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OpenDocument Now Published ISO Standard
bobibobi writes "After months of revisions, OpenDocument receives status of a full published standard. The various stages of a standard's "stage code are also online." The OpenDocument standard has been developed by a variety of organizations and is publicly accessible. This means it can be implemented into any system, be it free software/open source or a closed proprietary product, without royalties.
I'm just a little curious about what this means - is it just a red stamp? Surely it has no impact on how and where the OD format can be used. Confused of Holmfirth
We'll soon see the flurry of fud from them - ISO standards mean nothing much, we're all about lowering tco etc ...
But seriously, what difference does it make to anyone? I've been using odt long before and that's not going to change. Those big corporations with a billion dollar budget were using Word since decades. I don't see how that's going to change either.
Microsoft: "You've got questions. We've got dancing paperclips."
Salmon spend their whole life swimming in the ocean eating so that they grow strong and healthy so that when they return to their spawning pools they have enough energy to spread their milt before sinking to the creekbed, exhausted and dead. They get so beaten up by the force of the water which flows backwards towards the ocean that it seems almost pointless for them to make the trek all the way back to the waters of their birth. But they do this, despite having 90% of the OS market running Microsoft applications and with most application users using Microsoft Word to draft their documents. The battle to swim upstream to mate and die is one that must be fought. The survival of the wild salmon stock depends on these brave fish to face the torrents and rapids and emerge beaten and worn in the quiet streams of the Pacific Northwest.
I've worked with some OASIS spec'd XML before, and while it's not usually the most elegant solution, having *any* XML-based document markup become standard is good news. I would love to start doing text-extraction directly from Excel, Word and so forth without having to cut out text, drop it into another MS product, flatten it by hand, etc.
Quick example:
We do user requirements using Word. I wanted to extract them into a database so I can relate them
to functional specs, use cases, code, etc (yes, we're just figuring this out now).
To extract the requirements, I had to cut out each section of tables (Lord help you if they're nested,
or misaligned, or misnumbered) and plop it into Excel, scrub it repeatedly (scrub those nubs!), and
only then insert it into a database.
With XML-based documents, I just pull out all of the matching tags, form an INSERT around it, and off it goes into the db.
-BA
What can be more free than this and stay so: "open source or a closed proprietary"!
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
By supporting public standards, Microsoft can create an application which reads any document and can produce Microsoft Word documents.
The simple answer is that OpenDocument is not a Microsoft core asset. It's not even from Microsoft. It was originally created by OpenOffice, a competitor to MS Office.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
OpenDocument is the format that OpenOffice.org and StarOffice use for their documents, the one that's completely open, the one that Massachusetts wanted to standardize their document processes on but got shut down once Microsoft tossed their gubernatorial candidate/winner into the mix and scapped that show.
OpenXML, on the other hand, is Microsoft's proprietary format that it wants to be registered as an open standard, however it won't be truly as it has patent encumbrances. Besides, Microsoft likely sees OpenXML as another way to extort the computer industry for more licensing fees.
The problem with those "standards" is that today this may be enough for all, but maybe tomorrow there will arise tasks for which the standards will not be good enough, or you will need to use many hacks to try to fit to the standards. Or you may need to way for the ENORMOUS burocraty that rules those standard and hope that they will break the inertial resistance to the change soon enough. Propietary solutions are much more dynamic and flexible.... But hey, I'm not politically correct..so...
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Nope, it's endlich!
340 Swiss Francs! Boo hoo :( I thought it was free!
</irony>
Finally, the online community has convinced the gods of the space age to let go of their greed and lust for cash - i guess we owe it all to the Linux guys, but even more to Google - they were the first to understand how to profit in a friendly way.
Locksmith
Real layout/presentation junkies use TeX. The original "Open Document Format."
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
While google translator may not be the best, I at least tried to point out the internationality of this. The OpenDocument format ISO standard is INTERNATIONAL, not just English. Gringos.
With MS Office representing about a third of Microsoft's income, you can bet they aren't happy about this.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
Have you ever noticed how the best "standards" are those that were originally developed by a single company (usually with a profit motive) (think WiFi, think HPIB - er IEEE488, think PC BIOS, the list is long) that were subsequently adopted by the industry as a defacto standard? Conversely, how many times have we seen "standards" created by a committee that are bloated, too broad, and oftentimes followed by a significantly de-scoped version of same in a desperate effort to salvage something? When a bunch of entities get involved in setting a standard, invariably they each make sure their own interests are represented, which is how we get standards like, oh, to pick an example near and dear to me, DICOM - which is a "standard" for exchanging medical images. This "standard" allows for a multitude of codecs, a multitude of pixel representations and aspect ratios ... leaving the implementation of a reader that is fully compatible an almost impossible task. Will ODF turn out like that? I don't know, but that's certainly the way to bet.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
What part of "Open Document" don't you understand? ;-)
Open Document comes from Open Office, not Microfost Office. RTFA and read this page as well.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Now we need for national standards authorities (such as BSI, VDE &c.) to ratify this standard. Then, software which conforms correctly to the OpenDocument standard will be permitted to display the relevant national authority's mark (e.g. Kitemark). This alone will be a tremendous boost for the OpenDocument standard.
:)
What's bad IMHO is that ISO are charging money just for access to the standard -- it's not available online for you to print on your own equipment at your own expense. But, of course, you can always implement the standard by reading the OpenOffice source code
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
They want to make a show of being just as open as OpenDocument, but not give up complete control over implementation rights (read: patents) for their new MS Office XML formats. In other words, itsatrap. If the world moved to OpenDocument, no one could limit the commercial and noncommercial implementations of the format. Not so with Microsoft's standards, into which their claws are still at least loosely sunk.
Now that it's an ISO standard, perhaps the ISO would be so kind as to make its use part of one of those big compliance standards. This way, companies that want to be ISO 31337 (or whatever number they're up to now) compliant will have to use ODF as their primary means of storing and transmitting documents. After all, what's the use of a new standard if nobody feels compelled to use it? In addition to encouraging the use of open formats, it will give companies a reason to explore their options as far as office automation software.
Let's see some mass migrations from MS Office to OpenOffice.org and other such Open Source office suites. A few large corporations making the switch will produce case studies and some of those nifty ROI projections the suits always drool over. A snowball effect would be nice. One company makes the move and triggers a chain reaction in all of their vendors, suppliers, distributors, subsidiaries, etc. etc.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
While ODF was adopted as a standard by OASIS and now by ISO, it is based upon the XML format originally created by OpenOffice.org.
Now we know that the draft is obsolete and we have to page a huge bundle to d/l the PDF. What do we gain from that? Is this really operational costs? Why can IETF and W3C publish electronic versions free of charges and ISO can't? I'd rather have an OASIS semi-standard than an ISO standard that most can't afford to see.
No patents!
MS format is a memory dump using XML serialized text. That can't compare to a proper document format.
Don't forget KOffice, Abiword, Google Docs, and about a dozen others that are in various stages of implementing OpenDocument support. Corel says they're adding OpenDocument support to Corel Office (WordPerfect), though AFAIK they haven't said when it will be available. I don't think IBM/Lotus is adding OpenDocument support to SmartSuite (Ami Pro, Lotus 123, etc.), but IBM is moving to the IBM Workplace suite, which is built on OpenOffice.org and, obviously, uses OpenDocument natively.
I predict that by the end of 2007 all widely-used and still-developed word processor and spreadsheet tools except Microsoft's will support OpenDocument, and that many will use it as their native format. This news of official ISO standardization can only help.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It's "por fin", too :P. Saying "gringos" seemed to imply you're hispanic.
You're not.
Gringo.
OpenOffice.org and Koffice both use OpenDocument as their default file formats.
.odt format.
.odt files (and as i believe OS X uses system-wide filters for supporting rtf/.doc/.odt other apps like iWork '07 should also come with support).
AbiWord allows export in
Google's web-based word-processor and spreadsheet also both support saving files in that format.
A couple of days ago Corel announced the next version of WordPerfect would support it.
Released builds of Mac OS X Leopard show that TextEdit now has the ability to read and write
Even Microsoft has sort of supported it by helping to fund a Word plugin.
So all these products offer support of some kind. Now comes the hard part; getting people to use the format!
Title says it all.
Don't you mean Kapl'a??
No, they haven't! Most businesses have been using MS Word for one decade -- before that, they used WordPerfect. They actually switched due to a large effort on Microsoft's part to make Word read WordPerfect's format really well, while also being better software than WordPerfect. Software using OpenDocument could do the same thing, especially since it's actually a standard.
Companies have switched office software before; they can do so again.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Did you just imply that the PC BIOS is a good standard? I laugh in your general direction. To refine your point, the 'best' standards seem to be ones designed by a single company with profit motive that are adequately documented, not trade secrets that had to be reverse-engineered by a clean-room team at a competitor's R&D lab, then fought for in court battles when the original company has a hissy-fit that its secret 'standard' was implemented by someone else.
Why do all of you seem to have a distinct ISO hatred?
/. that the internet has been a powerful force in business) .
/. are CIO's or CTO's (information and technical officers) or people who have the ability to advocate ISO standardization for file types, do it. It can only benefit the mobility of your company. One can choose to make switches in direction rather quickly when all the data you store is in a known format. You could hire some coders to do internal tasks for you. There are NO disadvantages to ISO standardization for the customer. One can choose to purchase drop-in-solutions.
From engineering I have learned that ISO standards are completely voluntary. They provide a means for Company A to say, "I need 1,000,000 bolts adhering to ISO XXXXXX". They can then find companies which adhere to these standards and purchase based on best price. If a company wants to be ISO certified for a process they must pay for an inspector to come and check out the process (quality, ensuring, stuff is done properly, etc). I have heard other people bitch about how much it costs to do this, however, it is not your company being forced into the standardization, rather YOUR CUSTOMER is demanding a specified level of quality. These people who are complaining are really voicing a view that they would prefer to deliver a LOWER QUALITY good to a customer for the price of the higher quality good and leave the customer none the wiser. This is a bad business decision.
The example I give above is for screw production, however treat software as a commodity. Then software which read and write files which adhere to the standard are best. Software packages can be built to support these standards and greater emergent networks can be formed (I give the internet and it's effect on business. I hope we can all agree on
To further my example, look into the history of screws or fasteners, there were many competing designs, and the 2-3 best remain today enshrined in some ISO standard along with all their derivative designs.
With the introduction of this ISO standard, business can more easily data mine, update, import/export, modify, and track changes. If any of you who read
Simple questions like "We have ODT files and require support according to ISO XXXXX, can you provide this with your product." replace long drawn out negotiations about who owns what file format or whatever.
In conclusion ISO is important for customers.
If I am misinformed on any of these topics, please respond.
There are so many to choose from: If ISO has been taken, then you can always go to ecma, IEEE or whichever org is willing to take your money to make it a 'standard'. Other people suggest that if one monopolist is the only one to implement it, it is not a real standard (me for instance) .
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
The problem with any standard is when people fail to implement it, or its implemented slightly different. I've spent the last couple of months working part-time on a OpenDocument exporter. The two main OpenDocument applications on Linux, OpenOffice and KOffice both supposedly open OpenDocument spreadsheets. However, neither's file's meet the specified standard. Also, I've used files from OpenOffice to try and open them in KOffice, and KOffice crashes on startup. Using files from KOffice to OpenOffice, they open, but are incorrectly formatted. So, for a developer like myself, the question is, do I write to the standard, or to the biggest software packager using that standard (Firefox). It's much like writing websites, and then having to hack them for IE, but sadly, this is occurring in OSS software. Essentially, until we see complete, working implementations, it's good that OpenDocument is an open and now ISO standard, but essentially, it doesn't really help free information interchange when Openoffice and KOffice are more compatible on reverse-engineered Microsoft file formats than open ones.
The Dancing Paperclip Union is not liking this news. Expect delays.
"No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms." -- Thomas Jefferson
Isn't that spelled with a Q?
Hey, can I bum a sig?
OpenXML, on the other hand, is Microsoft's proprietary format that it wants to be registered as an open standard
Do you actually know what you're talking about?
OpenXML is not Microsoft's standard anymore - it's ECMA's, and it's been developed with the help of Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, The British Library, Essilor, Intel, The Library of Congress, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, Statoil, and Toshiba (according to ECMA themselves).
however it won't be truly as it has patent encumbrances. Besides, Microsoft likely sees OpenXML as another way to extort the computer industry for more licensing fees.
Yes, you really don't know what you're talking about. Period.
Add to shopping basket Size Price
ISO/IEC 26300:2006 PDF version (en) 13368 KB CHF 340,00
ISO/IEC 26300:2006 CD-ROM version (en) CHF 340,00
Interestingly, I can download the USB standard for free but I need to pay big bucks just to view a copy of the OPEN Document standard online? How OPEN is it when I can't even afford to see it?
I can download linux from Redhat at no charge, and Redhat is a For-Profit company, yet ISO is a non-profit organization. I can understand charging for the CD, but why such an outrageous price to download?
I just don't get it.
Most of the Notices for Proposed Rulemaking and various license submission forms and other public documents at the FCC's website are in WordPerfect format, though they're changing to PDF. Goes to show that even back in the day, people released finished publications in editing formats rather than final display formats.
"A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding."
OK, enough FUD, time for some cold hard facts:
h tm
h p8 -4E0D-B290-C836D5F70867/0/OpenXML.pdf
:)
Open XML is *NOT* proprietary See for yourself: http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/TC45-M.
ODF is *JUST* as patent encumbered as Open XML is.
The owners of both ODF and Open XML do not and will not collect royalties (both have published a covenant not to sue)
Sun: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.p
MS: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx
Non-Legalese Explanation: http://www.bakernet.com/NR/rdonlyres/CC54A6B6-79E
To implement either standard, a developer need not accept any kind of licensing agreement whatsoever.
A user, using software that implements either standard, does not have to accept any licensing agreement that covers the either respective format's standard.
Thanks for playing
--
Let's look at how they dealt with Sendo, a company that partnered with them to help them get into the clubby smartphone biz, ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/01/06/microsofts _masterplan_to_screw_phone/ ):
Now doesn't all the paranoia start to make sense? This is how they are reported to treat their friends. Now after you can't get their web page at http://www.sendo.com/ to load, check out their article on wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendo .
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Yes like TCP/IP, ANSI/Unicode, HTML, CSS. You know those obsolete standards that nobody uses anymore. :P
Funny, MS does have difficulty with those standards and still implements them in varying degrees of brokeness. Look also at Kerberos and LDAP. Even HTTP is not quite right with MS. Not surprisingly the errors have been pointed out for years, but remain unfixed, and perhaps not so coincidentally hinder interoperability with competing products.
MS may well be funding a small PR campaign by throwing a few dollars towards an external project to create a plug-in to compete with the OpenDocument Foundation's plug-in which is being tested by governments right now. However, even just looking at the implementations of earlier standards not related to MS cash cow, MS Office, casts doubts about how well MS will let OpenDocument get implemented in MS Office.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.