Microsoft's Open XML Project A Short-Term Fix

TechPro writes "In an interview with eWeek the managing director of the ODF Alliance (Marino Marcich) was pretty dismissive of Microsoft's Open XML Translator project. While the move was a recognition of the ODF Format's acceptance by government's around the world, the installable software plug-ins that would be created under the project were really 'only a bridge, a stopgap measure that will probably not be acceptable to government's around the world over the long term. Plug-ins simply don't give the benefits of open file formats and standards,' he said."

Comments

No Technical Support For The Plugin

[aymanh]

[...] a stopgap measure that will probably not be acceptable to government's around the world over the long term.

According to this blog entry at ZDNet, the author did an interview with MS representatives, and seems like MS doesn't plan to offer technical support for the plugin, and it will forward bug reports to the original authors. This plugin doesn't look different from a 3rd party plugin, so no, I seriously doubt any government will accept it as ODF support in MS Office.

Quoting the blog entry:

Microsoft is on the record as saying it will not be offering technical support to end-users for this translator. In fact, as far as I know, no one will officially be offering support (perhaps one of the three companies involved will, for a fee). As said earlier, Microsoft will accept bug reports and forward them on to the project's developers.

Re:short term - but does it matter?

[Laura_DilDio]

They are being obtuse by ignoring the spirit of the request to support open standards. Microsoft is attempting to win the battle by frustrating users. Proprietary formats have kept them in business for many years -- why change now? However, I remember when they supported dozens of file formats .

Java Redux

[Shadow Wrought]

Didn't MS do something similar with Java? Basically have their own "interpretation" of it which is almost, but not quite, compatible. How difficult would it be to make MS' version just off from everyone else's?

Re:Java Redux

[CaymanIslandCarpedie]

The real problem for MS here is going to be OpenOffice. OpenOffice has already broken from the ODF spec to accomplish some things. If MS follows the ODF spec people will scream about it not working 100% with OpenOffice. If They break from the spec to support ODF, people will scream about "embrace and extend". Its pretty much lose-lose, but to you original point its OpenOffice that did the embrace and extend in this case and now MS has to decide how to deal with it.

Re:Java Redux

[Jesus_666]

OpenOffice has already broken from the ODF spec to accomplish some things.

Interesting. Care to elaborate/give a link?

Re:Java Redux

[Tim C]

MS produced and distributed a JVM under licence from Sun. One of the conditions of the licence is that you are not permitted to add classes to the java.* package hierarchy; any classes you want to add must go in your own package hierarchy (eg com.microsoft). That stipulation is to prevent people from introducing new classes to the core API that no-one else implements, thus removing any chance of code being "write once, run anywhere".

However, MS did exactly this, introducing Windows-specific classes into the core API packages. Sun sued for breach of licence and won. MS were prohibited from distributing the infringing JVM and, rather than simply removing the classes and carrying on, devoted their efforts to producing .NET instead.

Re:wHAAAAA?

[aymanh]

Huh? Many Open Source projects or 3rd party companies offer paid technical support for the project. For example, both Sun and a variety of consultants provide paid support for OpenOffice, including its support for ODF.

In short, OO.o natively supports ODF and has technical support, MS Office has an ODF plugin in development, but MS won't offer tech support for it.

I don't understand how it is different.

[khasim]

From TFA:

Converters and plug-ins are not solutions to the problem as governments across the globe want access to their vital records and data and are looking to separate the document from the application, which plug-in technologies do not do, and which would open the market up to greater innovation and more product and price competition, he said.

I don't understand the problem. If it's a plug-in, and it reads and writes to the ODF standard, where is the problem?

The only thing I can think of is if people worry about a Microsoft "upgrade" breaking this plug-in. And then having to wait for the patch to the plug-in.

The translators would also not be perfect, Jean Paoli, general manager for interoperability and XML architecture at Microsoft, told eWEEK, as "OpenXML and ODF are very different formats and some hard decisions are going to have to be made when translating from one format to another, like where we have OpenXML features that are not supported in ODF."

Excuse me, but, fuck "translating". This isn't about "translating". This is about being able to read ODF files and save your work to the ODF format.

"Translating" only comes into play when you're talking about:
a. Converting all your previous work to a new format.

b. When some people you are communicating with are restricted to the .docX format and you use the ODF format. But that's not a problem if the ODF format is the standard format.

c. And Microsoft's "Open" XML format will only be available in their NEXT release so it won't affect anyone who is still using their current or a previous release.

Am I missing something, somewhere?

Microsoft's claims seem to center around an organization upgrading to the next release of MS Office and then migrating to the ODF format.

While I see most situations as an organization migrating to the ODF format from an existing installation of MS Office 2000 or previous.

Re:I don't understand how it is different.

[Zeinfeld]

The response from the ODF spokesperson was hardly what I would hope to see from an organization that was genuinely seeking to promote an open standard as opposed to being a way to sabotage a competitor.

If you have a genuine interest in ODF then the Microsoft news should be wellcomed. It will mean that there is a way for Office users to generate documents in a format that can be easily read by applications that comply with the ODF standard. I will probably get the plug in so that I can send editable documents to Linux users.

The ODF standard is far too new to be considered as a government mandate. UNIX was around for a decade before POSIX was mooted and then there was another decade before there was a requirement to support POSIX.

If there is a government mandate for a particular format then one would expect that Microsoft would provide a supported version of the plug in. At this point though there is no proven market for ODF and one can hardly expect Microsoft to commit to building the ODF market.

A much better way to deal with the news would have been to have hailed the step as an endorsement of ODF and glossed over the limited nature of the support on offer. As it is the article does more to highlight the contentious nature of ODF, the belief that Microsoft continues to be hostile to it and the beleif that the whole point of ODF is simply to attack Microsoft.

That might be an accurate description of the actual situation but that is hardly one that I would want to spend company time encouraging journalists to publicize.

MODF

[stocke2]

how long till they embrace and extend? Microsoft Open Document Format ODF with extensions, you can open ODF documents, but once you do microsoft starts "updating them" with MS only extensions, making MS documents all but unreadable in other word processors, and once an ODF file is opened in MS office it is modified so no longer conforms to ODF. They would surely claim, hey we support ODF see, everyone else is just not smart enough to offer you the extra stuff we put in, aren't we the greatest? 1. take someone elses great idea 2. break ...mmmmm extend it so it only works with MS windows 3. claim everyone else is broken 4. profit!

ODF great for freedom, but needs better tech info

[ishmalius]

I have been working for months on ODF output from Inkscape. Although I am a great fan of ODF, it has become apparent to me that there is a weakness in technical specifications and programmer's references. The ODF project seems to be heavily biased in its efforts toward advocacy, with little energy left over to clean up the Oasis specification, provide application information, and most importantly, provide a test bed.

There really needs to be a reference renderer for ODF. Something independent from OpenOffice, with examples of all of the grammar and semantics in the spec.

Re:short term - but does it matter?

[fastgood]

Proprietary formats have kept them in business for many years -- why change now?

More money. Microsoft's driving force. Change gets folks to upgrade that Office Suite cash cow.

People bought Office95 and ran it for 3 years on one machine, and then put it on the replacment for that computer for another 3 years. Same with Office '97 and Office 2000 lasting for six years ... and $149 for Small Office Edition works out to be less than fifty cents a week for Microsoft.

Time to change document creation -- to a new distribution model like the antivirus publishers did.

Re:Surprised? This is exactly what they do alread

[Kesch]

Now you're going to have to explain to me how Windows is cheaper than Linux.

Or explain how Windows is better than Linux.

Or you can go with the third option, which is "faster." You are free to use any interpretation of "faster." (Suggestions: operating speeds, release times, patch times.)

Or you can admit that good rules of thumb rarely apply in Computerland.

Emphasis on 'Short Term'

[dkh2]

The notion that any MS project of this nature is a short term fix cannot help but to be dead on target. As a point of discussion, look at the release timeline for the next releases of Internet Explorer, and even Windows itself.

Microsoft takes considerable heat from many sources that it's development process is dragged out far beyond need or reason. Look at the long development cycle with consideration of anti-trust verdicts, agreements, etc. and you begin to see some logic.

Microsoft is under some legal obligation to de-bundle or make removable certain components of their preferred distro. These obligations have an expiration date in the not very distant future. That expiration date is also not rediculously far beyond the historic release cycle for MS product upgrades.

Given the choice of re-engineering my product so a specific component MS wants to become ubiquitous may be removed, or delaying release a few months and using the time to tie it in so tightly that the notion of removal becomes irrelevant, guess what Microsoft will choose to do.

With delayed release they allow themselves to present that they are in compliance with all orders in effect at time of release, without having to de-couple anything. As a result, your filesystem browser is also your internet browser, is also your front end for all GUI desktop apps... Nevermind that this is in complete opposition to the expectation that the kernel is the interface between hardware and all other software, and that the command shell, filesystem browser, web browser, GUI windowing system, etc. all fall into the category of 'all other software.'

Re:Emphasis on 'Short Term'

[KingMotley]

Perhaps you just like saying things without really understanding what it is you said, but...

Windows has a kernel, and IE, GUI, command shell, filesystem browser, etc aren't part of it. Infact the Win32 API isn't even part of it. If you weren't aware, the windows kernel even has 2 other subsystems shipped for it (Posix, OS/2 1.1). Feel free to google to learn more.

So what?

[pdschmid]

Every supporter of ODF sounds as if ODF is the most used format world-wide and the de facto standard. Every supporter sounds as if there is no alternative to ODF and that it is the holy grail. But they all forget the realities that exist today. The de facto standard is not ODF, but the Microsoft Office 97-2003 binary formats. Billions and billions of documents are in those formats today and the number of documents currently in ODF pales compared to it. With Office 2007, Microsoft will offer a free method to upgrade all those documents to the OpenXML format. It's free, because the converter itself will be available as free download from Microsoft.
OpenXML provides full-fidelity for all 97-2003 documents, which means that users can upgrade their files to OpenXML without losing anything. In contrast, 97-2003 documents cannot be converted without any loss to ODF, as ODF doesn't support everything in those formats. This means in a few years, the vast majority of documents will be in the OpenXML format and everyone will be wondering why we even need ODF.
Microsoft providing an OpenXML-ODF translator is a stop-gag measure to prolong the eventual death of ODF.

I'm not aware of that...

[Eric Damron]

In what way has ODF been extended by Open Office? A link would be nice...

This actually shows a lack of understanding

[Jaqui]

of what XML is by Microsoft.

eXtensible Markup Language is meant for a base specification to ensure portability. Anyone can add to an xml based specfication for their product / needs. that is the idea.

if Microsoft's openxml format for office 2007 is an xml format, then they will have a dtd and reference url for the dtd that will enable any xml based application to use the format. If this is not possible, then it is another case of Microsoft lying to their customers about Microsoft products.


The above is the comment I made on Techrepublic in response to the article at the url below.
Since the Article I'm referencing is about the plugin for office 2007, it's a related story.

http://techrepublic.com.com/2100-3513-6090912.html /