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ODF Plugins and a Microsoft Promise of Cooperation
Andy Updegrove writes "Last week, the Massachusetts Information Technology Division (ITD) issued a Request for Information (RFI) on any plugins that might be under development to assist it in migrating from a MS Office environment to one based upon software that supports ODF. The RFI acknowledges the fact that it may be necessary or advantageous to see some of the code in Office in order to enable the types of features that the ITD is looking for. Conveniently, Jason Matusow, Microsoft's Director of Standards Affairs, had this to say on the occasion of ODF's approval by the members of ISO and the IEC: "The ODF format is limited to the features and performance of OpenOffice and StarOffice and would not satisfy most of our Microsoft Office customers today. Yet we will support interoperability with ODF documents as they start to appear and will not oppose its standardization or use by any organization. The richness of competitive choices in the market is good for our customers and for the industry as a whole." Presumably such support will include helping the plug-in developers that will assist Massachusetts migrate from a MS Office environment to one based upon ODF-compliant office productivity software."
I definitely smell a rat. It's MS... there's something to this. It's always the same old story with them...
1. Announce cooperation for ODF
2. (???)
3. Profit!
Before we get the usual FUD and Tinfoil Responses
This is 'exactly' what Microsoft has been saying all along about ODF.
ODF does not support advanced features, nor provides a 'standard' or uniform implementation for advanced features, which makes the adoption of this document format very premature.
Basically, even a product like Microsoft Word uses and stores information that there is NO way to store this information in ODF. At least not with any standardization.
Microsoft made it clear that an open format should be adopted, just NOT this specification, as it is limited and its feature set is targeted at lower end document structures.
ODF takes non-standard data and splits this off from the ODF Document itself. How can this help interoperability?
Lets use a real world example. Microsoft Word uses technologies like 'Ink' and as well as even voice structure, in addition to rich media formats that there is no STANDARD way of storing this in an ODF.
So if Open Office doesn't support concepts like Ink, if the document is saved using ODF the 'ink' being non-standard would not be put in a format that Open Office could understand and this information would not MATCH changes to the document even if Open Office preserved the 'ink' data. Rendering this information and data useless.
Ink may not seem important, but there are companies that do use ink technology in Word Processor documents, even Apple is moving for better Ink technology support. Also realize that there are a large population of people that use 'Ink' in Microsoft Office documents on a daily base. I even use it, and retain my notes and even my documents with the intact Ink. It is quite impressive to be able to edit and use Microsoft Word with Ink. You are basically using your own handwriting, but editing it with Wordprocessor tools, like doing spell check on it, move words around, etc etc.
And Ink is just a 'tiny' example of a feature that ODF does not support that you will find in other document formats, not even just stuff from Microsoft.
Microsoft tried to use a similar example like Ink several times, but the press and the people pushing for ODF would not listen.
You cannot have a universal document format if it does not have the capability to support features in the current products that would be using like Microsoft Word. Nor can you have a universal document format that does not have a structured way of standardizing new technologies that will be added to it in the future.
What happens when I drop a XAML animation or XPS document in my Word Document. These are simple binary or non-binary XML document structures, but yet, ODF would choke on this already. And you will see people using XAML/XPS based animations and images and document constructs even in applications like Microsoft Word within the year.
So this then breaks ODF for everyone but Microsoft Word users, and defeats the whole purpose of a standard document format. And Microsoft is NOT being evil with this, XPS/XAML is how the entire Vista OS works and passes information. Adobe also has many 'embedded' media technologies that fail in the ODF specification. We won't be able to use ODF easily with even something as simple as InDesign.
Now if you have read this far, please take note...
I think the ODF concept is grand, and there is NO reason Microsoft should hold the rules to any standard document format. We need a standard, but considering Microsoft truly DOES have the majority of the technologies used in document formating to extra concepts used in their documents like Ink, the ODF standard needs to USE Microsoft's knowledge on this subject.
It isn't like Microsoft isn't offering to help, they are. It also isn't like Microsoft has done something much like this before. RTF was a Microsoft creation, and even many of the XHTML and other 'web document' specifications have been written by or have been greatly improved by smart people at Microsoft.
In reading through the press, buzz, FUD, and eve
Well said. The biggest flaw in the ODF standard as its stands is that it doesn't really use XML's capabilities for, well, extensibility. There is no way in ODF to include your own data with your own schema (in a separate namespace) and have OO.o preserve that data, keep it with the appropraite document elements, delete it if the associated document elements are deleted, and so on. Let alone anything so interesting as interact with it or access it via plug-ins or extensions to add new capabilities.
The ODF spec gives almost no consideration to the perservation and manipulation of third party markup. OO.o currently just discards it silently when loading a document, and the saved copy omits any unrecognised markup.
The MS Office formats do offer all these features, and for that reason alone I'm starting to hope MS wins this one. Both formats seem like uninspring choices for different reasons, but at least the MS one won't artificially limit features and give the "universal" format the reputation of being limited, unreliable for more than basic uses, and crap.
I'm actually really interested in the new Office features for embedded third party markup and interaction with it via forms, etc. It has some interesting possibilities for use at work and with some other tools I'm involved with, and it's something I'd very much like to expore. If OO.o could support the same capabilities I'd be a very happy man, but I just don't see it happening.
...Massachusetts Information Technology Division (ITD), in requesting more information, have publicly admitted that they haven't thought through their adoption of ODF. They decided to adopt it, and now they're asking how? Exactly how much did they investigate the business case for adopting ODF?
I thought OpenDoc was created by an open consortium of companies and was based on real world needs instead of an artificial construct to match the features of a particular program.
Go look at who actually makes the decisions in that "consortium". Look at whos on the committees that actually matter. Oddly enough, almost all of them also have prominent roles in StarOffice/OpenOffice. Coinkedink? Methinks no.
What better way for Openoffice to attack a successful competitior (MS) that they can't compete with on the merits of their own product? By getting in bed with Government. Newsflash - this same tactic has been used for years in other industries. Can't compete with the company, bribe enough leftist government officials (psst...think this is mere conincidence that all this is coming from the state of Mass?) to *mandate* use of your product, or at least mandate *not using* the competitor's product, under the guise of "Government standards".
The longer I live, the more I see the same pathetic things happen.
Just because you *can* do something, doesn't mean it is wise to do so.
Next time you feel the need to create a Frankenstein document, think about alternatives to MS Word.... think about an actual workflow process that won't crash every other machine that uses it (we don't know how your system is able to process such insanity but none of the other PCs in the office will run this damn piece of crap MS Word version of an application that should have been written as a real executable by our IT staff, thanks Bob in Management...), and for God's sake, THINK ABOUT THE CHILDREN!!!!
Just say no to MS Word Macros....
Brought to you by the Council on Macro Abuse Syndrome
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.