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California Joins Open Document Bandwagon
Andy Updegrove writes "A legislator in California has decided that it's time for California to get on the open formats bandwagon. If all of the bills filed in the last few weeks pass, California, Texas, and Minnesota will all require, in near-identical language, that 'all documents, including, but not limited to, text, spreadsheets, and presentations, produced by any state agency shall be created, exchanged, and preserved in an open extensible markup language-based, XML-based file format.' What type of formats will qualify? Again, the language is very uniform (the following is from the California statute): 'When deciding how to implement this section, the department in its evaluation of open, XML-based file formats shall consider all of the following features: (1) Interoperable among diverse internal and external platforms and applications; (2) Fully published and available royalty-free; (3) Implemented by multiple vendors; (4) Controlled by an open industry organization with a well-defined inclusive process for evolution of the standard.'"
What happens for instance if tomorrow all of us wonderful Slashdot readers co-developed a magical format that not only was open and cross platform but inexplicably worked with all currently available office suites without modification...
I never get used to these constant resurrections
As long as the format meets criteria 1-4, I don't see why it's necessary to specify that it must be XML-based. Keep it simple, and all that...
Why not just require the format to be in ANY published standard format? "XML" by itself is meaningless, "extensible" is a loaded term (and a very bad idea when trying to write a way to keep things compatible). Why do lawmakers always have to over-specify things until the purpose of the law is lost?
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SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Anything from .Net to Perl can already parse XML.
If Government intervention is what it takes to force a level playing field, I will accept it. But still I would prefer it if market forces create a level playing field instead of government mandates.
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MS made a format that fits the very definition of what they said will be required in this bill. Is this bill just going to lead to government organizations upgrading to the new Office? Technically, all of these things apply even if the implementation of the "standard" will later be forked by MS with their extend and extinguish model. In short, does this really mean truly open formats will get a boost? Or that MS's new format will seem like the solution to a problem they have practically invented?
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Just specifying XML doesn't mean much, really:
... more binary crap...
<document>
Description of MS Open Format
<![CDATA[
37642364 78346478 23465789 34657834 65783465 78934653 47895634 78563478 65347856
56347825 63478256 34786578 34567893 45678934 65783456 78465783 46578346 57834567
34895723 48957348 90578934 75890347 58934758 93475892
]]>
</document>
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I am, of course, talking about Microsoft. They refuse to accept the Open standard.
Until that happens, there will be problems. Yes, you could have .odt documents sent internally, but what if someone has to send a document to someone outside the company? Microsoft Office does not recognize .odt, and if you think that you can train someone to remember to send .doc files to outside users, and keep internal documents to .odt, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
XML means it is readable by humans. You don't even NEED any kind of a program to get the text.
If, and when, such a format comes into play, and has a large enough subset of tools available for it, then the laws can be revised. With all documents already in XML, converting to the new format should be nearly painless, and more likely, both formats could be used.
The tech needs to be spelled out clearly in the law, otherwise vendors like Microsoft will be able to say their format qualifies and lobby until enough tech-clueless legislators agree to it.
Microsoft still isn't an open industry organization, they're one company. I think #4 is the most important part.
I think you make a disingenuous argument. By definition, no office suite can fully implement any other office suites interoperability unless suite b is a complete superset of suite a's features, regardless of document type.
By way of example, let's take something like KOffice. It seems unlikely that KOffice is a complete superset of OpenOffice, therefore even if both OOo and KOffice implement ODF, KOffice can never be completely interoperable with OOo (at least OOo -> Koffice). Further, if KOffice implements any features that OOo doesn't have, then the same is true in reverse.
This argument is a red herring. No, no office suite can implement every feature of OOXML, because OOXML is, by definition, a direct map of Office functionality, but even if Office used ODF, those same features would have to be represented in ODF somehow, and those same suites would still not be able to implement them.
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