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Docvert 3.0 Lessens Reliance On Microsoft Office
An anonymous reader writes "After 10 months of development Docvert 3.0 was released today. This open source web service converts DOC files to Oasis OpenDocument 1.0, and then to HTML, RSS, or any XML format. Try the ODF demo or download the source and install it on your own box. Version 3.0 comes with an MS Word Plugin, FTP/WebDAV upload, and an in-browser document editor."
Ya, I'm on the edge of my seat. It will get adopted as a standard or it won't. Office will use it either way and anyone wanting to interoperate with Office will have to try to implement it as well.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
as:
Object
Oriented
X
M
L
and whimpered at the thought...
To a Lisp hacker, XML is S-expressions in drag.
One of the things that bugs me are these 'enormous specifications' that are inconsistent. What we need is not just a document, but the tools necessary to verify a generated file. Not just for valid XML, but for all the little microsofty-bits hidden inside.
--jeffk++
ipv6 is my vpn
Despite what Microsoft thinks and how they're been acting in the past with all their 'standards'; Describing all the exceptions doesn't make something a standard. Describing them in the context of a non-standardized environment, makes it even less so.
Although I'm quite sure that Microsoft really doesn't give a and will push this through as 'their' standard that everyone else will have to adhere to to be able to do anything with Mickyshaft generated content anyway.
Whether ISO approves of this or not is inconsequential, the only thing that matters is that M$ can now say: Look, we proposed a standard, it's not our fault 'they' think it's not good enough.
Coz eternity my friend, is a long *ing time.
I solved the issue by writing a program that ran on a Windows PC (an old one that had been discarded and was gathering dust in the closet) that received SMTP mail, detached the Word attachment, started up Microsoft's Word Viewer to read the attachment, then "printed" it to a file in PDF format and finaly SMTP mailed it back to the sender.
From then on all we had to do was forward the email to the robot and wait for a readable version to bounce back. As I used Microsoft's own Word Viewer there were no problems whenever a new version of Word came out, I just downloaded the latest viewer :-)
...Some people think its fine that way. A friend of mine, quite pro-ms, told me that all those little strange things in the specification where normal to have backwards compatibility, and that reading the specification was a waste of time. Instead, he directed me towards a preview of Ms office 2007. Because for him, as for many more, what's important is the final product, the cuteness of the buttons, the way it works and displays its own format. Why bother using a free program that displays word documents badly, when Office is already perfect huh? I feel so misunderstood sometimes. What makes me sad is that they don't see the use of a clear straight-to-the-point format. Maybe only geeks can be horrified by this one.
I wonder if you could get 60 people to review 100 pages each (or divide up chapters or sections in some logical manner). That may be feasible in 1 month. At least the glaring problems would be flagged. I have no idea how to organize this however.....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
This is why we oldsters hate Microsoft. 25 YEARS of this.
...when you can have oo-mox?
Chris Mattern
The second design requirement was that the spec be developed and released quickly, before ODF had time to gain much traction. Between these two objectives, it's hardly surprising that it ended up the way it did...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Well, the XML notation for Office 2003 was even more so. They broke that one now, and some changes are to the better. The requirement to be able to represent just about anything that was possible in the previous versions, faithfully, is still a great contaminant, as you say.
So it looks like the Open Source community is now debugging Microsofts Document format. I am sure Microsoft does not itself know what is going on in here half the time and much of this document was generated by code scrappers looking for structures and interfaces.
Congrats to the world community but they should really submit a bill to Microsoft.
"additional Microsoft technology that must be emulated (but is not covered by the Microsoft patent pledge); elements that can't be implemented without Microsoft technical assistance; dependencies on Windows itself; mandatory bugs; and more. And then there's also the fact that OOXML heavily overlaps ODF -- a platform-independent, already-adopted ISO/IEC."
Pretty much like everything they do.
Wait - where are the virus APIs? Did they leave those out?
Naah...
Gotta be there somewhere. Keep looking.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
<microsoft_word_document>
(Content of
</microsoft_word_document>
...whether ISO has simply become a dumping ground for people simply wanting to market their stuff as standards (ECMA), or a real standards body.
As it is, there is not a snowball in hell's chance that OpenXML can become an ISO standard. It is simply a dump of the existing awful doc format into a nice incomprehensible 6000 page document, and it doesn't even use existing ISO standards. There's even a set group of banners and bullet points defined in there which can by no stretch of the imagination be called international.
I know Microsoft has managed to butter the ECMA up as their usual standards dumping ground, but I simply cannot see how they can get past the shortcomings in that article. To do so would be a huge amount of work (and Office 2007 is already using this format) and it would threaten their Office monopoly - which is what this obfuscation was about in the first place.
I'm shocked too, that someone using ad-hominem attacks would resort to anonymous posting. Amazing. This must be Slashdot.
The fact that Updegrove might have a vested interest in ODF succeeding doesn't detract from the OOXML proposed standard being a crock of shit.
"I think it would be a good idea!"
Gandhi, about Internet Security
Check out the article on Groklaw Searching for Openness in Microsoft's OOXML and Finding Contradictions for further comments. The article also has links to a couple of wiki pages with further comments.
Outside Office 2007, who would ever implement this "standard"?
That's the reason for all the "render like WordPerfect 5.x" options that people have complained about, because they have to allow people to convert to the XML format and then convert back without reducing the document to an unreadable mess.
There is no reason I know of why the XML format cannot support all the features of Word and round trip, without relying on nasty hacks like this, it just takes more work. The problem with "Open"XML that I've seen is the concentrate entirely on supporting only the features of .doc files and their interactions with other programs to the exclusion of anything else. Rather than "render like WP 5.x" you need to define how WP 5.x renders that feature, then incorporate it into your conversion script in a way that makes sense in general for documents.
The whole format is built upon the assumption that only MS and Word will be using it and it is not designed to abstract word processing documents in general, but to kowtow to the eccentricities of Word.
The alternative is to not support roundtripping and then wait for slashdot headlines like "Users find that the new Office XML format mangles their documents".
No, the alternative is to do it right and build hacks like the ones you mention into the import and export routines, rather than embedding them, without any definition, into the format.
> there's also the fact that OOXML heavily overlaps ODF -- a platform-independent, already-adopted ISO/IEC.
Couldn't the Microsoft people use the existing standard instead? That way everyone would be able to communicate. Someone should call to let them know about it.