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Microsoft Votes to Add ODF to ANSI Standards List
RzUpAnmsCwrds writes "In a puzzling move, Microsoft today voted to support the addition of the OpenDocument file formats to the American National Standards List. OpenDocument is used by many free-software office suites, including OpenOffice.org. Microsoft is still pushing its own Office Open XML format, which it hopes will also become an ANSI standard. Is Microsoft serious about supporting ODF, or is this a merely a PR stunt to make Office Open XML look more like a legitimate standard?"
In an epiphany, Bill Gates realized that the lackluster sales of Vista were due to all the bad things he's done in his life. So now he's got a list of them on a sheet of yellow paper and he's going around making up for them. Having Microsoft back ODF is helping him make up for #38 on his list: "Screwed over consumers with proprietary formats."
:-)
Come on, couldn't you see Ballmer playing Randy?
--Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
Let's tag this with "thelatter".
Microsoft hasn't stood in the way of ODF at all. They just think there's room for more than one standard.
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Somebody spike the coolaid in the Redmond cafeteria? :-)
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now they don't have to worry about losing. They're double dipping!
Or is it merely a rhetorical question designed to encourage flaming and thus more page hits?
... and likewise.
YES!
Wait, this is Slashdot.
YES!
Do I even need to ask this question, or do I just like to watch myself type?
YES!
So, I'm just gonna post now, and I suppose you'll see it as you refresh every 10 seconds awaiting responce. Please post back, as I'm refreshing every 10 seconds awaiting for responce too!
THANKS!
I don't see how this looks like a PR stunt. Making ODF an ANSI standard isn't exactly making Office Open XML more popular is it?
Follow me
Is the wolf being friendly to the sheep?
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
Not that strange, when you think about Microsofts "it's good to have more standards" argument. Knowing that the standard would be added anyway, they probably voted for it, to make that argument more credible, when OOXML is up for the ISO vote, besides ANSI is more or less irrelevant when ODF is already ISO certified. I would be very surprised if Microsoft doesn't later use this as part of an argument for accepting OOXML, directly or as a response to critics.
But still, as long as customers dont know the difference between interoperability and "microsoft compatibility" they win these games. Sad.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It's like the "peaceful co-existance" the Soviets were all in favor of. They want to then be able to say they support is even as they choke the life out of it.
They did a good thing. It is fruitless to speculate why. 'Nuff said.
Some settling may occur during posting.
If you can't read the "standard" documentation and develop a program that properly works for that standard, then it is not a standard. The "standard" still has things like "will support rendering of Office97 table format", and never define what the "Office97 table format" exactly is and how it works.
Until each and every thing in the standard is properly defined and explained, it is not a standard.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
The end result is that ODF becomes a standard. MS maybe gets a few brownie points in the public eye for supporting it, so good for them, but is this really an issue?
Apparently M$ can do no right. It reminds me of a quote from Jesse Jackson. He once said that if he walked across one of the Great Lakes, the next day the newspapers would report that "Jesse Jackson can't swim". Methinks some of you take your evil empire conspiracy too seriously.
Life needs more saving throws.
Please. If the majority is clear they really have nothing to loose by going along with it. With the bonus of free future spin control.
How does supporting a format that probably goes against the company's welfare supposed to make its own format legitimate? That's like saying a hypocrite's arguments are void and null despite the fact that they're logically sound.
Is Microsoft serious about supporting ODF, or is this a merely a PR stunt to make Office Open XML look more like a legitimate standard?
This is complete amateurs who wrote this. Here's how it's done:
---------
Did Microsoft just voted this way since they have no reason or gain of they voted otherwise and this is not even news worth reading...
OR
Microsoft has a very sinister plan in the works, the ultimate outcome of which is victory of OOXML over ODF. It involves vampires, politics, space ships, weapons, monsters, time machines, tornados, zombies, death stars, extra dimensional ports, robots, dinosaurs, seductive girls, perfect storms, fast cars... And all of this starts with ODF becoming an ANSI standard. And this is why Microsoft voted positive.
Are MS doing this to trick their customers and partners in to adoption, then 1 year down the line spring suprise lawsuits or license fees on them?
ilovegeorgebush
This vote is good for Microsoft. It can work this way. With ODF on the list, and later with others like PDF on the list, plus their own OOXML added to the list, it can make the list itself look legitimate. Then they will argue that governments can meet their obligations for open documents by choosing any one format from the list, making it seem that OOXML will be at least as good a choice as ODF.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
sounds like the beginning of another "embrace, extend, exterminate" plan to me
Now, im not american, so maybe i dont get this, but what is the point of a standerds institute if it starts to list standerds after they have become standerd. the artical talks about, some old, formats already in use for years as standerds, HTML, RTf. With the exception of ODf, which is still up and coming, this would seem to be a waste of a log time, and proberbly, money
I agree. Having multiple "standards" is stupid. There are times when it doesn't cause TOO much of a problem (DVD -R vs DVD +R). But usually it is more beneficial TO SOCIETY to have ONE standard that everyone can vote on to expand/extend.
Two standards in document formats is beyond STUPID.
Which is what Microsoft wants. Since Microsoft already owns 90%+ of the desktop market, whatever they sell becomes the "de facto" standard.
Even if it's broken and won't work with anything else.
MS has never supported pushing a standard unless it is theirs or it is a modification to a current standard. Even in HTML, they were late to that game and push for a number of mods (a number of which were insane but designed to give them an edge). In java, while the did not push for standards, one it was, they tried to control it.
This is totally out of character for MS, though the only issue that I can see, is that now MS will be allowed to push through a number of mods that will allow their proprietary EEE ©.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Can two or more standards be, by definitation, standard? Why not just publish a RFC and allow everyone write applications to that. What could be more standard than that.
What is a "Standard
"Is Microsoft serious about supporting ODF", NO
"is this a merely a PR stunt to make Office Open XML look more like a legitimate standard?", YES
davecb5620@gmail.com
Embrace, extend and extinguishe xtinguish
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend_and_
this isn't news at all.
1) No reason to vote against it other than promoting their competing format
2) No one can vote against their standard simply as retaliation
3) They get to say that more standards are better, look we voted for the competition
4) anyone who votes against OOXML can be portrayed as being against customer choice
I had a few more points, but typing makes me sleepy.
My thoughts exactly - they did it because it's a vote, and theirs probably isn't going to change the result, so they're using it as a way to argue that they care about choice.
The same I keep preaching when it comes to politicians. Don't judge them by their words, judge them by their actions.
/dev/null anyway. What would be interesting to see is whether that vote actually makes a difference. If it's already accepted or rejected by a magnitude, it's easy to cast a vote for the side which promises better PR.
It's easy to vote for something when you know that the vote is for
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
embrace, extend... oh never mind. We'll never learn will we?
If OOXML fails, then Microsoft will 'surport' ODF, then they will change ODF to make it proprietary to Microsoft Office, and then when Sun sues them, Microsoft can countersue for the patents OpenOffice and ODF supposibly breaks.
There already are more than one document format standard. For instance, ODF and PDF are both ISO standards, and while they don't do precisely the same thing (there is plenty of overlap though), neither does ODF and OXML. Multiple standards exist because some standards aren't universally applicable. ODF can't do everything that PDF does and vice versa, the same applies to ODF and OXML.
Why is it, by the way, that having 300+ Linux distro's and dozens of GUI is "choice" and a good thing, but having more than one document format is "stupid"?
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It takes TIME for an ANSI or ISO standard to be created. If ODF were to undergo this process it would create the impression that it was a rough or draft standard that had yet to have all the edges polished and kinks worked out.
It is interesting that they are doing this though since it is a clear indication that they see ODF as a real threat and something that they can really only hold at bay temporarily. Has Microsoft gone into hemorrhage control mode?
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
You need to turn off your ethics for a minute and think only about maximizing Microsoft's position. Clearly Microsoft would benefit enormously if they can make it so that OpenOffice doesn't officially comply with its own standard file format -- the main reason anybody even cares about a standard is so that governments and localities have a check box that makes it 'ok' to use OpenOffice.
Imo Microsoft wants to move the standard to ANSI then because that process is easier for them to manipulate into adding unnecessary complications and impossible requirements. This will put OO on a treadmill trying to support their own standard and Microsoft get to say "See, OO doesn't implement halting problem either, might as well buy from us because Office is more compatible with Office."
The problem isn't whether M$ supports a standard's adoption. They supported HTML but...
Remember: Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
Plus, then they will "comply to open standards" removing a EU/Mass./Whoever-else objection to using their software.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
As can be seen with their current "standard", they can just cite "behave the same way as MS Word version X.y.z on OS a" and claim that it is "documented".
Since Microsoft is the only ones who REALLY know how that behaviour was implemented, they'll be the only one who can write a compleat implementation.
Just as the situation is today. Look at the "reviews" of OpenOffice.org by various "journalists". You'll see them complaining that the formating on a document was "messed up" when they went
from MS Word
to OpenOffice.org
back to MS Word.
Now, if there are a dozen word processors out there and they all implement the ODF standard and none of them (except MS Word) trashes the formatting when bouncing a document between the other 11
THAT is what businesses and governments want. The ability to see the same document the same way no matter WHO edited it on WHAT operating system using WHICH word processor.
If Microsoft fails at that it will be because Microsoft failed on their own.
Can two or more standards be, by definitation, standard? (sic)
Feet and inches / metres
Pounds and ounces / kilograms
Personally, I like to refresh my user page, as it feels a bit more narcissistic, and it loads faster so that I have more immediate gratification. But this is AC, so that won't work. Pewp.
...wait, what was the topic again?
Since you agree that ODF and PDF do not do the same thing, you cannot say that they are multiple formats for the same thing.
PDF's are very handy for sending out documents THAT YOU DO NOT WANT CHANGED.
So, what does ODF do / not do that OOXML does do / does not do?
Examples.
Its quite simple, if something gets adopted as an ANSI standard then it is effectively controlled and maintained through the ANSI organization. It will be easier for Microsoft to pull the strings of ANSI than it would be able to do the same for ISO.
they're back peddling.
after the all the talk over the past week about M$ and "their" patents, people are starting to remember M$ is a convicted monopolist and why.
they have to put back on their friendly face for the press and make a good show.
atleast until they know they have the next group in the white house bought off.
And in possibly related news Police in Seattle are reporting that Tom Robertson, general manager for Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft, was hit by a flying chair whilst out walking his dog. Police don't yet have any firm leads but are seeking to question a bald, red-faced caucasian man who was seen fleeing the scene.
Microsoft does something right for a change and everyone is discussing conspiracy theories. Could it be that they see the writting on the wall, that ODF is the way of the future and are willing to accept that and move on, no hard feelings? After all, that's how they got where they are now, by taking someone elses ideas.
Seriously folks, how else could they have voted?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
I thought the reasons are clear.. M$ is going to push ODF for a while, wait till it has penetrated all levels, then spring the "BTW, we have 183 patents covering this, so all your ODF are belong to us"
Or how about Iran verses the rest of the world in peaceful co-existence? We're only enriching uranium for peaceful purposes. We only lie to infidels, as our religion [of peace] instructs us to.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
> Microsoft sells lies, not software.
That's the truth, parent post has accurately summed up Microsoft in one sentence.
Where is cairo, where is longhorn, where are these patent infringements in linux? The list goes on and on.
We are talking about the same Microsoft here aren't we?
Really???
n alContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1144104,00.html
.doc (or whatever extension is next) make it _really_ hard to use anything but .whatever.
Then what the hell happened in Massachusetts wanted to switch to ODF?? Here's a long-winded citation: http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/origi
No, they'll do what they already do with everything that's not a
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
'Why is it, by the way, that having 300+ Linux distro's and dozens of GUI is "choice" and a good thing, but having more than one document format is "stupid"?'
Because those distros and GUI's adopt standards that allow them to all interoperate and exchange information. A document format is a means of storing and conveying information. All means of storing and conveying information should be standardized. It makes sense to have different document creation applications but they should all store the results in the same format so that your preferred application is interoperable with mine.
Behold the M$ party line and how it contrasts with reality:
Microsoft hasn't stood in the way of ODF at all. They just think there's room for more than one standard.
You forgot to tell me about how "open" the M$ "standard" is.
If they were in anyway serious about ODF, the new Office would be using it and there would be "patches" for users of older version s of M$ Office. Instead, they have graciously sold Novel enough information to create a partial implementation to import the text portions and called that interoperability. They expect the whole community to wade through their insane 7,000 page spec which tells them to look at 10 year old printed material! Can you really tell me that M$ is not playing the same old format war games because they did not exercise a vote in an obviously abusive way?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
A Standard is the whole world deciding to use your product instead of the competition. What, you thought this was all about the consumer? Since when?
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Web pirates touch themselves!
It has always been fairly trivial to transpose content from one document standard to another. You sometimes lose something (most often precise placement) in the details of the translation, but you more often do not. The only thing that matters about making ODF a standard is that it becomes a benchmark that other formats can be translated to and through. Microsoft has no reason to oppose it, as they understand that, as long as ODF is less detailed than Microsoft's preferred standard, the small loss of detail will make Microsoft's products look good when they demo them to executives and purchasing agents. Very few people who actually work with documents will care, as they understand that most content repurposing requires some giggling of the details, but Microsoft isn't likely to win that class of users anyway.
Davis http://davis.foulger.net
It is too confusing everyone using the word standard to mean whatever they want. We need a standard definition of standard.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Microsoft has proven, time and time again, that they will engage in all sort of nefarious, underhanded behavior, including lying, cheating, stealing and extortion, in order to maintain and extend their monopolies. They showed no hesitation about lying and evidence-tampering in front of a federal judge, for example. While they do occasionally do the right thing for the right reasons, their history is such that no sane, educated person can observe their actions, especially with respect to competitors, without wondering about their motives.
What you're seeing here is speculation, but it's speculation based on knowledge of the subject. This is not like seeing Jesse Jackson walk across a Great Lake. This is more like seeing John Gotti walk across a Great Lake. I think it's reasonable to speculate that it might not be the second coming.
Why would they do this? How about because they want to make MS Office the program *everybody* uses for *all* word processing? ODF isn't that popular yet, but it's gaining exposure. So... add support for it, then add it to the list of official formats you can use. Remove some of the primary advantages of OO.o (support all the same formats, support a couple it doesn't, and still have things like better Accessibility support, and it gets a lot easier to convince governents and companies not to switch).
Admittedly, they could do this without standardization of ODF, but there's no point in fighting it and a bit to be gained from supporting it. There's nothing wrong with the standard; to Microsoft it's just another format you can use their software for.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
And earlier today Microsoft released their list of patents, including one claiming ownership of all ANSI standards...Steve Ballmer was quoted as saying, "we'll adopt ODF and extend and embrace it by issuing OOXML as the new universal format for documents". When asked if this maneuver was undertaken to undermine open source, Ballmer replied by throwing a chair and grunting before storming off stage.
MS was scared by this, as Office wasn't designed around it
It doesn't matter whether MS office was designed around it or not. A while back MS own PR types where blowing a lot of smoke about how MS Office could support arbitrary XML schemas. If that is even remotely, true, then ODF is more or less a drop-in replacement for whichever undocumented file format MS is peddling this week. If it's not true, then MS has been making some rather false claims about the capabilities of its office products.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
What precisely does OOXML do, that ODF won't?
I'm genuinely curious.
I've yet to see any compelling reasons to use OOXML, and there are a lot of compelling reasons in favor of ODF (open format, relatively simple spec, many existing implementations with open codebases, etc.) and none in favor of OOXML.
The only things I've ever seen in OOXML that don't exist in ODF are the 'Microsoft braindeath compatibility features'; the tags that say "Do spacing like Word 95!" and can only ever be implemented by Microsoft, because they're the only ones who really understand WTF "spacing like Word 95" means.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
That's not, however, strictly true. Human interface is just as much a communication format as is a document format. Having different GUI's is the human equivelent of different file formats.
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well they are working to add ODF to word 2007 see http://sourceforge.net/projects/odftranslator/ so who knows !!!
"I don't pitch OpenSUSE Linux to my friends, i let Microsoft do it for me
...it is most likely that the left hand didn't quite know what the right was doing... again.
Just like WinNT did Posix ...
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
Why not Sun?
They got confused my the similar names of the two formats.
CfkRAp1041vYQVbFY1aIwA== RV/hBCLKKcSTP5UFK3kqsg==
I assume you mean that Microsoft has things like "Spacing like Word 95" in their standard...
But the right way to do this would be to simply have a really flexible definition for "spacing", so that users could manually implement "spacing like Word 95" in their word processor, and it would be preserved in the ODF file format, without having to make ODF specifically deal with every word processor since WordPerfect 1.0.
What you might lose is the ability to as easily convert it back to a Word95 document, but you're going to lose something when you go from a more powerful format to a less powerful format anyway.
I'd say, if it's reasonably possible, other formats -> ODF should be lossless, and ODF -> other formats may be lossy, as "other formats" should be considered "legacy formats".
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Have you ever tried to purcha$e a copy of an AN$I $tandard?
Have gnu, will travel.
I'd suggest that we create a reference implementation -- either clean up OpenOffice or write something new, from scratch. Also, make sure OpenDocument (and anything close enough) is trademarked.
Then, if Office differs from the reference implementation in a way that breaks it, don't let them use the word "OpenDocument" until they fix it.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
HTML was designed specifically to support custom extensions and tags. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a browser supporting a new tag that is not a part of the official HTML standard. There are tons of tag extensions. Mozilla supports the canvas tag which is not a part of the standard. Mozilla supports extensions to CSS which are even prefixed "mozilla". All the standard states is that if the browser doesn't recognize the tag it must ignore the tag and not fail to render the basic elements of the page.
"Is Microsoft serious about supporting ODF, or is this a merely a PR stunt to make Office Open XML look more like a legitimate standard?"
Microsoft expects a quid pro quo. M$ voted for ODF, now Microsoft expects the ODF supporters to vote for Open XML in grateful acknowldgement of M$' beneficence.
Why? Isn't it obvious? Microsoft probably has a patent on using XML for representing word processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
Not exactly. I might be required to read and edit your documents, and using a format that isn't handled by both of our word processors makes that hard or impossible. You are hardly required to use my human-computer interface, so if we use different desktop environments, that is hardly a problem.
Somebody at MS saw the word "open," got confused about which format was which, and voted wrong.
"Wait, that's not our proprietary-blob format? But I thought -- aren't we pushing the one called Open .. uh something? Yeah, that one's ours, right? What?! Where am I?"
People, do we really want Old Man Microsoft with his finger on the button?
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
...so No, it's not a trap. Microsoft wants to become Linux. Microsoft management finally saw the light and saw that the one thing they lacked was being Linux. They will now soon announce that the partnership with Novell was not about patents, but actually about secretly starting the union with the Open Source movement.
In three months time, Bill Gates himself will be announcing his presence on the next HOPE conference, with a special speech called "Open source and I, how do I fit in, even though I know shit ?".
In other news, scientists have concluded air is water and water is air, yay.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Okay, if you think it's due to MS Word that OOo looks bad, try this one on for size: a document saved as ".odt" with OpenOffice.org v2 for Linux (Kubuntu) is mangled when opened in OpenOffice.org v2 for Windows (Win2k). There was no MS Word involved anywhere.
This was a document for which formatting was important: I had designed a greeting card to be printed onto thick paper and folded into quarters, so positioning was critical. I did this on my Linux box, but the printer was hooked up to the wife's box, and she only wants Windows on it. I saved the file on Kubuntu, FISh'd it over to the Win2k box and opened it, and the text formatting had screwed up, spilling over onto the next page.
If OpenOffice.org can't standardize their own document formatting, what's the point having a standard like ODF in the first place? (I finally exported to PDF in order to get it onto the Win2k box without messing it up.)
I'm grateful to Sun for all the contributions they've made to Open Source, but I have to say, OOo is a steaming pile of crap.
Okay, that was a bit too blunt, and I'm glad they have an integrated office suite with spreadsheet, presentation application, I appreciate the work they've put into this, grateful that they distribute OOo under an Open Source license, etc. etc., so let me do my best to be more subtle.
Erm, er, OpenOffice is
Sorry. I tried.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Everyone is unique and therfore interfaces with a computer in his/her unique way. This implies there is no standard human-computer interface, however we often want to do very simmilar tasks and then edit someone elses?
I agree, I didn't think so, either.
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
Microsoft was on the ISO committee that ratified ODF as an ISO standard, and Microsoft voted "YES". Microsoft isn't the one that's advocating one format to rule them all and is blocking usage of certain formats, that's IBM's thing wrt OOXML (IBM was the sole "NO" vote for OOXML ECMA ratification and is the one that's most trying to block OOXML ISO ratification).
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
ODF is unnecessarily complex and not very useful at all as it currently stands. Most of the people here are willing to accept a MS conspiracy theory. If anything, MS should want ODF to become a frozen standard so that they could
a) develop compatibility to the standard.
b) develop MS-only standard enhancements/extensions.
c) Argue against ODF adoption in government because of deficiencies frozen into the standard.
d) Release an upgrade to office that contains document formatting features not available within the ODF standard.
Smells like base64-encoded binary sh!t appears in ODF, when this format will be officially supported by MS.
Yeah. Or Isreal peacefully co-existing with the world. Or the United States of America.
In seriousness, please remember that you are in the middle of a big world of propaganda with a political agenda. These opinions about other governments are just opinions, they are not facts. If you look purely at facts and actions of nations, ignoring the swell of patriotic pride, it's hard to see the United States as any less evil than Iran. Zionists invented terrorism for fucks sake.
No I am not muslim or from the middle east or anti semitic, just a bit of a realist.
I don't therefore I'm not.
It's not that confuzzling as the story makes it out to be. Since they claim to own the patents on essentially anything and everything dealing with open source software, it makes sense for them to promote their own property.
Zionists invented terrorism for fucks sake. actually it was the French
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
It's PR. Microsoft does NOT support ODF!
From TFA Microsoft supports choice. Notice "choice" meaning that Microsoft want people to say that they want choice; i.g. OOXML too becomes a standard.
In other words; Microsoft sees taht they are very likely not to get OOXML an ISO standard, so by saying they want ODF *AND* OOXML they might still be able to squizze OOXML into ISO =(
Of course it's a trap. Don't need tinfoil, just look at history. They never have and never will do good regarding standards.
But these troglodytes are connected by money and favors to the government you know. They have experience doing modeling, demos, etc. IIRC the U.S. government models foreign policy using a tree of responses to potential situations, all precalculated for maximum results. At least that's how it used to be before the neocons. You know, the military had a plan for everything.
So it stands to reason MS does things similarly. It is all a precalculated decision tree and when something occurs that they didn't guess, they just update the thing. The scary thing is they learn from their mistakes. But MS has a lot of cash, a lot of lawyers, and very few ethics. So they're golden.
Then it is pretty easy to see the sarcasm and smirking going on as they reach this decision point.
Step 2345: ODF is getting popular (40% probability)
Step 2346: "Cave in" (lol) and recommend to ANSI or some such. (PR: "We mean business", etc.)
Step 2347: Start embrace/extend thread, Start "ODF in everything" team, Buy startups if any. Contribute some dumb thing to ODF and let wind out of their sails. (ha!)
Step 2348: Did we win yet?
Step 2351: If not start getting mean. Threaten patents (doh). Get Novell's ass moving. Get clients to complain about how glacially changing ODF can't save their important ActiveX apps, etc. Launch "Better ODF than ODF" product. Launch attack PR thread ("Would you leave your future in the hands of these guys", etc. lol!)
Anyway more of the same. Basically nobody would win a Hugo award for writing this story, it's too predictable and the aliens are the good guys.
Did you have all the necessary fonts on the Windows box? You can't really blame OOo for you using fonts on Linux that Windows didn't have. You can however, blame OOo for not supporting embedded fonts. I'd agree that OOo needs some serious work.
This is a no brainer. The standard was going to be approved anyway.
The only thing voting against would do would be to confirm what we already know, and everyone else shoud... that ODF is a long term threat to the dominance of MS Office.
By voting for its acceptance, they're playing that it isn't a threat.
This also let's them play the partial support game ("broken" ODF documents that don't work in word) with supposed good intentions.
If ODF gets even more traction and they do have to support it credibly to avoid losing big bucks, the supposed good intentions give them opportunity to play the embrace extend extinguish game a little longer before it becomes obvious what they're doing (to those that haven't paid attention to Microsoft business practices before).
Parent post doesn't demonstrate what it thinks it does, but it does point out a couple of general problems worth noting.
If I were attempting what parent post described, I would have used OOo's .pdf capability, which probably would have worked well enough.
BTW, Scribus is a competent desktop publisher. It is FOSS, and well worth the effort to learn if one is into things like greeting card designs and other stuff where presentation is more important than content.
There is no need to bring the Russians into this.
Before, you extinguish, you extend; before you extend, you embrace. All we are seeing here is Microsoft's first awkward efforts to embrace a new standard. In the past, they have moved quickly from that charming awkwardness to the oh so thrilling Leisure Suit Larry stage, where things start getting poked by their extensions and the early smothering of extinquishment makes things oh so exciting for the consumers.
I was at a Novell technology preview yesterday and heard something interesting. Don't shoot the messenger btw... Part of the much-criticised MS/NOVL agreement was interoperability. Part of this interoperability will mean that both OpenOffice and MSoffice will at some point in the future not only both support ODF, but will save their docs as ODF by DEFAULT. I have to say it sounded unlikely to me, but it was announced at a public event, so who knows? Either way, don't shoot the messenger.
Probably you had different fonts on the two computers. If you want to guarantee it looks the same, you should save it in pdf format. Ooo lets you do that, and I'm sure your wife's windows computer has Adobe Reader on it.
Does anyone else think that the very fact that there are >357 CSS selector compliance tests slightly worrying?
I'm a CSS hacker myself and still find that shocking. Methinks it really is time to scrap HTML(etc) and start over with WWWNG.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
Possibly the same reason that it's also choice to have several keyboard manufacturers, but all do the same thing when you press a specific key.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
People keep confusing what standard means. There are TWO types of standards. One type is the standard that everybody uses (a de facto standard, there may or may not be anything keeping people with it beyond general acceptance) the other standard is a fully documented set of specifications. You CAN have multiple sets of specs, for instance you have multiple standard bolts, they aren't all just as good as each other.
By voting to lock in the ODF standard MS can make OOXML 100% compatible and then add features on top of the standard to both OOXML and their version of ODF at the same time. Since MS is prevalent in the office people will view OpenOffice as being the version that is broken when they are unable to open their documents in it due to proprietary tags.
Even if OpenOffice implements those features they will always lag behind MS and quickly return to being a coulda-been contender. The "good guy" attitude of Open Source will make it hard for them to counter attack OOXML in an similar manner since MS already has the market penetration.
Isn't it funny how, when Microsoft does something puzzlingly in support of what we've all been asking for all this time, rather than being congratulated, the Slashdot crowd immediately starts trying to guess what their devious secret strategy is here to achieve world domination?
Possible reason for this: They have been around for thirty years, and in all that time, they have ALWAYS had a devious secret strategy to achieve world domination!
On with the speculation!
Obviously they're just doing this to make themselves look better when it comes time to vote for OOXML!
Did you have the same font sets stored on both computers, and did you use only the consistent font set?
People like to blame formatting on changing word processors, but one of the consistencies Microsoft enjoys is their default font set distributed everywhere. Try this. Carefully format a document, close it, delete the font you used, and open the document back up. Your layout will be trashed.
You can't make banana pudding from apples, but that is what you're possibly doing unless the font is embedded in the document.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
From the http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Ferengi_Rules_of_A cquisition:
"Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies."
Why this obsession with one standard? One standard to do what? Well presented bullet lists, footnotes and fancy tables? ODF can't cope well. Clearly structured content that is easy to shift in and out of different formats? ODF's strength.
The two overlap in many areas, but whereas ODF is strongly content oriented, OOXML is strongly presentation oriented. I want to have both. It's not like having to choose between 110v and 230v, it's more like having both 230v AC and 16v DC: both useful in specific contexts.
Aside from the fact that most Human Interfaces are fairly compatible with Humans.