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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.'"
A format richer.... with bugs!
Support a true independent artist - Leila Lopez
I am not sure why neither one of these formats approaches the consistency of Publisher files or Pagemaker files when it comes to retaining formatting across platforms and versions. pub files and pagemaker files (I forget what they were called) were much more consistent across versions back in 2002 (Last time I was an editor for anything was 2003). Anybody know why? Granted that pub files were enormous, but in today's day and age, size matters lesser than it did before (My girlfriend tells me that every night)
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
In plain English with a little bit of background.
.from the view of a rifle scope.
Microsoft made the business decision to watch this standard grow . .
Is it just me, or do other people feel like gagging every time someone at Microsoft says something is "rich," has "richness," "rich user experience," etc.
It's like eating a whole stick of butter with mayonnaise to dip it in. MS "richness" can't be good for you.
*hurls into the wastebasket*
init 11 - for when you need that edge.
Microsoft Will Support ODF If It Doesn't 'Restrict Choice Among Formats'
:(
It is very noble of Microsoft to complain about all these restrictive document format that seem to be so pervasive in the IT world. I applaud them for looking out for my interests and freedom to choose. I have to say though, I am a little worried about them. All this goodwill stuff is well and good, but I can't help feel that until they start to get a little bit more militant about protecting their own IPR and file format, their business will never get off of the ground!
in Airplane II where the warning light is flashing with a man with a shovel behind a bull.
I hope I am wrong but I expect that they will have an import export functionality that has a deliberately crippled scope, for example not supporting all formats or only a certain level of table nesting. They will then state ambiguously that this is "unsupported with ODF", which along with marketing FUD will make it appear as a restriction of ODF rather than their implementation. I think that what has happened is that they see a possibility that OOXML will not be ratified as a standard. By supporting ODF they will still be able to supply companies and oganisations with a policy of using standards based formats. Their hope is that once Office is in there, if the implementation is bad enough, people will either unofficially use OOXML or lobby for a rules change to allow it to be used.
"richer functionality" = setSpacesLikeWord95
Hmm, maybe too flamebait or trollish here, but still.
.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
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
My 0.02
Dear Microsoft,
Thank you for your input. However our needs in the marketplace seem to be different than your own. Most users don't find being locked into a Microsoft proprietary document format to be their most important need. How about you quit bitching about Apple locking people into their proprietary music player long enough to quit locking users into your Office document formats, or your Exchange email sever, or any of your products that refuse to support open standards. After all, Apple's MP3 player will let me play a standard MP3 and will allow me to rip a standard CD. How about you let us open an open standard document format?
Fuck you very much,
Your Users
The good news is that if Microsoft is changing their tactics, it means that they are admitting (partial) defeat in their previous attempts. Essentially they have lost the technical argument. Many groups have weighed-in on the subject and agreed that ODF is a more open format, and actually meets the needs of a standard. OXML is not winning that particular competition.
So they have a new tactic. This tactic basically amounts to saying: "Let's just have both standards, and let people pick the one they want. Oh... did we mention that OXML will be the default in all of our products?" Moreover, they are strongly implying that ODF is a lame duck, and that OXML has "more features" and is "richer." They are trying to paint ODF as the poor-man's format, with OXML being the format you use when you're serious.
The bad news is that this tactic will probably work. If OXML is the default format (in the dominant Office suite), people will view it as being the "serious" one and anything else as being "dumb." It doesn't matter that the additional "richness" is a bunch of features that these users will never activate. It also doesn't matter that the additional "richness" won't be maintained cleanly across platforms, during filetype conversions, and possibly even across software version changes. All that matters is building mindshare that truly believes that OXML is "the real deal" and that anything else is "that weird thing that geeks use."
So the counterattack from those of us who would prefer a true standard (such as ODF) to become the default need to use ODF as much as possible, and encourage others to do the same. ODF is the one that guarantees readability into the future, and that guarantees interoperability. We need to make this clear to everyone else.
If ODF support were perfect, I might consider buying an updated OS X version of Word when a native Intel version is available - I would want to try a 30 day demo first, however. I own licenses for older versions of Word/Office for Windows and OS X (I am an author and most of my publishers like manuscripts delivered in Word formats). I have written several books using OpenOffice.org, and at the last minute converted to Word.
That said, at least for my work on Mac OS X, the best writing tools are: TexShop with OmniGraffle for technical diagrams. Latex and OmniGraffle are a great combination!
A plug-in that supports Open Office formats in M$ Office. I would like to think that it works and that M$ cooperated in its development. I suppose it could have been reverse engineered. I would respect M$ a lot more if they just would stop breaking their previous products with so-called upgrades. Word processors are mature products, there is no reason that there should be any struggles over file formats.
Just as the automobile can co-exist with the airplane, ODF and Open XML can and should co-exist, the team writes. They go on to imply that standards agencies should not place themselves in a role similar to restricting transportation solely to the ground level.
Sorta like the Department of Homeland Security and the 'No Fly Lists' that they put out to limit people to ground level transportation? I'm sorry but if ODF becomes the standard everyone uses/wants then Microsoft can adapt or die like anyone else in the marketplace. We dont owe them any favors for half assed OSes with bugs all the way up and down the spectrum and trying to force DRM onto people and make themselves out to be the Piracy Police.
The fact they're putting so much time and effort into trying to kill ODF just goes to prove that the standard *IS* a much better designed one and that Microsoft cannot compete on a level playing field. Oh dont worry I fully expect that sooner or later they'll find a way to make it so you cant install open office or any alternative text editors onto their machines (what you thought that computer you bought was YOURS?)
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
Personally, I think file formats will become irrelevant to the end user.
It's really dumb that (for instance) we produce documents in Word, convert them to PDF, email them to someone else, who will read them on a computer screen. We are stuck in last generation technology, and people growing up with the web today just won't do it. Although many of us find it hard to believe, on-line systems will eventually replace Microsoft Word, OpenOffice etc. completely.
When that happens, the file formats will be irrelevant to the end user, just as web page formats are pretty much irrelevant to current web users. This is bad news for Microsoft, since they have an incredible amount of lock-in at the moment due to their proprietary formats. However, they are not going to be able to transition that lock-in to the web.
Probably not.
This looks to me like the type of jargon that is used to try to obscure a total lack of anything meaningful to say.
Stricktly speaking, it might say that ODF is fine but some people may want to use Open XML because it does more. The argument -- I believe -- is over whether the capabilities of Open XML are things that any sane person wants in a document standard.
Personally, I think the world would be a better place if Microsoft were forced to comply with an open document standard -- any document standard -- that they did not produce. When it comes to document formats, their constant, uncontrolled, (and largely unecessary?) format changes have cost users a fortune. Past time for their users to bring them to heel.
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
Yes, OOXML is richer, specially when you want to represent dates: http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2007/06/malaysias_ histo.html
Well, after reading TFA, I get the impression that Microsoft hasn't really gone for "active support" as such. What they have said is that they didn't object to ODF going through the standards bodies.
Of course, with ODF being a fairly well documented open standard, there wasn't really any convincing way that they *could* object.
What makes MS very, very scared is widespread ODF adoption. Once state governments started to mandate open standards in government documents, it looked pretty much like ODF would get adopted. Not because ODF was superior, but because they had bothered to go through ANSI/ISO etc.
Since then, there has been a two pronged solution for microsoft. One has been to get OOXML to become a "proper standard", and the other is to browbeat state governments into giving up their policies. The former ran into problems, when IBM and others pointed out to ECMA that the OOXML spec was anything but open.
Microsoft cried foul straight away. Their argument "We didn't object to ODF, why are you objecting to OOXML?". The answer from IBM et al. was -- the OOXML standard sucks, and can only be implemented by someone who has the source code for all versions of MS-Office. It's not open, and until it is, we are not supporting it.
This "announcement" by MS, is nothing more than a warmed over restatement of this position, and mentions some esoteric features of OOXML that are not in ODF.
I'm thinking they might use the Sun plugin under some special licensing deal that alows them to more closely refine the standards they are implementing.
Opensource scare MS in their own product because they lose the level of control they are used to having. If the community changes the development and the model behind it or even changes the license to something MS wouldn't agree with (the community or sun) MS would be left out of the picture or force into a situation they might not like.
I also suspect they would work for a better license then they got with Java where they can embrace and extend without complaints. This way they can blame stuff that isn't the same on others and their failures. They might like the shortcut in the effort but not the loss of control.
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.
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.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
In English, with background:
"We need people to think that OpenOffice.org and other programs that use ODF are inferior products. So, we will constantly position our product and our formats as being more flexible, having more features. So, without saying it, what we are saying is that ODF sucks and OOXML is much, much better, but we'll support ODF anyway because other people seem to want to use it. Maybe we'll do another 'embrace, extend, extinguish' thing like we did with so many other standardds."
My blog
OpenXML definition allows it to contain BLOBs (binary large objects) in undocumented formats.
This reduces OpenXML to just marketing bullshit with no real substance, because we all know Microsoft will just use/store their old formats as a BLOB in an OpenXML wrapper which continues to ensure no-one else can read it, yet allows them to say that they are using a publically available standard.
But, OOXML does have more features. Why, there is the "kern italics font as in Word 95" feature. And the "line spacing as displayed in Word 6" feature.
Really, please do read the OOXML standard. It reads like Microsoft putting into words every single quirk their products have ever had, and then knowing that no one else could possibly hope to implement it.
Bearded Dragon
IOW, just as in the opearting system business, their office suite business is hampered by backwards compatibility with everything else they've ever produced?
Wow! I am shocked! *gasp*
My blog
Microsoft did the same this with VC-1, they sat on all the MPEG committees but then took their own similar but semantically different standard to a different body.
>>You can always tell a Java program on Windows because it breaks every paradigm that a windows user is used >>to. The buttons look different, act different. Menus look weird and act weird. Nothing does what you expect.
I find many *native* windows programs fit also into this category... For example. On my PC now, i have running:
IE 6
Firefox
Outlook 2003 v2.
Windows Media Player 9.
Every one of the above programs, differ from each other subtly, Outlook has blue re-arrange able menus, in a different font to the others. firefox has a larger toolbar, and the separator line between the toolbar and menus is more bold. Windows Media player is so vastly different its not worth listing the broken paradigms, but even in skin mode, has white boxed menus, that 'press' in, when the others do not. Java has its faults (slow initial startup speed/ memory consumption, for instance), but don't criticise it for stuff even Microsoft cant get right on its own platform.
The pledge to support 'ODF and other formats' is just a carrot - it's like
Besides, America is not the only country in the planet, so if the ISO is indeed the International Standards Organisation, it must not be influenced by a single commercial entity. Open XML may be more attractive to those who want richer functionality, the ability to integrate business data into their documents by defining their own document schema, or a format that was designed to be backwards compatible with existing documents. The XML spec does not need permission from Microsoft in order to be extensible and adaptable, by changing default schemas - in fact, I think the ISO must request Microsoft to rename the format without using the words Open and XML simultaneously.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
You can always tell a Java program on Windows because it breaks every paradigm that a windows user is used to. The buttons look different, act different. Menus look weird and act weird. Nothing does what you expect.
Are you trying to say that IE 7 was written in Java?
The reason, of course, is that while Microsoft Office is a great product, it is also an expensive product. Many people are more than willing to buy it, because they like the interface, or need the features. However, many other people do not need all those features, or are not yet adapted to the interface of MS Office (or at least not MS Office 2007). For those people, a cheaper (or free!) product might be a better fit.
Microsoft is scared to death of the free market. In a fair competition of various products, MS would still make money, but not nearly as much as they do now, where they have the entire market captured due to file-format lock-in. This is what makes Microsoft scared. This is why they are being pulled kicking and screaming into the world of open and standards-compliant file formats.
No one here is arguing that MS could not write a decent ODF word processor. That is a strawman. The fact is that MS doesn't want to write a decent ODF word processor (or even plugin) because that would mean giving up a certain percentage of their devoted (read: captured) user base.
So let me see if I've got this straight:
OOXML is better than ODF because Java apps don't use native Microsoft widgets. But although wxWidgets demonstrates that non-MS products can indeed conform to Microsoft standards, that doesn't apparently count because you like Visual Studio. Neither of which points is in any way a non sequiteur, probably for reasons that will turn out to involve the mating rituals of crocodiles.
Really, if that's the sort of argument Microsoft are reduced to, I'm surprised the debate has lasted this long.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!
"...but expressly as a way to "get Microsoft""
Okay, if you say so. But any format that is intended for everyone, not just Microsoft customers, seems to hurt Microsoft. It shouldn't but that's their perception.
Welcome in the real world. It has never been about arguments, it's about beliefs, convictions and emotions. The arguments are always chosen to support whatever people already believe. Marketeers understand this very well.
Being analytical is more the exception than the rule.
If ODF becomes a standard and OOXML does not, Microsoft will do one of two things (or both).
1) Use their existing leverage in the market to push their own format anyway, possibly by providing a crappy bug-ridden conversion utility. This way, if people try to jump off the "sinking Microsoft format ship" then they will not be able to do so perfectly (i.e. loss of formatting/limbs/life)
2) Embrace, Extend, Extinguish (as one poster noted with Java). They will use the committees that they have already loaded with Microsoft business partners to pass many "updates" or revisions to the standard, probably to the point where it's less like ODF and more like OOXML. Maybe they'll even shove VML into ODF, because they can't be arsed to support SVG in Word.
"open source ODF format as perhaps trying to monopolize the standards process"
.. to achieve interoperability .. when the standards process fails, he said, the other three "toolsets" could be relied upon as a backup plan"
.. 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: 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"
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
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'?
davecb5620@gmail.com
From reading the article, its clear that the summary above is quite misleading - Microsoft will not "support" ODF in the sense that they will offer a version of their office productivity suite which allows for opening or saving ODF files.
Microsoft will "support" ODF in the sense that they will not contest the standardization of ODF as an ISO/IEC/ANSI standard if ISO/IEC also accepts OOXML as an international standard. Nobody at any point said anything about Microsoft releasing software that understands ODF.
"Microsoft is scared to death of the free market. In a fair competition of various products, MS would still make money, but not nearly as much as they do now, where they have the entire market captured due to file-format lock-in. This is what makes Microsoft scared. This is why they are being pulled kicking and screaming into the world of open and standards-compliant file formats."
Yeah. Sure. Microsoft is scared of competition in a free market. Because they've failed at it so dramatically in the past.
This "running scared" motif is stupid. Microsoft lives for competition, and they're very, very good at it. If you think they're terrified of a standards format you haven't been paying attention. Their response is standard operating procedure, and nobody is losing any sleep over the subject.
They aren't scared of linux either. They acknowledge the threat, and they move against it. But that's not fear, that's just business.
MS said that they don't want to get "locked-in" with ODF... That's rather ironic, anyways:
Recipe for a good standard format:
The fact you are the largest software company in the world shouldn't mean you should "own" any "standard". We don't need an standard that would function exactly the same as the defacto-standard from old office, that would be useless and will only make the world waste resources in the migration from one closed defacto-standard towards a closed "standard".
ISO will show a lot of incompetence if they actually approve two standards for exactly the same thing... If that happens we will have to replace ISO, really
No offense to MS, they make great products and all, but I would love to see people use their products because they are the best products and not because they are the only ones that implement their format correctly, I hate self-feeding monopolies.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Oh, right... We just want to make software to hurt Microsoft.
The whole FOSS movement is just about hurting Microsoft. Through crap software nobody would ever use save for political/religious reasons, i.e. hating MS.
Boy, aren't there hordes of anti-MS masochistic fanatics?
Take a look at the whole "browser wars" non-issue: MS was giving away a browser with their OS, just like Lunix does, just like Apple does, etc.First of all, typing Lunix is just about as pathetic as typing Micro$oft. Now that we got that out of the way, let's comment on this "non-issue".
So... I see that you don't understand that Linux is just a kernel, not a company. Furthermore, there are quite a few browsers available in any Linux or BSD distro. And none of them bring Linux money.
And it is not the giving away of a browser that is the problem; the unnecessary integration of the browser and the inability to remove it is more of a problem. As is the good old MS practice of extending standards in broken and incompatible manner.
MS was ADDING VALUE to their product, which EVERY company should have the right to do.You do KNOW that random CAPITALIZATION will not MAKE you any MORE right, right?
It's because of MS, and ONLY becuase of MS, that every consumer isn't forced to pay extra for a TCP/IP protocol, for a winsock, and for the browser.Oh, right.
There were no free browsers before IE, right? And there were no BSD implementations of TCP/IP stacks which Microsoft used in Windows, right?
I guess I should be thankful you didn't mention printer drivers.
That right there was at least $100 in additional software purchases, but MS said "screw that, if everyone wants it, it should be part of the OS". Just like the did with terminal emulation software. Just like they did with disk defragmentation. Just like they did with COMPUTER NETWORKING, and everything OS related.Well, would you look at that... I guess there was really no GNU or BSD code with the same functionality before that...
Pause not.
Then again, look at Linux... every distro gives you Gimp and OpenOffice.org and *D-ripping software, and just MS Office and Photoshop would be... how much in additional software purchases? If Microsoft included a Photoshop-killer app in their OS, claiming that it was an essential part of it, what would you say? And what do you think the courts would say?
The problem is that when FOSSies (and MS's competitors) can't succeed in the marketplace, or in the marketplace of ideas, their final resort to sociopathically forcing their will on everyone else is to try winning either in the courtroom or by convincing lawmakers.Oh, deary, deary me... I thought it was MS that was not only convincing lawmakers by heavy lobbying, but also very nearly proposing laws themselves... I must have been mistaken.
FOSSies bang the drum that "consumers should have choice", but what they really mean is "we feel that no consumer should be allowed to choose Microsoft, and are going to force everyone to not choose Microsoft", just like they are trying to do with the BBC. And the truth of that latter statement is being proven time and again, and being proven on in this forum every single day.Now, now... wipe that foam from your mouth or we'll have to call in a vet, Yeller...
Yes, when you have a monopoly, usually the freedom to choose is the freedom to choose something but the monopoly. This is the stage you try to get your freedom from something, so that you could later have the freedom for something.
Ignore this signature. By order.
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,
Edit menu: XP Comctl32,
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 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
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011