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Google Pleased With ISO OOXML Decision
yogi writes "In a blog post from this Friday past, Google welcomed the ISO decision not to fasttrack OOXML. They also (once again) voiced their public support for the ODF standard. 'Technical standards should be arrived at transparently, openly, and based on technical merit. Google is committed to helping the standards community remain true to this ideal and maintain their independence from any commercial pressure ... Google supports one open document format and calls on industry participants to collaboratively work on ODF. With multiple implementations of one open standard for documents, users, businesses and governments around the world can have both choice and freedom to access their own documents, share with others and pass onto future generations.'"
I was also pleased with the result. But it's not on freaking Slashdot. What makes Google's opinions newsworthy?
Which is of course what Microsoft must stop at all costs. Also worth remembering is that were the shoe on the other foot, and Google had the business lockin and office suite monopoly Microsoft enjoy, they'd probably protect their proprietary formats at all costs too. So whilst Google's opinion may be aligned with most people here, do remember that they're a company whose sole aim is profit.
This looks like a fortuitous PR stunt to me, I don't doubt that Google like ODF now but we shouldn't forget that Microsoft have been known to be open when they lack market share too.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
At my day job, my officemate just got Office 2007, which he was pleased as punch about... at first. Then he realized that no one else on any platform, using any software, can read Office 2007 files. He might as well write them in crayon, for what that's worth. He can select an earlier format, but then it saves as read-only.
At this point, my endless nudging about this whole Open Document Format thing is starting to make more sense for him. In fact, he'd be pleased to replace Word. However, he and some other co-workers are power Excel users, and are very reluctant to even consider replacing it.
Can anyone out there make a convincing case that Calc or Gnumeric are just as good as Excel, even for advanced users?
What if I do the same thing, and I do get different results?
Either that or they just embrace the ODF spec, extend it in proprietary ways that won't work in other office suites, and then extinguish it. That way MS Office will read everything but still produce documents that only work properly in Office.
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
The fast track process does not officially end until after the next ballot resolution meeting (BRM). According to the ISO press release http://www.iso.org/iso/newsandmedia/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1070, if Microsoft scrapes together enough support at the BRM, then the OOXML standard will be accepted.
On the other hand, if Microsoft doesn't get the support at the BRM, then OOXML is out of the fast track process and referred back to committee for development.
The fast-track process isn't over yet; all ISO has decided is that OOXML didn't pass the initial vote. There's still (probably, unless Microsoft backs down at the last minute) a Ballot Resolution Meeting to come, where the committee looks at all the comments received with the votes and tries to resolve them. If the various national boards decide that the result is good enough and vote for OOXML, it can still become a standard in the near future.
TFA itself talks about "not approving the fast-track", which isn't quite the same as "not fast-tracking" OOXML period but is still misleading. (Fancy little Preview button down there. I wonder what it does?)
I, for one, welcome our like-minded, Google-employed brethren with open arms and open document formats!
The game.
It wouldn't under normal circumstances, but there are a growing number of organizations (in particular various governments) who are demanding open document formats to protect valuable data from being stored in proprietary formats that might, at some point the future, become very difficult to access. In other words, in 2050 AD, the state of Massachusetts doesn't want to maintain an old copy of Windows 98 running Office 95, or have to run one virtualized on new hardware (if you can find an old Pentium emulator around) just so it can open old, archived documents. With a *useful* open document format, it's at least feasible that you could get your programmers or hire programmers to write software to extract or translate the data.
This is the importance to Microsoft of getting OOXML turned into an ISO standard. That way it can have its cake and eat it too. On the one hand they can declare to Massachusetts or any other government or organization demanding an open file format that they have this keen ISO standard, all the while having a format with so many patent-encumbered and proprietary hooks that no one but Microsoft could ever hope to write a program that could read or write it.
One only has to look at how incredibly important it is to Microsoft to get this enormous, crappy and completely unimplementable standard through ISO by the sheer efforts and willingness to risk public exposure to buy votes. If they can't get this past the ISO post, then the long-term viability of their business model is severely compromised.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Because 'odf' isn't an actual file extension used for ODF documents...try odt (text), odp (presentation), etc...
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
1. You're redundant: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=300601&cid=20646489
2. You have no idea what you're talking about: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=300601&cid=20646837
Google Docs supports it.
Does anyone have a factual list of Office features that can't map to ODF? I mean, besides "justifying the way Office 97 does", which doesn't meaningfully constitute a "feature".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They don't support any of those either, alas.
WTF are you smoking, yes they do:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=filetype%3Aodt+the&btnG=Search
The ISO decision to not fast-track this won't be made until the ballot resolution meeting (BRM) in February, where they look at the comments, decide which can be resolved, and re-vote. If it passes that vote (and you can be sure MSFT is working on that), the fast-track succeeds. The ISO press release that TFA links to explains this. (I guess someone at Google has reading comprehension issues.)
It ain't over yet.
-- Alastair
Thanks for the correction. That works with any filetype (try it), but their Advanced Search form only covers certain types (PDF PS DWF KML KMZ XLS PPT DOC RTF SWF).
Except only certain file types get properly identified and parsed into html. The fact that it's not in the drop down list is a minor problem likely due to the relative lack of popularity of these formats right now.
ODF is the default filetype for openoffice.org so there are many users but simply not close to (I'm sure that's an understatement) as many as other formats have.
ODF is not a perfect standard. I don't believe there is such a thing as a perfect document standard. But what ODF is not is patent encumbered or encumbered by references to proprietary functionality.
Simply put, a reasonably competent programmer could implement ODF from the documentation. However, to implement OOXML would require both licensing to take care of any patent issues and access to internal Microsoft formats.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
OOXML was designed by microsoft to be directly compatible with binary document formats. (.doc). This saved microsoft months and months of coding and testing.
In general, OOXML as xml based format is pretty much useless. Many tags are one letter sized and totally unintuitive. Sure, it does it's job well, but you will need a proper editor for that.
Seriously, consider troff as a case example, a program which Brian Kernighan once called "50000 lines of uncommented unreadable C code written by the late Joe Osana" (I've tried to remember where I first read that, but haven't found it again and it's true enough as a reading of the source reveals).
troff wasn't exactly open source as we now define the term, but the markup language specification was fully documented. As a result, it was reimplemented in a variety of forms including the GPLed groff and it is still possible to make hardcopy of troff documents written decades ago.
Similarly, the TiVoized TeX (you are not allowed to make willy-nilly changes and redistribute them, but it's still open source), will also live forever.
Even more so than open source, an open specification is something that can never ever be taken away from you and it will live in the form of working code that implements it for as long as it is useful.
Contrast this with the OOXML "standard" which includes XML tags such as format this paragraph like Microsoft Word-95 (without explanation as to what that means) or use word spacing like Microsoft Word-97 for the Apple Macintosh (also without explanation as to what that means), etc.
Can anyone name a single proprietary counterexample that has lived at least as long as troff (over 30 years)? Open standards work and we have the track record to prove it.
If you are still confused
Normally I use OpenOffice.org Writer to edit documents. But I decided to try KWord from KOffice, since it is much faster.
But KWord can't export to PDF (it can use KDE's "print to PDF" option, but my printing is kind of broken when I'm not at home). So I saved in OpenDocument format, and imported into Writer. No love - the formatting is totally broken! I tried to load into AbiWord, but it doesn't understand OpenDocument format at all.
In the end, I saved it as Microsoft Word document - which all 3 programs load and save more-or-less accurately.
An incomplete unratified standard yes, but one that is being worked on by multiple parties to ensure it meets the needs of all of those parties. Anyone is free to join and express their needs too.
The difference is that OOXML has a quickly hacked together specification for formulae which is flawed in many ways, which only has input from and only satisfied the requirements of one organisation. A ratified flawed standard is a bad thing, because it will remain in that flawed state, that why the ODF people are trying to get the formula format correct.
If the ODF spreadsheet specification doesn't suit your needs, why dont you read the spec thoroughly and suggest changes?
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Um, IBM just announced that they were going to start contributing to OpenOffice, and apparently are putting out their own ODF-compatible office suite based on OpenOffice. The industry is very much interested in ODF, because it represents for their development teams a fully accessible standard, and means the chance of not being beholden to Microsoft.
If ODF is adopted in a large way, then Microsoft would likely adopt it, then either break it (as they did with Kerberos) or put in lots of vendor-specific extensions to assure that only Microsoft products could deal with it (in short turn ODF in the new DOC). The open question is what would those organizations that are demanding an open standard do. I guess it depends on how savvey they are, on whether Microsoft can continue to throw its weight around, etc. But the fact is that ODF, though still maturing, represents the single biggest threat to Microsoft's business model in a decade, and they are putting a substantial amount of political effort into getting their own unworkable standard in place.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
To whit, any standard's approval should be conditional on an existence proof. Require a clean-room reference implementation that works. Let them compete in the marketplace on cost/performance, not correctness. The world is sick of disfunctional software.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
Funny, I always thought real men did it in straight TeX. (LaTeX being a set of macro packages layered on top of TeX to simplify document creation, etc. As I recall, Leslie Lamport invented LaTeX as a way of leveraging TeX to effectively replace Scribe. If you don't remember Scribe, it was a non-free document formatting system which used to be very popular at many universities.)
In fairness, LaTeX is a lot more usable by mere mortals. Personally, I always found TeX to be a little less restrictive when it came to fancy formatting that didn't fit neatly into one of LaTeX's categories. Pity that TeX isn't XML, or it'd be a perfect portable document format that would be acceptable to nearly everyone. As it is, I'm sure a TeX to ODF converter (or vice versa) would be trivial to write.
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