Microsoft Pledges Conditional Support for ODF

Macthorpe writes "BetaNews is reporting that Microsoft has announced in a letter that they will support ODF as a format option, if it doesn't 'restrict choice among formats'. Citing their lack of opposition to the ratification of ODF as a standard, they go on to say: 'ODF's design may make it attractive to those users that are interested in a particular level of functionality in their productivity suite or developers who want to work that format. Open XML may be more attractive to those who want richer functionality [...] This is not to say that one is better than the other — just that they meet different needs in the marketplace.'"

Comments

Re:really

[Giloo]

Hmm, maybe too flamebait or trollish here, but still.

The good thing that could bring a MS-made ODT plugin would be 100% compatibility between ODT and OOXML. While the plugin for MS Office from Sun is just fine, it's not possible to migrate old MS Docs seamlessly. This means that people won't switch.

I do want to make people use OpenOffice, and I use it myself, but I need to make sure that old documents will be translated with no page breaks problems and with no human interaction. And I also need to make sure that MS can read what I produce using OO.org properly. Otherwise, people won't see the point, and go on using MS Office and saving .doc files. I don't care about MS Office being a standard, if it's so good, so be it. If MS can build a nice (and better than Sun's) tool to do so, I don't care... Just allow full interop, please

My 0.02

Richer as "representing dates before year 1900"

[FedeTXF]

Yes, OOXML is richer, specially when you want to represent dates: http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2007/06/malaysias_ histo.html

Re:Richer as "representing dates before year 1900"

[KarmaMB84]

The date format is backwards compatible with Excel 2003 and earlier which represented dates in days since Jan 1 1900 and also considers 1900 a leap year (it was not) in order to remain compatible with Lotus 1-2-3 which incorrectly considered it a leap year.

The rest of the linked article is mostly bullshit. It isn't a problem with the XML format, it's a legacy limitation with Excel due to compatibility with the previous broken leader. Hash marks mean the date won't fit into the cell (increase the width of the column!).

A good behavior would be to use the old format for converted documents and give the option to switch over to ISO format and ISO format for all new documents.

grid fitting prevents that

[r00t]

What units do you use?

a. Bob's screen
b. Joe's screen
c. Bob's printer
d. Joe's printer
e. something arbitrary, like EMUs or TWIPs

Whatever you choose, it'll look ugly nearly everywhere unless you relax the idea of exact formatting. Text layout normally fits letters to the grid of pixels. When you change the device, you need to redo the grid fitting (changing layout) or live with blurry/uneven text.

Re:Ahaa!

[denis-The-menace]

But I wonder...why, don't Microsoft partner up with the ODF folks to develop one "killer" standard?

You must be new here or forgot your tag.

MS wants to keep control (aka Vendor Lock In)
Think of MS as the RIAA of spreadsheets and memos.
If ODF becomes the defacto standard, MS looses control and everybody can get of the MS office upgrade treadmill.

Re:File formats will become irrelvant

[pubjames]

Oh, so that naturally explains why the internet is full of Microsoft IE ONLY web sites.

It is?

Maybe for you, but I haven't used IE for over a year and I don't recall coming across a single site that I haven't been able to access. Although I've read that in the US lots of banks require IE - perhaps that's what gives you the impression that there are lots of IE sites?

Re:File formats will become irrelvant

[Shados]

The only IE-only sites I've seen in years were internal corporate intranet applications, and even those are starting to be rare...

ODF trying to monopolize the standards process ..

[rs232]

"open source ODF format as perhaps trying to monopolize the standards process"

translation: An open format that anyone can write to without conceding licensing restrictions to a single commercial company is in actuallity a monopoly.

"Certainly there's a place for ODF in the world, the interoperability team continues, and users are free to make that choice for whatever reasons they'd want to do so"

translation: We want to own the standard.

"We ensure our ability to add value by ensuring that we are masters of the schema"

"Microsoft perceives the standards process as one of four "toolsets" .. to achieve interoperability .. when the standards process fails, he said, the other three "toolsets" could be relied upon as a backup plan"

translation: We'll pretend to support open standards while covertly working to push our own non-standard standard.

'Standards, Robertson told BetaNews, "are a very important tool to use to address interoperability .. cycle of innovation that's more rapid than the cycle of standardization .. and shouldn't you look to some of the other tools that you have available to you, to address interoperability?'

translation: We'll continue to play hunt the piñata with the formats as it's worked very well up to now in maintaining our monopoly on the desktop.

How about publishing an RFC the next time you 'innovate'?

Re:I've got this nice bridge to sell, too.

[VGPowerlord]

Menus look weird and act weird.

Then take C# which is a nice programming language and has a normal GUI and you've got a winner.

I can't believe that you said that with a straight face.

I decided to test your statement and draw up a menu that looks like the File and Edit menus of one of Microsoft's most ubiquitos programs, Notepad, using Visual Studio 2005 (C#) and NetBeans 5.5.1 (Java) using their default display types.

Here are some screenshots:
Main app: XP Comctl32, .NET 2.0 WinForms, Java Swing
Edit menu: XP Comctl32, .NET 2.0 WinForms, Java Swing

Things in common between all three:
All support keyboard mnemonics, displayed as an underlined letter
All support shortcut keys, displayed to the right of the menu item
All have minimize, maximize, and close buttons. They also all have the application menu in the upper-left.

Not shown in the picture:
All support submenus
All support toggleable menu items (they show up with a checkmark next to them)

Differences between all three:
Menubar color. XP Comctl32 is the only one to use the system color.

The major differences are listed below
Between XP and .NET (.NET changed to NET because of Slashdot's "smart" formatting):
NET menus use a gradient highlight and look like a tab when selected
NET's menubar is a blue left-right gradient
NET menus have a large blue line running down the left side as well as extra whitespace on the right
NET uses an outline for highlighting
NET shortcut keys are right-aligned
NET uses a different color separator, which also doesn't go all the way across the menu
NET's menus are spaced farther apart

Additonally, these are not shown in the picture:
NET can use addiitonal control types as menu items (ComboBox and TextBox)
NET can have icons on menu items

Between XP and Swing:
Swing menu items are in bold
Swing menu items use a different font
Swing's menubar is a silver up-down gradient
Swing uses a blue font for shortcut keys
Swing's highlight color is grey
Swing menus don't have a drop shadow
Swing uses a different color separator

Additonally, these are not shown in the picture:
Swing can use an addiitonal control type as menu items (RadioButton or to be more exact, jRadioButtonMenuItem)
Swing can have icons on menu items

What was the point of this? It was to point out that .NET WinForms menus are just as different from XP Comctl32 as Java's Swing menus are.