seem confused...

[Typhon100]

Perhaps, but it is definitely a step in the right direction. I also think it is something that should be a part of this discussion: compare ODF to OpenXML, not ODF to the old 2003 and earlier formats.

Re:A lot of you seem confused...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it's not a step in the right direction. It's a con trick by MS to appear open, whilst keeping control of the format to themselves.

Re:A lot of you seem confused...

[Typhon100]

It's going through the standards process. That means it becomes a standard and MS loses control of the format. I don't understand where you people come up with this stuff.

Re:"MA" is a postal code, but...

[XzQuala]

You're not from Massachussetts, are you.

Not only am I from MA, but I am also related to one of the few politicians to ever get elected to an office while serving a prison sentence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Michael_Curley

That still doesn't make ignorance excusable. If you want to complain about standards, dont forget to use them when bitching.

Why MS should have supported ODF

[Rob Y.]

Not only does this plugin allow MS Office users to use ODF, it does it with their existing MS Office licenses. Microsoft's OpenXML would have required an Office upgrade in order to achieve interoperability. And if they had implemented ODF in the upcoming Office release, this plugin probably wouldn't have been written, so again, you'd have needed to buy an Office upgrade to play.

Now there's interoperability with no revenue stream for Microsoft. Nice going, MS.

Re:Why MS should have supported ODF

[bheer]

> Microsoft's OpenXML would have required an Office upgrade in order to achieve interoperability.

Um, you might want to do some basic Googling before you post? Microsoft has gone on the record multiple times that DOCX/XLSX/etc (i.e, OpenXML) plugins would be released for Office 2000, 2002 and 2003 when Office 2007 shipped. (BBC's June 2005 story, Brian Jones' original blog post about DOCX and friends).

Mod parent up

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful observation, I'd mod it myself if I had the points

Never an 'either-or' situation

[jjo]

Massachusetts never formulated this as an "either-or" issue. It has consistently said that it is happy to continue buying Microsoft Office or any other office suite that might be needed, as long as that office suite can be configured to use ODF by default.

Microsoft cares deeply about what office format you use, because if you use theirs, you must continue to buy Microsoft Office if you want it to work all the time. If you use ODF and continue to use Microsoft Office, the door is open for you and/or your colleagues to switch to a competing software suite later.

Re:Never an 'either-or' situation

[NutscrapeSucks]

Massachusetts never formulated this as an "either-or" issue

No, that's incorrect. The OOo advocates tried to hijack this thing as soon as it was clear that MS wasn't going to directly support ODF.

Microsoft cares deeply about what office format you use,

They are introducing an XML format themselves. While there's some legal quibbles, it basically eliminates the "lock-in" argument from the equasion. Of course, they would probably rather that you used their format over someone elses, but as long as you are buying MS Office, why would they complain?

Re:Never an 'either-or' situation

[jjo]

Please post a quote where a Massachusetts official posed this as an either-or, Microsoft-vs-ODF situation. Random 'OOo advocates' may have posted some anti-MS rants, but that's irrelevant.

If you truly believe that Microsoft will actually release enough of a specification, and actually adhere to that specification, enough to eliminate "lock-in", then God bless you.

Re:Never an 'either-or' situation

[NutscrapeSucks]

Sorry, I meant to state that it was the "Hairy Guys" advocates pushing this either-or agenda in an attempt to promote OpenOffice, although these people were allies of the MA CTO. Otherwise, why would OpenOffice be in the picture at all?

And it doesn't matter what I believe about MS's XML, it's what the market thinks.

Re:Never an 'either-or' situation

[Anonymous Coward]

Otherwise, why would OpenOffice be in the picture at all?

Because until this plug-in, there wasn't an existing way to support saving to ODF under MS Office? If ODF hadn't made the plugin, which according to them took around a year to write up and properly test, MA would have ended up footing the bill. Seeing as MA was unlikely to have up-front supported the conversion and waiting a year for it to finish without at least *considering* other options, OpenOffice was brought up by many (not sure how much inside the MA government) as a possible alternative, either for the interim or for the long-term.

Is this the one???

[theguyfromsaturn]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ooo-word-filter

Re:Is this the one???

[theguyfromsaturn]

Apparently not. Just testing my luck was I.

Attn: Idiot Moderators

[NutscrapeSucks]

Just because this guy keeps using the word "trollish" does not mean he is actually trolling.

Re:Attn: Idiot Moderators

[east coast]

You don't understand. Since I had a legitimate question about the validity of an open source product versus the commercial close sourced competition that makes me a troll. The zealotry within the open source crowd is like a religious cult. So, instead of being able to ask questions and get back real answers from the open source faction (that claims that open source is for everyone and should be universally accepted, at least until you have a question) you have to walk on eggshells and not bruise their egos.

God forbid people come out and say "Hey, I don't understand why..." and not get modded troll for it.

What makes it worse is that in metamoderation these posts will probably fall into the hands of an open source cultist who will automatically see that something about an open source project is being question and just mindlessly agree to the troll mod.

I find very few people in the open source movement that seems to be serious about putting out information without being judgemental of "n00bs" and the like. Frankly, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth and makes it very very hard to have any amount of enthusiasm about a group of people who are practically kicking me out the door at the same time I'm trying to knock and say "Whats going on in here".

And they expect Joe Sixpack to be more tolerant of these attitudes? Please.

Re:Attn: Idiot Moderators

[NutscrapeSucks]

No, while I think you're an insightful guy, you misunderstood my point. Many of the people on this site are functional illiterates and retards. If they see the word "troll" in a post, they will mod it troll. Try using the words "insighful" and "informative" in your posts and check how it gets moderated. Hope that was informative information.

Re:Attn: Idiot Moderators

[zsau]

Strangely, there's also the ones who see "troll" or "flamebait" in a post and mod it up. Usually, the moderators will be in agreement about whether it should go up or down, but I can't detect a pattern. It's got nothing to do with whether they criticise free software or not ... usually they do, regardless of the direction they move in.

So?

[bufalo_1973]

You can:

A) "upgrade" and lose/have to convert all your documents or
B) stay with the program AND the documents you are using.

If ODF becomes THE standard I think MS wont dare to screw ODF support and suicide.

MS will worry....

[Mariner28]

If you bother to read the Groklaw article, you'll note that the ODF plugin supports Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I.e., you can save to an ODF format from each of the three. I assume Access will be forthcoming in a later release.

Now can you see why they've bolted down all the furniture in the executive suite in Redmond? That's another three shackles coming off. Freedom of choice is within reach.

And for all you die-hard MS fans that live in Massachusetts: You might want to download the plug-in anyway. At least in the future you'll be able to read newly archived ODF-formatted documents. Save them as .doc, .xls, or .ppt files if you want. And if you want to pay for the privelege of upgrading to Vista and Vista Office some time in the future, go ahead. I'd rather get off that high-speed carousel and upgrade on my terms, not some vendor's...

Re:MS will worry....

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

If you bother to read the Groklaw article, you'll note that the ODF plugin supports Word, Excel and PowerPoint. I.e., you can save to an ODF format from each of the three. I assume Access will be forthcoming in a later release.

Appoligies! I did read the article... but clearly, not thoughly enough.

Never release the plugin source code!

[Antony T Curtis]

I believe that for ODF to take off, the source code to this plugin should never be released ... and that a plugin for the upcoming Office should never be released too.

Why? Because if people must use ODF, they cannot use Microsoft's "latest-and-greatest" version unless Microsoft themselves develops ODF compatibility. This would seriously impact them where it hurts - their revenue. People who must have ODF will not upgrade.

And to ensure this, the plugin must be closed source.

(Of course, they can have some kind of Shared-Source licensing in the same way that Microsoft promotes, and offer to open it to Microsoft on that basis... Make sure that the license includes some nice juicy NDA provisions and has a viral clause which taints all who walks within 100ft of the source...)

Free plugin?

[alexborges]

Will the plugin be free, as in freedom?

Or do we still have to pay due to stupid licenses like outlook plugins?

Meanwhile...

[irrelevant]

... the rest of the world lifts it's collective finger to Microsoft and installs the ODF plugin.

Think about the formats, not the suites

[shis-ka-bob]

The importance is that it allows organizations, like the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to use ODF as a standard format. Users that have MS Office don't need to be retrained in OpenOffice. Handicapped users that depend upon third party tool that works only with MS Office can still generate documents in the approved standard. So, this allows Massachusetts to choose an open standard for their documents without having to dictate a particular implementation. This is a bigger win for ODF advocates than for OpenOffice.org users.

To illustrate..

[Unski]

the un-necessity of ODF, I am going to post in the widely-used MS Word Document format (2000-2003), abridged to bypass the lameness filter, so I will be understood readily, thereby validating my conceit;

;BF>^@^@d^A^@@d^A^@^@^@^@^@^@<88>^A^@^@^@^@^@^@^ D^@^A^A^O^@^D^A^@ ^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@I think all of this ODF nonsense is for communists, and I hope you will all subscribe to my Anti-Terrorism newsletter.^M^@^@^
^@^@^@^

This Is Not Completed

[LoveTheIRS]

This is from their website: "A couple of news reports have suggested or implied (incorrectly) that a plugin has already been completed. This is not the case." From: "OpenOpenOffice" - http://o3.phase-n.com/faq.html

Numbers Game

[bill_mcgonigle]

There are a lot of third-party providers of Office plugins, and MS doesn't want to annoy them.

Microsoft will happily blow them all out of the water if it's necessary to protect its monopoly office suite solution. They're not going to sit idly by while it slips away from them.

Fortunately for the plug-in developers they'll probably go after OpenOffice.org on patent grounds instead. I wonder if the DOJ will have anything to say about it.

Re:Numbers Game

[Software]

I agree with you about MS going after OO.o on patent grounds. My humble prediction is that the DOJ will do nothing about it.

The third-party developers of plugins help MSOffice maintain its monopoly, especially at the corporate level. If your company uses a plugin to connect MSOffice to your document management or other essential system, you're not going to switch to OO.o and give it up. The closed .doc and .xls formats are a bigger factor, though. So while MS would sell the plug-in developers down the river if it was in MS's interest, that's just not going to be the case.

Get Legal?

[bill_mcgonigle]

The Get Legal campaign would make a nice full-pager as well. Let me know where to send my $20.

So where is the MS Office for Mac plugin?

[Been on TV]

The article states that the plugin supports every version of Microsoft Office back to...., but there seem to be a total disregard for the fact that Microsoft Office also have lived on the Mac for as long as there has been such a product. (MS Excel 1.0 in 1986 on the Mac Plus and Word 1.05 even earlier.)

The concept of open format gets a pretty strange ring to it, if the openness is just available for Windows and Linux users. In my estimates there must be 25 + million Mac Office users out there with documents that could benefit from this plugin.