Microsoft Announces OOXML-UOF Project with China

Andy Updegrove writes "Today, Microsoft announced its own interoperability project to bridge the gap between China's domestically developed Uniform Office Format (UOF) and Microsoft's OOXML. In the continuing tit for tat battle between ODF and OOXML, this announcement tracks the intent of an already-existing 'harmonization' committee, hosted by OASIS, that is exploring interoperability options between ODF and UOF. Like the OOXML-ODF translator project announced by Microsoft last year, the new effort will be an open source project hosted by SourceForge. The announcement is, in one sense, no surprise. Microsoft has been waging a nation-by-nation battle for the hearts and minds of ISO/IEC JTC1 National Bodies, in an effort to win adoption of OOXML (now Ecma 376) as a global standard with equal status to ODF (now ISO 26300). In order to do so, it needs to offset the argument that one document format standard is not only enough, but preferable. With UOF representing a third entrant in the format race, easy translation of documents would obviously be key to lessen the burden on customers of products based upon one format or the other."

Comments

Haaaa

[Mockylock]

Microsoft: "You want to go together on a new 'standard'?"
China: "Sure, whatever."
Microsoft: "What's wrong?"
China: "Can we still pirate software?"
Microsoft: "Sure, whatever."

How about...

[omgamibig]

...yet another freakin format? Seriously!

Competition??

[l2718]

We've been through this before, but why would the user benefit from multiple standards when they are essentially equivalent? The user does not interact with the document on the disk. He interacts with a computer program -- so there is a natural room for competition in the field of word processors, which benefits the user. In fact, a single accepted office document format will simplify this competition and hence help the user.

A design competition for file formats would persumably benefit programmers who write word processors. But once the design is fixed, they too would rather implement one format rather than two. Again, the word processor has an internal representation of the data, and reading/writing to disk can be done in many ways. Of course, having the format be a dump of the internal (binary) data structures of your program would be a big boost -- but that can hardly be said to foster competition.

OSPC?

[WrongSizeGlass]

One Standard Per Child?
Open Standards are great! ... let's start a organization to develop a lot of them.

Re:Why?

[DragonWriter]

Why are so many people so satisfied with the status quo of being locked-in to Microsoft products?

Because for the average user, Microsoft products (at least Office) do the job required, and do it fairly well, and no one is providing anything that, despite file format incompatibility, provides a compelling reason to change aside from "we're a bit cheaper". Without that, no one is going to get up in arms.

If someone comes up with a way to fill the role of the word processor or spreadsheet in a way stunningly better than Microsoft has, then substantial numbers of people will start chafing at vendor lock-in. As long as most competitors are just making "me too, and you can run me on more OS's" products, they'll have a niche, but not a big push for change.

Re:hey retard ./ editors, it's != its

[WrongSizeGlass]

Their, their ... its not worth getting you're self upset about it. Its the tone of you're comment that infers there doing it on purpose.

The Churchill quote

[roman_mir]

The article uses a quote from Churchill's WWII speech:
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans,...we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender...
                                                                                  - Winston Churchill, June 4, 1940

It is sort of disturbing to see that and then this text in the next paragraph:

If there was any doubt left in anyone's mind that Microsoft will do everything that it can, and wherever it must, to ensure that ODF makes the minimum inroads possible into its vastly profitable Office franchise, the news of the day should put that doubt to rest. In the continuing tit for tat battle between ODF and OOXML, Microsoft announced yesterday it's own interoperability project to bridge the gap between China's domestically developed Unified Office Format (UOF) and Microsoft's OOXML...

and then this little piece: This will hardly be the last beach upon which Microsoft will defend its Office franchise.

So by this logic MS is a liberator fighting against the evil forces of Free Software.

Probably there is some comedic value in it, but honestly this leaves a very unpleasant taste.

What's the big problem?

[asciimonster]

I don't know why these people take so long to make their standards (or "standards") into one unified format. I did it in 2 minutes. Here it is:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gandunifieddocumentformat xmlns="...">
    <ODF>
        <!-- ODF stuff -->
    </ODF>
    <OOXML>
        <!-- OOXML stuff -->
    </OOXML>
    <UOF>
        <!-- UOF stuff -->
    </UOF>
</gandunifieddocumentformat>

DONE!!!

Re:Why?

[morgan_greywolf]

If someone comes up with a way to fill the role of the word processor or spreadsheet in a way stunningly better than Microsoft has, then substantial numbers of people will start chafing at vendor lock-in. As long as most competitors are just making "me too, and you can run me on more OS's" products, they'll have a niche, but not a big push for change.

But OpenOffice.org Writer is stunningly better than Microsoft Word, in many, many ways, unless you're one of those people that simply must have Word's outline view. Better bullets and numbering, better support for templates, support for conditional formatting, and better support for master documents are just a few of reasons why I use OpenOffice.org Writer instead of Word for my writing projects, despite having access to both at home.

Re:Why?

[cheater512]

There probably should be a 'Get OpenOffice' campaign just like the 'Get Firefox' campaign when Firefox 1.0 was released.

Outline view

[tjwhaynes]

But OpenOffice.org Writer is stunningly better than Microsoft Word, in many, many ways, unless you're one of those people that simply must have Word's outline view.

I keep hearing about Word's outline view - what does it offer that OpenOffice.org's Navigator does not offer? I can move sections around, demote and promote sections, quickly jump to a section/table/picture in the document from the Navigator. Please enlighten me!

Cheers,
Toby Haynes