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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!
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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.
My feeling is this - you create your document 'easily' using standard Office suite interfaces. It saves it like it would a publisher file which lays out your doc and specifies EXACTLY where everythign goes. When you open it again, it is formatted perfectly and you keep editing until the cycle repeats. Not sure why this wouldn't be possible. Like the reply below you suggests, uniting office level of control with a desktop publishing level of precision might lead to a killer application.
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
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
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!
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.
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
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
>>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.
1. Twips are anything but an arbitrary unit. There are 20 twips to a point. 72 points to 1 inch.
2. The reason for the differences is the fact that very little in a document is stored in absolute positions. Almost everything is stored relative to other things in the document. Images are generally stored as some offset from a text anchor, for example. This allows you to make broad sweeping changes to the document easily as you can add text or other elements and the rest of the document will re-flow (since everything is stored relatively) nicely. The downside is that you are now dependent on the layout engine to ensure integrity between devices, and differences in layout in one portion of the document effect the rest of the document being positioned relatively to it. This is why word processor documents can be subtly (or sometimes hugely) different when viewed on different machines.
This differs from a absolute positioning view of the document (think publishing software) where everything in the document is positioned in absolute terms (more or less). This makes the editing process more difficult, since adding big content pieces often means you have to revisit the various document elements and reposition them accordingly.
At the end of the day, your word processor and your publishing tool are really solving different problems. Your word processor document isn't meant for distribution, it's meant for revision. Your PDF file is difficult to revise, but the layout is more or less guaranteed on every machine.
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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?
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!
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.