ODF Vs. OOXML File Counts On the Web

mrcgran writes "In eight months since Office 2007 was released to the general public (10 months since release to enterprise customers), there are fewer than 2,000 of these office documents posted on the Web. In the last three months, 13,400 more ODF documents have been added to the Web, with only 1,329 OOXML documents added. It would be hard for the Microsoft camp to spin ten times as many ODF documents added as OOXML documents, especially since 34% of those new documents were added on Microsoft.com. That isn't what I would call good traction for Microsoft's overwhelmingly dominant office suite."

Comments

Microsoft is competing with itself

[Shados]

Thats the main issue. I have Office 2007, and had it for a while. I almost always save in normal DOC for people still using Office 2003...

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[hairpinred]

I personally have found that when trying to open old DOC format files that OpenOffice.org does a much better job than the latest version of Word does.

Especially if you have any legacy Word 1.0 or 2.0 documents that can't be upgraded to the latest format for contractual reasons - Office 2007 will not open those files correctly, and those files are officially unsupported by Microsoft.

I'm surprised that more people don't just use .ODF, it's a published, open standard that is as trivial to write a parser for as it is to just unzip the file and look at the XML directly...

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Bluesman]

I think this is exactly right, and one of the most interesting aspects of Microsoft's business.

Their whole business is dependent on being the popular standard. But by definition, a standard can't be a moving target, so it has to change very slowly or people will stick with "the old version that everyone has."

This puts Microsoft between a rock and a hard place, since they'll lose the market if they make too drastic a change, and they'll also lose the market if they don't change at all, and allow other implementations to catch up.

It's a high-wire balancing act, and while they're very good at it, they're going to slip eventually.

All of you people worried about Microsoft as a monopoly are freaking out over nothing. In the long term, what they're doing with Windows and Office is not sustainable.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Volante3192]

Especially if you have any legacy Word 1.0 or 2.0 documents that can't be upgraded to the latest format for contractual reasons

Offtopic, but I'm just too curious... Would it be possible to explain why these can't be migrated to a newer format? I'd think that'd be dangerously unwise.

I'm surprised that more people don't just use .ODF, it's a published, open standard that is as trivial to write a parser for as it is to just unzip the file and look at the XML directly...

Cause we all know how much a success that is; just look at HTML!

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[dmpyron]

Of course it's about "standards". Even Microsoft "standards". I've had two professional associations I belong to say that they won't accept anything in WTF the 2007 format is. This is for the benefit of both the office staff and also the referees. I'm still running 2000. That's what the ACM (you know, the computer people) require. The IEEE recommends 2000 but will also accept 2003. The ISSA hasn't taken an official stand, yet. But everything coming out of them is 2000.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Danse]

All of you people worried about Microsoft as a monopoly are freaking out over nothing. In the long term, what they're doing with Windows and Office is not sustainable. People have been saying things like that for years. It hasn't come to pass yet. What may not be sustainable for other companies, Microsoft can pull off due to their political and financial clout. They damn near succeeded in getting OOXML fasttracked due to their financial clout with their partners. They will come up with many many ways to fight off what you seem to think is inevitable.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[cyber-vandal]

Well it's been 12 years since Windows 95 and Office 95 and I don't see either of those cash cows slipping in the slightest. In the meantime Microsoft remains in the way of the proper innovation that competition in that space would provide.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[tsa]

It's a high-wire balancing act, and while they're very good at it, they're going to slip eventually.

They don't necessarily have to slip. They just have to make a better, more intuitive, easy to use word processor. I can name quite a few things that are wrong with Word 2003 and OpenOffice. But I guess you can too :)

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Bluesman]

"They just have to make a better, more intuitive, easy to use word processor."

While certainly possible, I think that there are limits to how great you can make a word processor. There comes a point where it's good enough for just about everybody, and I think we've already reached that point. Yeah, there are some problems, but I think those problems are probably inherent to using a general purpose WSIWYG editor than they are problems that can be fixed by a better interface or more features.

The goal here is not to build a better mousetrap, but to invent something that solves some other problem I have. Microsoft isn't particularly good at that.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[tsa]

I don't agree with this. There are too many things I come across during writing that could be made easier and more logical. The handling of pictures in Word is abysmal, for instance. Integrating tables into text could be improved. Copy and paste is an issue in 2003... Integrating special characters in the text is difficult in Open Office... I don't think the development of word processors is at its end yet.

The problem might be that word processors, Open Office and Word alike, are made using a specific concept. We are used to thinking in popup menus and toolbars. Maybe we need a genious to come up with a whole new, more logical user interface.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[phoenixwade]

Especially if you have any legacy Word 1.0 or 2.0 documents that can't be upgraded to the latest format for contractual reasons
Offtopic, but I'm just too curious... Would it be possible to explain why these can't be migrated to a newer format? I'd think that'd be dangerously unwise. I'm not sure of the parent poster, but we have some electronic documents that are archived from 10 years ago that can't be updated and then re-archived, they must match the printed documents that they produced. We can, and do, convert to a new(er) format when updating a document to be submitted and published now, and to allow those documents to be searched, but the ability to open documents from years ago is critical for one of our customers. We got the job because we were willing to dedicate a system to retrieve those documents in the original format.

My recommendation was to handle those archives very differently. This client has a decision maker who knows what he wants, and dictates that it is either done that way, or he'll find someone else to do it. So we do it that way, and every year, I make a case for becoming more current, and every year, the answer is no. I don't mind, though, he's paying for the service, and other than this little bit of fear, he's really easy to work with, I've certainly had far more progressive clients that were far more of a PITA.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[geekboybt]

Like, oh, I don't know... ribbons?! That's it! Ribbons! ...crap.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Bluesman]

I just think that for the things you mentioned, there is probably just no good way for an easy to use, WSIWYG editor to handle things correctly without some sort of artificial intelligence.

Some people will want it to act one way, while other will want the complete opposite. That might be true for the same person working on two different documents.

I think that something like LyX, or even LaTeX, offers a much saner solution to the problems that exist in Word. The "specific concept" you mentioned might just be that WYSIWYG isn't such a great idea after all.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[jawtheshark]

I'm not sure of the parent poster, but we have some electronic documents that are archived from 10 years ago that can't be updated and then re-archived, they must match the printed documents that they produced.

Understandable... but how do you explain to the people that want this that the software that created these files doesn't exist anymore and worse that the programs that are supposed to read them do not render them correctly either.

I'm not claiming that OpenOffice renders them correctly, but Microsoft Office 2007 doesn't either. So you have a document that cannot be rendered, unless you dig out that XT that ran DOS with the DOS version of Word to reproduce them. (Just an example, subsitute with Mac OS/Word or DOS/Wordperfect wherever you want)

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[dugjohnson]

I like Atlantis. It's simple, does just about everything I want, and I can turn out sound that makes it sound like a manual typewriter when I write, complete with bell ding. But that is only good because I am old enough to have used a manual typewriter.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Scruffy Dan]

MS has released a compatibility upgrade so office 2003 XP and 2000 can open the new XML files. I have tried it a couple of time and it seems to work just fine

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Shados]

Surely outputing the content as a .pdf would be the new, microsoft approved way of doing things? Unless it's intended as an editable document.

Close. XPS, not PDF :) It -is- Microsoft, after all.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[MightyMartian]

And that's the crucial thing, at least at the moment. A whole helluva lot of businesses are holding off on Office 2007, so that even those folks that do upgrade are setting Office to save in the older format to guarantee compatibility. Any advantages to the OOXML file format (and quite frankly, from an operational point of view, I don't think there are) are meaningless if everyone is still saving their documents and spreadsheets in the 2000/XP/2003 format.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[MightyMartian]

I'm sure there are many things from a technical and usability point of view wrong with Word 2003 and OpenOffice. But the fact is that both have a familiar interface which has, in many respects, gone unchanged since Word 95/Word 97. Word 2007 is a radical departure, both in file formats and in interface, and I'll argue that, at the moment, any superiority (whether subjective or objective) is meaningless in the corporate world. You sit a secretary down who has been typing her reports for a decade in previous versions of Office in front of Office 2007 and you're going to have a serious problem on your hands.

Maybe Microsoft has the clout to make the Vista/Office 2007 juggernaut win out in the end, and it's still early days, but you know what, people don't like it. XP's still selling. Everyone I've dealt with is sticking with Office 2003 (hell, I was working at a place last year that was stilling using Office 2000). It makes one wonder whether Microsoft has overshot the target a bit here.

My personal prediction is that at some point Microsoft is going to have to make some compatibility skin for Office 2007 if they truly want reasonably quick penetration, and no matter what they do, the 2000/XP/2003 DOC format is going to be the king of the hill for a long time to come, and that if MS does too much that breaks that defacto standard, then competitors like OpenOffice may very well have their chance. This behemoth is of Microsoft's creation, and if they don't start listening to what they're bigger customers are saying, the damn thing could run right over them.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[CastrTroy]

However, with the way things are going, unless you keep that old software (and operating systems) around so that you can open those files at a later date. If you're worried about printed documents matching the files, you'd be better off converting them to PDF as you get them, to ensure that they match what was printed. THere's been many times when I've opened word files on newer version of Word, only to have my documents look different then they used to.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Gr8Apes]

Even the original computer with the original version won't render them correctly if the printer is different. MS long ago decided not to follow a typesetting model (like (la)Tex etc) but rather a view rendered concept that depended upon the physical aspects of the hardware. Change the target hardware, and the view changes. This was especially annoying between HP Laserjet II, III, IIIP, and IV w/wo Postscript. (At least in Postscript, the page would always print the same way).

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[ozmanjusri]

They just have to make a better, more intuitive, easy to use word processor.

MOOXML isn't about competing with other office suites. It's about preventing competition from thousands of specialised document creation tools.

If ODF becomes ubiquitous, it will be easy for specialised tools to create documents which can then be opened/parsed by the office suite or by other tools (ie databases, document managers, aggregators etc) in the chain. Instead of having a few easy targets to embrace, extend..., Microsoft will have to contend with a whole ecosystem of document tools.

Of course, having that flexibility will be an immense improvement for businesses and other computer users, but less profit for Microsoft means it must be fought with all the tools their monopoly position can muster.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[jbplou]

I'm surprised that anybody would change there Word Processor at all. I can't imagine a realistic business case for a business that is currently using Word 2000 or 2003 that would show a gain in bottom line by switching it over to Open Office or Office 2007. If you already have the licenses there is no reason to change. 90% of the features of word processors aren't even used by the normal user.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[chthon]

Switching an office suite is a long term commitment. One should start with computing the yearly costs that have been spent in the past X years on them to see what the long term results will be. Then you can compute what can be saved by switching over to a free office suite.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[orasio]

I just think that for the things you mentioned, there is probably just no good way for an easy to use, WSIWYG editor to handle things correctly without some sort of artificial intelligence.

Some people will want it to act one way, while other will want the complete opposite. That might be true for the same person working on two different documents.

I think that something like LyX, or even LaTeX, offers a much saner solution to the problems that exist in Word. The "specific concept" you mentioned might just be that WYSIWYG isn't such a great idea after all. While I agree with you that WYSIWYG is not such a great idea (I waited for WYSIWYG editing for years, and when I had WordPerfect 6.0, I was very happy with it, but of course I used the code window a lot, because that was what I thought of as part of the experience, because not only I need to see how it looks like, but also I didn't want to lose the knowledge and the control of what was being written. That is what we lost, now you have the WYSIWIG view, but the view that shows the codes is not logical or easily understandable, and doesn't teach you anything. The fact that it is not plain text doesn't help with the editing, either.

Anyhow, there is such a thing as an interface that is good for everyone. I was really looking forward for The Humane Environment, that is what I would call a good idea applied to text.

In a less radical fashion, I think table editing and images could be a lot more consistent for everyone, and easy to use, just with a more careful and polished design. The big issue with MS and interfaces is that they owe a ot to old users, so they can't change their interfaces so much that their skills become useless. I haven't beta tested Office 2007 (and I'm not planning to) but in every other release I have seen lots of inconsistencies that can only be blamed to the effort in not changing old interfaces.

For example, shortcuts in msoffice are laughable. I use Spanish-language computers right now, but the ocassional English winword at a friends house.
Not only the shortcuts differ among languages, but also Notepad, Wordpad, Winword, and Excel do not have a consistent "Find" shortcut, and the dialogs differ everywhere. The management of tables is winword is spartan. I had more control, and less trial-and-error when I used WordPerfect 6. Images were easier to use. Don't get me wrong, you could not drag and drop an image in wordperfect for DOS, but the whole process of putting an image exactly where you wanted, subtitled and all, was much faster, and more straightforward.
You would think that in more than 10 years, they could have improved some of that, right?.
No, instead of improving, you get tabbed properties dialogs with lots of options that are not self describing, and mostly useless, and most importantly, bad defaults! But they stay that way only because they need their faithful customers not to waste their skills.

I don't think AI is needed to provide an easy to use a text editor on steroids. Good design is.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Zeinfeld]

I'm surprised that anybody would change there Word Processor at all. I can't imagine a realistic business case for a business that is currently using Word 2000 or 2003 that would show a gain in bottom line by switching it over to Open Office or Office 2007. If you already have the licenses there is no reason to change. 90% of the features of word processors aren't even used by the normal user.

Actually there is an incentive to move to Word 2007, it is the first edition of Word with a citation feature that does not totally suck.

But as far as the annals of useless comparisons goes, 13,000 vs 1,300 documents is irrelevant. More HTML files are added to the Web each minute.

The value of OOXML etc will appear once there is a large enough base of users. Maybe that will take three or four years. At the moment I can't use the new features of Word 2007 because I have to use two different machines and one is stuck with the downversion.

Its not worth paying a lot to upgrade but most companies pay the same regardless of which edition they run. So the newer versions will percolate through.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Master of Transhuman]

"It hasn't come to pass yet"

The operative word here is "yet".

Email me in twenty years - if we still have email - and let me know how it went.

Just because Microsoft has been around - and dominant - for the last twenty years doesn't mean they will continue to do so for the next 20. Technology is changing too fast to make decades long pronouncements about who's going to be on top. I read somewhere that of most of the top IT companies in the early '80's, most of them went out of business or were bought out by somebody else. Do you remember Borland, or even older, Ashton-Tate? Who owns Lotus now? Where is the guy who started Lotus working now?

Nothing stays the same. IBM amazed me by not collapsing in the 80's amd 90's. They reinvented themselves as first a PC company, then a services company, and even managed to renovate the mainframe market which was collapsing all through the '80's and '90's until AIX and Linux came along.

Microsoft COULD do the same - but it will require a major shakeup in management - namely, dumping Bill and Ballmer and the rest of that lot who are dinosaurs dragging the company into the ground.

Re:Microsoft is competing with itself

[Danse]

Just because Microsoft has been around - and dominant - for the last twenty years doesn't mean they will continue to do so for the next 20. I'd rather not have to wait through another 20 years of Microsoft, the 2000lb. gorilla, sitting on top of OEMs and killing off competitors through their shady business practices, stifling the innovation we should be seeing so that they can maintain their monopoly on the desktop OS and application suite. The government took two shots at them. Won both times, and yet they imposed no significant remedy for the problems MS had created. So the only real competition has been from open source channels, and only because Microsoft never quite figured out how to kill those off or even hurt them bad enough to halt the work. Commercial competition was held in check for years due to a lack of interoperability with MS products. That is a tragedy.

Is a web count really the best metric?

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of what I and the various people and businesses I've known use this sort of document format for, is the sort of thing that should never in a million years be put out on the web in the first place. If you can count what formats are clogging up large intranets, meybe you've got a clearer picture.

Re:Is a web count really the best metric?

[tigre]

It is very relevant if you're looking at what people use for interchange of public records, which is a significant aspect of the standards battle.

Re:Is a web count really the best metric?

[jhol13]

Of course it is! It would take just a few minutes for me to generate practically infinite number of either ... so I can decide with 100% accuracy which one is more relevant! Pay me to decide the matter for good! :-)

Re:Is a web count really the best metric?

[tsa]

You're right. This is more reliable.

Yeah, but

[everphilski]

what about the number of .doc files generated in the same timeframe? :)

Re:Yeah, but

[EvilRyry]

doc files are the last generation. Nobody cares how many DVDs are being sold when looking towards the future, they're looking at the next generation Blue-ray and HDDVD sales. Likewise, nobody cares about doc files. The important question for our future is OOXML vs ODF.

Re:Yeah, but

[man_of_mr_e]

45.5 Million new .doc files were added in the last 3 months.

Yeah, using the logic of this article, ODF is a dismal failure... lol

public consumption

[snilloc]

Anything shared for public consumption would use the more compatible .doc

Re:public consumption

[Elektroschock]

You have to watch this in the context of ISO standardisation of ODF. With OOXML they sell their second standard.

When standards were determined not by.....

[3seas]

....committee but rather by popular use.....

ODF is apparently 10 times more a standard than OOXML.

And I bet its all because its easier to spell.

Re:When standards were determined not by.....

[Anonymous Coward]

And I bet its all because its easier to spell.

I tried open office once and it was buggy and crashed a lot. So why should I use the Open Office XML format, when I can use the trusted Office Document Format?

Re:When standards were determined not by.....

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Hahaha beautiful.

Re:When standards were determined not by.....

[Elektroschock]

Good reasons why Open XML is suboptimal can be found on
http://www.noooxml.org/
the website you won't find on wikipedia thank to their astroturf editors.

Open XML is broken XML. And the patent licensing conditions look like a minefield.

Microsoft should adopt OpenDocument.

And...so?

[DragonWriter]

In eight months since Office 2007 was released to the general public (10 months since release to enterprise customers), there are fewer than 2,000 of these office documents posted on the Web.

Probably because most people creating documents with Office 2007 for the web are either:
1) Converting them to PDF or XPS if they aren't meant to be edited, or
2) Converting them to Office 97-2003 format if they are meant to be edited, since the majority of the Microsoft Office-using audience will be using older versions of the office suite.

I don't think counting documents on the web is particularly a useful way to try to measure the dominance of office suites or their associated file formats. Its, perhaps, an easy measure, but not a meaningful one.

Re:And...so?

[value_added]

I don't think counting documents on the web is particularly a useful way to try to measure the dominance of office suites or their associated file formats. Its, perhaps, an easy measure, but not a meaningful one.

Agreed, but only if you're a rational sort.

I'm reminded of my head exploding some years ago when I read about Bill Gates' disappointment at learning that of all the rich and varied content available on the web, so little of it was offered in .doc file format.

My head has exploded many times since then.

Re:And...so?

[fermion]

So what you are saying is that OOXML has such poor support that people who use it feel compelled to save it in a more universal forma, while ODF is sufficiently universal that people feel comfortable posting it as is.

In any case, your first point, that people save in PDF, is of no real issue. First, the study, as flawed as it may be, is meant to indicate formats that are universal enough to be predictably exchanged. Second, the same argument applies to ODF, only more so. I, for instance, seldom post in ODF as OO.org saves to PDF without any complex spyware ridden third party hacks.

Re:And...so?

[DragonWriter]

So what you are saying is that OOXML has such poor support that people who use it feel compelled to save it in a more universal forma, while ODF is sufficiently universal that people feel comfortable posting it as is.

No, what I'm saying is that people using Office 2007 to post documents on the Web (hardly its primary use) are usually targetting an audience where Office 97-2003 is a more useful interchange format (since lots of people have older versions of Office), while people posting ODF documents on the web are mostly targetting people who are likely to have an ODF software.

That doesn't mean that "ODF is sufficiently universal" for anything; I suspect that if you looked at where those specific ODF documents are offered they would be:
1) Sites targetting specific narrow communities where Microsoft Office is not likely to be used (i.e., Linux users), or
2) Sites where ODF is one of several formats offered, and one of the others is Microsoft Office 97-2003 format

Anyone who can use OOXML documents (i.e., that has MS Office 2007) can use Office 97-2003 documents equally well, the reverse is not true. Therefore, for public interchange on the Web, Office 97-2003 makes more sense, whether as a sole format, or alongside other formats for people who don't can't use any MS Office format. The same is not true of ODF (while some ODF software handles MS Office 97-2003 formats tolerably well, not all of it does.) So it makes sense that there would be more ODF than Office 2007 on the web, not because ODF is more universal, but because there is no more widespread "fallback" format that is available everywhere ODF is that delivers a substantial subset of ODF functionality.

For other uses that are important in the selection of office suites and associated storage formats, the concerns that influence what is used for public interchange on the web are less relevant. These numbers don't really tell a lot about adoption of ODF vs. OOXML overall, just one specific application where it is unsurprising and says nothing really interesting or useful. And that's even before considering that they include all ODF, but exclude the macro-enable versions of Office 2007 formats.

In any case, your first point, that people save in PDF, is of no real issue.

The real issue it embodies is that "public interchange on the web" isn't a primary focus of editable office document formats.

First, the study, as flawed as it may be, is meant to indicate formats that are universal enough to be predictably exchanged.

So? How important is the portion of the web indexed by Google to that interchange for editable office documents? I would suspect that either portions of the web behind login walls or email are more important avenues for editable office document interchange. Sure, they are harder to measure, and this is easy. But "easy to measure" and "meaningful" aren't the same thing.

Second, the same argument applies to ODF, only more so. I, for instance, seldom post in ODF as OO.org saves to PDF without any complex spyware ridden third party hacks.

The fact that the same argument applies to office suites generally reinforces, rather than undermines, it. Also, the implicit comparison you make is invalid, as MS Office 2007's PDF/XPS plugin is simple, from the user perspective, and comes from Microsoft, not a third party, leaving aside questions of whether it is "spyware-ridden" or a "hack".

Re:And...so?

[Gnavpot]

So what you are saying is that OOXML has such poor support that people who use it feel compelled to save it in a more universal forma, while ODF is sufficiently universal that people feel comfortable posting it as is.

I dare to ask: So what?

OOXML does not have to actually be used to serve its purpose for MS. It just has to be accepted as an (pseudo)open, possible alternative to the existing old formats. This will probably be enough to stop critical questions from buyers who want support for open standards.

Bad metric

[BuR4N]

"That isn't what I would call good traction for Microsoft's overwhelmingly dominant office suite"

Its a worthless metric, how many OOXML have been stored in various internal Sharepoint servers around the world ?

Re:Bad metric

[guruevi]

Well, having implemented ShitPoint 2007, nobody uses OOXML, everybody still uses the DOC or PDF formats. Even XPS is hardly used (only by documentation originating from Microsoft)

Nobody wants to switch to Office 2007 because 1) it's expensive, 2) it's more difficult to use, 3) it needs major retraining.

I am going on as a Mac Sysadmin now (quit the other job) and I don't think a lot of people are going to upgrade to Office 2008 for Mac either, I think they stay with the current implementation and switch to Open/NeoOffice later, maybe if iWork gets an ODF implemented, I would consider it.

You might not see it, but there is a big push for more open standards and usable file formats. Not only for ideological reasons, the current Sarbanes-Oxley and HIPAA-compliance as well as a lot of other internal legal policies require a lot of (financial and personal) documents to be stored about 10 years or longer (some 20 years, or even forever). Looking at Microsoft's track record, they keep their document formats for maximum 10 years (they just killed the format that was last updated in 2000 and is backwards compatible with a version of 1997) and then throw it out with minimal if not no backwards compatibility. Another requirement is that those documents stored are directly available in case of legal action in their original format and layout. There is not going to be any time to write plugins and converters that do their job halfwards at that moment and if you need to write something like that, it's nice to have a DOCUMENTED format that everybody can use without paying Microsoft an extortion fee.

Re:Bad metric

[man_of_mr_e]

Nobody wants to switch to Office 2007 because...

That's funny. In my own anectdotal experience, on the 15 flights i've taken in the last 3 months, every single time i've seen someone open up a (non-mac) laptop, they've had Office 2007 running. Probably 25 different people, randomly encountered. The ribbon bar is very noticable, even if you're just glancing in someones direction.

Now, maybe it's just that people that regularly fly on business trips have extra money lying around to upgrade, but it kind of blows your other theories. Especially since a) it's a free upgrade for anyone on software assurance, and b) it's not more difficult ot use, and c) i don't know of anyone that's needed to be retrained to use it. In fact, in my experience they find it easier to use than Office 2003.

And in regards to HIPPA and S-O, you should really read this article (in particular, page 3): http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/072307-opendoc uments-grounded.html

And, before you jump to the conclusion that it was written by a shill, you should note that the authors are members of OASIS and one of them writes for Groklaw.

How many Copies of 2007 are truly out there?

[imcclell]

Another question is, what the market share of office 2007 vs an ODF compliant suite? If there's 10 million people with ODF capabilities, and only 1 million with OOXML, doesn't this make sense?

The question is not how many now, but it's how many will there be 5 years from now.

Buffoons...

[Anonymous Coward]

In 12 minutes since this post was released 100% have called this a stupid piece of trash. That is hard to put a spin on.

***captcha is buffoons***

Bollocks

[Anonymous Coward]

Why exactly is this tagged "linux"? As though magically all thing FOSS revolve around Linux? Because there being more ODF docs out there, is suddenly a win for Linux, instead of a win for Open Office and FOSS in general?

"That isn't what I would call good traction for Microsoft's overwhelmingly dominant office suite."

The fact that it is an "overwhelmingly dominant office suite" is traction enough. Compare how many users are using any other suite, to the amount running Office. And filecount means something now? By this logic, should be now abandon Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and other audio formats because the number of .mp3s out there completely overshadows them? Should be dismiss Linux and OS X as insignificant sheerly on the basis that there are astronomically more Windows boxen out there? But wait, this is different somehow (because the OSS variant has the numerical advantage) less asinine than, oh, I don't know, basing security on the number of known vulnerabilities that we here on Slashdot love to complain about, isn't it?

And this whole "t would be hard for the Microsoft camp to spin ten times as many ODF documents added as OOXML documents" continually searching for, and boasting any little flaw or inconsistency or what-have-you, no matter how insignificant is really both absurd and childish.

Re:Bollocks

[Bigjeff5]

By this logic, should be now abandon...

Should be dismiss Linux... Sorry, together those make the strangest set of typos I think I've ever seen. It's almost like you're purposely saying "should be" instead of "should we", but it makes absolutely no sense...

Wierd.

Anyway, other than that, I think you've got a point. :)

Re:Bollocks

[a.d.trick]

ODF doesn't even have necessary connection to FOSS. It's just another open standard, like HTML.

As for why this story is interesting? Well, it might be a stretch, but it is possible that there is some correlation between the document counts and the popularity of the formats. That seems almost as likely as our anecdotal evidence on the obscurity of ODF. It wouldn't be news to hear that ODF went largely unused, we would alread assume as much. The fact that there is evidence to the contrary is at least interesting.

news flash!

[kevin.fowler]

Office 2007 users don't like posting documents on the interweb.

Re:news flash!

[gardyloo]

Duhhhh. It clogs the series of tubes.

Meanwhile...

[Vellmont]

The REAL document format, PDF has millions of documents on the web.

Do I really care what format people pass around documents they intend to edit, as long as they publish them in what's become the standard format for end-users, i.e. pdf?

The problem, as I see it is people are using ODF/.doc/Microsoft-whatever to often for documents that are really supposed to be just electronically published documents. I.e, not intended to be editied (though obviously you can with the right software).

MS Google jamming

[SgtChaireBourne]

Wait a short while for MS to figure out how to game these numbers too.

All MS has to due is illegally leverage that desktop monopoly again. MS Outlook currently infests a large number of MS Windows desktops. All MS has to do is add a "security" patch that co-incidentally also sets MS Outlook to spew MOOOXML for all formatted messages. Overnight overpopulation of the new formats. Courts are so #$&* slow that by the time the anti-trust papers are served, it'll have been long since over. Of course, current bandwidth limitations would be a show-stopper for that plan - message sizes would go up by about three orders of magnitude.

Re:MS Google jamming

[Ashtead]

The problem with that one will be everyone who is using some other OS than Windows XP or Vista, or at first, some other mail client than Outlook (including web-based ones such as Gmail), will complain about unreadable e-mails. Of course, this will also be a possible way to stem the tide of spam, at least temporarily, but I feel the effect is that e-mail will become even less reliable than it already is.

No Demand?

[EraserMouseMan]

Is this proof that nobody really cares about an open document format?

How does it benefit most people? Not at all. Everybody can already read the MS docs they create since everybody already has MS Office.

Re:No Demand?

[koxkoxkox]

Except those that don't, of course.

Well

[trifish]

I've never seen a single ODF document on any website. But I've seen a lot of .docs and zillions of .pdfs.

Seems logical

[EraserMouseMan]

It seems logical that ODF would be used more since it's the non-widely-used (read non-MS Office) software that implements that format. These people must convert to something for others to be able to read it (usually either MS Office format or ODF). MS Office users don't need to convert their docs to anything. Almost everybody can already read Word or Excel documents.

What they need to do

[VEGETA_GT]

Make a patch for there older office systems like 2003 which allows them to save to there OOXML. Now this concept will go right over M$'s head as they will say "well why would we do that, then there is no reason to update to 2007". Well thats what people say now, why go to this new system when 2003 works just fine, dose all we need and hey everyone can read and modify ours docs. We upgrade we will have to save in the doc format because hey then everyone can deal with the document basically. But if they make it so that the older offices can deal with the newer format, people will be more inclined to move tot he newer format and will then not have any reasons besides cost to moving to 2007 as then all can read the documents. Microsoft has to realize people are not just going to jump when they say jump, and are not going to switch formats because they say so. If it works then why change right. Fastest way to change is let everyone deal with that format on any of there systems then that one less reason for not upgrading.

My 2 cents plus 2 more and a happy face :)

Re:What they need to do

[Anonymous Coward]

It would appear that this concept does *not* go over their head. What you're talking about is the "Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats" and it's been out since June:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?fa milyid=941b3470-3ae9-4aee-8f43-c6bb74cd1466&displa ylang=en

BTW, it works with Office 2003, Office XP and Office 2000

Re:What they need to do

[VEGETA_GT]

Well I missed this. I stand corrected.

Legacy formats, so what?

[twitter]

Old word formats are still a poor way to share documents and are probably outnumbered by pdf.

The new formats are supposed to address these problems and deliver a fundamental promise of electronic editing: seemless collaboration. The M$ format is really more of the same old M$ only, version dependent stuff M$ has always served. Because it offers no real improvement, it's adoption will have to be forced. ODF, on the other hand, offers a choice of editors and OS, and is being used by people. Free and open standards work. M$XML is not really free and won't work. The M$ monopoly is failing.

Re:Legacy formats, so what?

[plague3106]

Right, ODF will allow that choice, just like html authors only need to write one page and it renders the same in all browsers.

Re:Legacy formats, so what?

[DragonWriter]

The new formats are supposed to address these problems and deliver a fundamental promise of electronic editing: seemless collaboration.

The focus of Microsoft's collaboration effort with Office 2007 isn't just formats, it focusses on moving people from the plain-old-web to Sharepoint servers for collaboration, which wouldn't show up in Google indexes.

So, if Microsoft were successful, there would be zero OOXML documents found via Google on the web that were there for the purpose of "seamless collaboration".

I would, therefore, suggest that only finding small numbers of documents on the Google-indexed portion of the web is not a good measure of Microsoft failing in this regard.

Is it significant?

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

How long will it be before MSFT posts a massive number of ooxml docs on line to spin the numbers? How long will it take to write a script to convert a bunch of doc files and translate them into ooxml and post it in some site or the other?

What would be significant is, if public in some county or school district sues the Govt agency claiming, they have a fundamental right to get Govt documents in a format that is not saddled with proprietary burdens, they should have the right to process these docs and forms without paying royalties, license fees or even signing EULA with private third parties. That would be significant.

Count the number of docs, MSFT has enough money to churn out and post a million ooxml docs in two days.

Re:Is it significant?

[nontrivial]

I totally agree, in no time MicroSoft will be generating millions of bogus OOXML documents to skew this new metric, just like they have generated millions of bogus websites to skew netcraft metrics. Everytime you sign up for a passport account (and don't use it, then sign up for another because you can't remember the BS info you used last time you signed up), that's another website. All they have to do is place an OOXML document or two there as well and now the evidence is overwhelming that OOXML is supierior since "everybody" is using it.

What this really means

[realdodgeman]

This just proves that OOXML is not needed (yet). Everybody continues to use .doc or odf.

who puts documents on the web?

[harlows_monkeys]

Most business and professional users aren't writting their documents to put them on the web.

Re:who puts documents on the web?

[Iphtashu Fitz]

I see plenty of cases where documents are put on the web. I just recently filled out an application for a grant for a non-profit organization I'm involved with. They had an application form that we had to fill out and made it available as both a MS Word and PDF file.

I would point out

[Toreo asesino]

...that MS Office supports ODF just fine. You'll probably find some of the docs on-line even came from Office.

Personally...

[Gyga]

Personally I release all documents in .odt, .doc, and .pdf. If there was a OOXML-compatible program that can run on Linux I would also release in that.

Yes, you would. So? Re:I would point out

[twitter]

This would be wonderful if it were true.

MS Office supports ODF just fine.

What I've read does not support the assertion. In the last year, M$ has made a few converters that imperfectly use the text document branch of ODF. These converters are poorly integrated into Office and not at all into the OS, so using ODF on a M$ platform without Open Office is painful.

If a user wants ODF, you would think that they would just get Open Office. It's interface is more familiar than Office 2007 and the user gets a next generation file format, free from vendor lock-in.

I'm not sure what this has to do with the article which is about no one outside of Redmond using M$XML.

Difference

[everphilski]

There is a stark difference. There is a great capacity increase between Blue-Ray, HDDVD and DVD. What is the driving force behing yet another office format? The existing one works just fine. Upgrading media is a no brainer because we have hit the limits. We haven't hit the limits of an office format, yet.

Re:Difference

[tixxit]

Doc is proprietary. With the huge growth in new, non-windows, systems that includes, not only linux workstations, but also PDAs, smart phones, web applications, etc, proprietary formats just aren't cutting it anymore. The need for a common format that can be shared amongst all these new devices, whose specificaiton is open, not only to implement, but to extend as well is essential. ODF is hugely superior to Word Documents in many ways. First, ODF is NOT just text formatting. It is everything in one (spreadsheet, presentation, text, etc). It supports a lot more, in terms of ability, than .doc by itself. It is better technically. It fixes many issues with current formats. It separates content from data. It follows common standards. The only reason .doc would not be inferior or equal to OOXML or ODF is if you're still thinking in terms of a small group of people in a homogenous enviornment editing a basic word file. When you start to get any more complex, then you start to see the short comings.

That isn't what it's measuring

[Colin Smith]

I don't think counting documents on the web is particularly a useful way to try to measure the dominance of office suites or their associated file formats. It's measuring the usage of a particular standard. It's pretty clear that nobody uses OOXML, anyone using MS Office simply continues to use DOC.

Re:That isn't what it's measuring

[Elektroschock]

Yes. But open xml has special features. It prevents a switch to a real XML format. http://www.noooxml.org/petition

Re:That isn't what it's measuring

[DragonWriter]

It's measuring the usage of a particular standard.

No, its not. It's measure the usage of a particular standard for interchange on the portion of the web indexed by Google. It doesn't measure what's used for interchange by different paths than the web, by log-in based sites on the web, or what is used for non-interchange (i.e., archive) use.

Since one of the main motives for choosing a standardized format for office documents is future-proof archiving of internal documents, and since it doesn't measure that use at all, its next to worthless as a measure of the use of the standard.

OTOH, unfortunately for Microsoft (not that they don't often benefit from this effect, so its not entirely unfair to Microsoft), its exactly the kind of meaningless-but-precise measure that all too often motivates business decisions.

It's pretty clear that nobody uses OOXML, anyone using MS Office simply continues to use DOC.

That's not clear at all.

What may be clear is that people aren't using OOXML for public interchange on the web, which isn't the same thing.

(Actually, even that's not all that clear, though it may well be true: it appears that the comparison in TFA only measures DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX. It doesn't count the macro-enabled versions of the Office 2007 formats [XLSM, DOCM, and PPTM] which are still, I believe, OOXML.)

Apple and Oranges

[in10se]

1. Most people using Office 2007 are still saving their documents in XP/2003 format, so don't confuse the use of the format with the use of the software. In addition, Office 2007 has built-in support for PDF which is a better choice of format for the web.
2. You can't expect major corporations OR small businesses to jump formats overnight (and yes, 7 months is "overnight" when you are talking about major software changes).
3. ODF is output by various free software. More people are willing to download, upload, and play with free software. Geeks are more likely to play with free software. Geeks are more likely to upload documents to the web than normal internet users.
4. Word processing documents (in either format) aren't really meant for the web anyway.

All of these things will lower the number of OOXML documents on the web even if the use of Office 2007 is growing. Any opinions of Microsoft, Linux, Office aside, the comparison in TFA means absolutely nothing.

Re:The root problem is that there's a difference.

[Vellmont]

The real problem is that there is still a difference. You should be able to edit documents with ease.

Honestly, why? I don't care about editing documents, and honestly it's not really something with a great need. If you _want_ to edit a PDF, you obviously can. The difference is really only in the availability of the software (not many people create PDF editors).

Word Perfect did not have this problem and was the defacto standard before MicroSquish got them

That was a different world where there was less cries for open standards, and the formats were really more about creating paper printouts (and selling word processing software) than it was an electronic document format. Was the wordperfect "standard" open and published? I'm not really convinced it was any better in those respects.

Que?

[Toreo asesino]

"text document branch"? Sounds like rubbish to me.

Have another article on it if you want - http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,126331-page,1/ar ticle.html?tk=nl_dnxnws - no mention of partial implementations there, or otherwise there's always the good old community to help out - http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter

Also, as it turns out the UI for Office 2007 isn't so bad after all - http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=201800612&cid=RSSfeed_IWK_News
Think logically for one second....Microsoft have in fairness spent a fair few billion on this new interface. That's more effort and investment than OO will ever get, ever, so the chances are it is going to be easier for users.

Re:Que?

[marcello_dl]

> Also, as it turns out the UI for Office 2007 isn't so bad after all.

it is different, that's the problem. joe user will have to spend time to relearn how to do the same stuff with the new program. I installed firefox on machines at work exactly one day after they were "upgraded" to IE7, guess why.

> Microsoft have in fairness spent a fair few billion on this new interface. That's more effort and investment than OO will ever get, ever, so the chances are it is going to be easier for users.

Two problems IMHO here. First you assume the billions were spent to make it easier for users. I say the billion actually spent on the interface are aimed at fidelizing the user, offering new functionality at the price of making difficult for users to migrate to the alternatives in the first place.

Second problem, by your reasoning Microsoft with 10x the resources of the competition oughta have better security than linux and a better user experience than macs. hmmmmm.

Re:Que?

[Toreo asesino]

Different it may be, but certainly for the better I'd say, and as my previously supplied link suggested - the "learning curve" has been vastly over-stated. Having upgraded a long time ago, I too found myself hunting for the odd feature here & there, but nothing the help system can't highlight in a matter of seconds and overall a far more intuitive interface. Either way, I'm not alone on this opinion.

And sorry, but personally the whole "M$ Windoze security suck0rz!" thing is frankly so out of date. There was a time when it was true, but not any more.

http://blogs.csoonline.com/windows_vista_6_month_v ulnerability_report

Yes I know it's only "reported" bugs, so I'm not about to say Windows is certainly more secure, but I think it's a strong argument for how it's at least equal to that of it's OS sibling.

So desperate...

[suv4x4]

It would be hard for the Microsoft camp to spin ten times as many ODF documents added as OOXML documents, especially since 34% of those new documents were added on Microsoft.com.

Man, relative comparison really makes this sound tough for Microsoft. 10x more ODF! 34% on Microsoft!
If only we could skip the part with the absolute numbers, where it turns out this is about mere several thousands of documents found on the web (of either format).

Congratulations on the self-referring sarcasm about the spin though.

Apparently no spin is hard enough for either Microsoft or the FOSS fanatics.

Re:The root problem is that there's a difference.

[Vellmont]

The real problem is that there is still a difference.

The more I think about this idea, the more I disagree with it. I think it's a great thing that there's a separation between "presentation" formats, and formats intended to be edited. Why? Because presentation formats should always be the same, always be readable by an older version of software, etc. Editing formats have different needs, like adding new features like layers, links to other documents, etc.

Look at the photoshop format (psd I think) vs jpg for instance. jpg is a format intended to be published, where psd is a flexible format for a designer to do whatever they please with the photo (seperate layers, all that jazz).

In short, editing formats need to evolve and be extremely flexible (and thus incompatible), presentation formats need to stay the same (to a large degree). That doesn't mean you can't edit a publishing format of course.. people edit jpgs all the time. It's just not the design goal of the format.

Its the public, who will be deciding

[unity100]

even if ms bought entire international standards boards and pushed their format, whatever public prefers to use will be the format to stay, and in time even goverment agencies will have to switch to the format public has chosen by their invisible hand. it has happened many times before and this is no exception.

You should be kicked for posting EITHER format

[wsanders]

Mod parent up blah blah. EITHER format is evil. Unless you can show me an aggregator that can interpret either OOXML or ODF. That would be kewl.

We just paid a lot of money for a bloated shiteware CMS that can sort of do this with DOC files. Even it will convert the DOC file to PDF on the fly for those of us too l33t to read DOC files.

Re:You should be kicked for posting EITHER format

[Daengbo]

What do you mean by aggregator? An RSS feed?

As for CMSs, I know that Plone and EZPublish can accept/convert ODF files, and I just found HippoCMS, an Apache Caccon-based CMS, through a quick Google search for "ODF CMS."

Different Audiences

[ClubStew]

Um, maybe because the corporate world with corporate secrets (whether they should be or not) use Office and don't put their works up on the web; and those who do tend to publish are typically in the open source camp?

Let me Make this Simple

[Bellum Aeternus]

I work for a small company, about 50 employees, we have one person using Office 2007 because he got to select his own Dell machine. The rest are all on 2003, guess what format everybody is using? You got it .doc - so these numbers are misleading.

Re:Let me Make this Simple

[PitaBred]

What do you mean they're misleading? They're saying that most people haven't moved to Office 2007 in the almost year since it's been released (which your numbers support), and people aren't using the new formats. In comparison, people are increasingly using applications that create ODF files, especially as compared to those who're using OOXML. .doc format isn't anywhere in the equation.

Office Compatiblity Addon for Old Versions

[antdude]

See here and you can save as Office 2007 formats for old Office versions (as long as they have this pack). I also noticed MS keep them updated through Office Update and I still use Office 2000 SP3.

Re:The root problem is that there's a difference.

[PitaBred]

I don't care about your mom. Nor do most people. But you probably do. Just because you don't need it doesn't mean that no one does, or even that the majority of people don't do it.

Re:The root problem is that there's a difference.

[ClamIAm]

presentation formats should always be the same, always be readable by an older version of software, etc. Editing formats have different needs, like adding new features

Presentation formats also have the "need" for new features: PDF (for example) has not remained static. While using my brother's computer the other day, I downloaded some music scores (PDFs). His (older) version of Acrobat actually couldn't read the file. I found this odd, as usually a "may not be rendered properly" message will appear.

Yes, but how many ODF/OXXML docs are OFFLINE?

[RudeIota]

It makes sense ODF would have a broad presence online to the technologically inclined, web savvy population. But how many documents done in the office, at school, in the lab, at home etc... have NOT been uploaded to the web?

Online presence of document formats probably accounts for only a small fraction the total word processing done out there in the "real world" and therefore only indicative of web presence itself.

I don't know if it was the point of this article, but online presence does not realistically display growth trends or market share. Sadly, I'm sure MS Office is vastly preferred to OO, SO etc by your average user and companies... and it [unfortunately] will stay that way for a long time.

If they were HTML we could read them

[gig]

Over the same time a million plus HTML documents were added to the Web and we can actually read them. Both ODF and OOXML are completely and utterly obsolete and useless. If the user's work is stored by their tools as HTML+CSS+JS then that would enable the user, that would be something other than software programmers wanking away for their visions of world domination.

8 months is not a long time

[CanadaIsCold]

I know that for a home user 8 months may seem like long enough for an Office application to be deployed but it's not really that long.

A large number of businesses only upgrade every 2 versions because of the cost of training,re-writing templates and integration, and the price of deployment.

If it is in the plan to deploy Office 2007 for these networks expect them to be using the old document format for at least a year - 2 years after deployment due to compatibility headaches.

So you should measure this number again in a year or so. Once the large enterprises start to publish in this format you will most likely see a spike in usage of the format.

Interesting thought. If you tracked trends on the published format could you get enough detail to figure out when a company upgraded? The company would probably need to be of significant size.

Re:Doesn't matter

[Chemicalscum]

I work for a small to medium size multinational corporation, about 10,000 desktops world wide. We have not installed the MS OOXML converter plugin. Why ? I guess there is no demand for it. No one from outside the company has sent me an email with a .docx attachment. Mostly I get pdf's with the occasional .doc file

There's no "ODF" category.

[SanityInAnarchy]

Nor is there a F/OSS category, or a GNU category, as far as I remember when I last tried to submit a story.

Seems to me, "Linux" is as good as anything to describe this.

Maybe, maybe not...

[SanityInAnarchy]

My guess is that someone who is clueful enough to use either ODF or OOXML is clueful enough to at least understand, say, Word's "Save as HTML" feature, or use an actual HTML solution from the beginning.

That would be why .doc is still the overwhelming majority.

However, there are times when it makes sense. For example, manuals which were always meant to be printed and physically included with a piece of hardware often go on the Web as PDF, because that's the format in which they're sent to the printer, so putting them online takes no work -- compared to redoing it as HTML. (I haven't found a reliable pdf->html converter yet.)

And there are other examples, even beyond distributing content. You could say "Take a look at my document here, notice how nicely OpenOffice handles this particular feature..." Of course, you could post screenshots, but you should really do both, unless the documents are partly confidential.

Re:Maybe, maybe not...

[MightyMartian]

I think there's a two-part standard that has sort of developed mainly by accident and necessity, and that is Word docs for internal use, and PDF for wider publication. Acrobat and other PDF readers are so common now that you are almost guaranteed the ability of a recipient or audience being able to read it. I know that in the legal profession, PDF has become THE file format. For archival purposes, I figure it's as good as you're going to get, the one disadvantage is that it's not so editable, but then again, is that really an issue when you go to archive something?

Are these archived documents edited?

[Mathinker]

Just curious, but are these 10-year-old archived documents edited or used as the basis for new documents?

My impression has always been that documents in such half-dead formats are more or less dead themselves with respect to editing, and the best idea would be to (somehow) convert them to PDF and be done with it. Since you are the first person I've caught with real experience, I'm curious to see if I'm right in your case....

Re:Are these archived documents edited?

[ozmanjusri]

Just curious, but are these 10-year-old archived documents edited or used as the basis for new documents?

In my experience (Workers Compensation claims), the documents are opened for analysis and printed immediately, a copy will be made in a modern format for redaction and/or inclusion in other documents.

The rules in this case come fro Australia's Records in Evidence legislation, but they're likely to be similar worldwide.

While the 'original document rule' has been abolished, it is still necessary for parties to authenticate evidence of the contents of documents tendered in one of these ways. For example, in relation to a document in writing that is signed, it remains necessary to lead evidence (if the point is contested) that the signature appearing on the document is the signature of the person who has purported to sign it. In the case of computer records, it is necessary to give evidence that the computer output is what it purports to be.

The procedures, which can be set in motion before the hearing of a proceeding, may result in the making of court orders against the party leading evidence of the contents of the document, including an order that:

in the case of a computer or similar document, that a party be permitted to examine and test the way in which the document was produced or has been kept.

In other words, a printout will most likely be acceptable, but if the evidence is contested, you may need to show an examiner how you stored and retrieved the information.

Re:Are these archived documents edited?

[phoenixwade]

Just curious, but are these 10-year-old archived documents edited or used as the basis for new documents? Not anymore. It's now a version based on the older documents (based on an older version...), but you can show the linage of a given document.

My impression has always been that documents in such half-dead formats are more or less dead themselves with respect to editing, and the best idea would be to (somehow) convert them to PDF and be done with it. Since you are the first person I've caught with real experience, I'm curious to see if I'm right in your case.... Funny enough, that is my recommendation each year.....

no reason to buy office anymore

[llZENll]

with the release of Open Office, there is simply no reason to buy office anymore, it will work just fine for most people.

One of the dumbest metrics ever

[j0217995]

Seriously the amount of documents on the web should help determine if a format is used or not? WOw what stupid thinking. How many of these documents can't be on the web, but are instead stored on corporate file servers and corporate intranets around the world? Seriously folks, this is perhaps the dumbest evidence for whether a format is succeedin or not that I've heard of

Re:The root problem is that there's a difference.

[MMC Monster]

Wordperfect did change a document based on the installed printer driver.

It drove me nuts, when moving a document from a computer hooked up to a laser printer to one hooked up to a dot matrix printer. Invariably, page breaks would move. Sometimes line breaks moved as well.

Re:The root problem is that there's a difference.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I don't care about editing documents, and honestly it's not really something with a great need.

Yeah, that's why no one uses Wikis. Oh wait...

If you _want_ to edit a PDF, you obviously can.

Not as easily, I think. And you're right, the availability of the software is pretty slim.

If I was passing around a document I wanted people to be able to edit, I wouldn't use PDF. I'd use PDF for things I really don't want anyone to be able to edit at all.

Whoa, now wait a minute!

[Jugalator]

Before drawing biased conclusions:

That isn't what I would call good traction for Microsoft's overwhelmingly dominant office suite

... you really need to keep in mind that Office 2007 users are more than likely to save their docs as the traditional .doc formats to remain backwards compatible with Office 2003 and earlier! It would be crazy to start using the ODF format for pretty much any reason in the same year as the product has been released, and require all users of earlier suites to install the Office 2007 compatibility add-on!

So rather look in the way of sales figures if you want to see if Office 2007 was a success or not, not the use of its own format.

Re:Whoa, now wait a minute!

[Jugalator]

Sorry, I of course meant OOXML above but you probably realized that.

Clue Phone its for you

[RobertLTux]

The International Standards Organization Open Document Format is the primary "native" format for Open Office (in fact the format was developed with OO.o being the reference program).

Editing is an issue for archival...

[SanityInAnarchy]

Not a huge one, but it is an issue when you consider that you may eventually want to convert your archive to another format, or display it in another format.

That's easy in documents designed to be edited. It's easy to, for example, convert odf to html, or pdf, or plain text. It's much harder to convert pdf to one of these other formats -- I've tried a PDF to text conversion, and a PDF to html conversion, and neither worked the way I wanted.