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Norway Moves Towards Mandatory Use of ODF and PDF
Andy Updegrove writes "Norway has become the latest European country to move closer to mandatory government use of ODF (and PDF). According to a press release provided in translation to me by an authoritative source, Norway now joins Belgium, Finland, and France (among other nations) in moving towards a final decision to require such use. The Norwegian recommendation was revealed by Minister of Renewal Heidi Grande Roys, on behalf of the Cabinet-appointed Norwegian Standards Council. If adopted, it would require all government agencies and services to use these two formats, and would permit other formats (such as OOXML) to be used only in a redundant capacity.Reflecting a pragmatic approach to the continuing consideration of OOXML by ISO/IEC JTC 1, the recommendation calls for Norway to 'promote the convergence of the ODF and OOXML, in order to avoid having two standards covering the same usage.' According to the press release, the recommendation will be the subject of open hearings, with opinions to be rendered to the Cabinet before August 20 this summer.The Cabinet would then make its own (and in this case binding) recommendation to the Norwegian government."
First, let me say that I like the concept of a single file format that can be read by any computer and displays in a consistent manner. From that aspect, I applaud PDF.
However, the current implementation requires that I have a bloated reader that typically includes Additional Crap (tm) in the installation which installs by default (if even given the option). The reader insists in "improving performance" by running a program in my system tray for which I must remove the configuration myself (no option).
This is also the same reason that I hate Quick Time, so it isn't limited to a single file type.
Layne
Government should not be in the business of making specific technical decisions that are inevitably subject to obsolescence. They should mandate general principles. Mandating the use of open, patent-free formats = good. Mandating the use of an open but specific format (not to mention a contrived mess such as ODF) = bad.
I don't know if they will be last, but I can say that this can only be good news. Open standards for documents. The mere fact that MS is fighting this with a 'standard' of their own should be indication enough to anyone that MS means to keep them locked into MS products.
Sure, they (MS) think the MS OpenXML thingy is better, that's their job to think that way. The simple truth is that an open standard would comoditize MS products.
I'm going to bet that the Internet community in general will simple work its way around to ODF without MS and MS formats will slowly die off. Enough people and governments are asking for it, it will eventually happen. Many businesses really don't care as long as all their users can use the new and the old documents without training.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
Err, ..., kpdf?
Exactly the same argument could have been made for railway guages, and yes, here in the UK we curse the decision to use 4'8.5" (I think, I'm sure someone will correct me) instead of Brunell's 6' but at least rolling stock can run on most tracks in the country.
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
I like KPDF as well and that's my default viewer, but look at what is coming: Okular promises to be, if not an Acroread killer, at least a very serious contender. Note that this is KDE4 stuff (ergo Qt4, ergo it may easily be on Windows machines by year's end!).
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
Sumatra PDF is a good lightweight (under 1mb) freeware PDF viewer for Windows.
It opens PDF files extremely quickly (usually in less than a second on my rather average computer, compared to an average of almost 10 secs with Adobe Reader) and doesn't try to takeover you computer and run your life etc. I've also yet to find a PDF which doesn't display correctly with it.
Website: http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/
A white paper based on a technical comparison between the ODF and OOXML formats
...the OOXML "standard" is terrible from a technical point-of-view, even if you forget about Microsoft's motivation behind it.
Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone.-rms
So, we'll make a bi-lateral treaty -- we'll accept the metric system as our official measuring standard as soon as France accepts English as its official language. :-)
I'm afraid you're a little for this one - that particular deal was struck long ago: Britain would accept the French metric system for mapmaking purposes if France would agree to use the Greenwich meridian. You will have to find some other bargaining chip if you want to avoid looking like a sore loser
sigs are hazardous to your health
Norwegian doesn't come in two variants you dolt. There's a multitude of dialects that vary a lot and two written forms based on these. One is bokmål and the other is nynorsk. Bokmål, literally, book-language, is mostly based on danish, while nynorsk is closer to the original old norse language. From a linguistic point, nynorsk is the natural successor of old norse while bokmål is a norwegianized danish. Very few people actually speak like the forms are written, most speak some sort of dialect where a lot of the 'correct' grammar orally is not correct if written.
Rest in peace Malin "looxn" Kristiansen. We miss you...
I thought Chinese was the most common language not English. :P
Amen. Let me try to draw a picture of the Norwegian political landscape, on a socialist / capitalist axis:
- Socialist left
- Labour party
- Centre party
- Christian party
- Liberal party
- Conservative party
- Progress party
Our country is being run by a coalition of the two leftmost and one small central party. Now, you're probably wondering where the US parties are. Well, they're roughly a foot to the right of your screen.Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
LaTeX3 is being developed actively. I don't really know anything about it, and I don't know if it gets rid of (La)TeX's quirks, but... one can hope, and it might be worth looking into.
butter the donkey