OpenDocument Foundation To Drop ODF

poet sends us to Computerworld for a story on the intention of the OpenDocument Foundation to drop support for Open Document Format, OASIS and ISO standards not withstanding, in favor of the Compound Documents Format being promoted by the W3C. The foundation's director of business affairs, Sam Hiser, dropped this bomb in a blog posting a couple of weeks ago. Hiser believes CDF has a better shot at compatibility with Microsoft's OOXML, and says that the foundation has been disappointed with the direction of ODF over the last year.

Comments

questions

[stoolpigeon]

The first place I saw this was LinuxToday which linked to this cnet article on the matter and I've done some digging since and I've got a few questions. Maybe someone here will know.

Is there a difference between Compound Document Formats and the Compound Document Framework. Are the formats implementations of the framework and if so are they supporting a chosen format or the entire framework?

Do any existing office suites support this framework/format?

Re:questions

[cHiphead]

Its blatantly obvious that Sam Hiser, proponent of the blog post that sparked this frenzy, doesn't know jack shit about the real specs of ODF, read the comments on the blog I linked, they more than make the point (aside from the initial long-winded comment attempting to discredit anyone with enough common sense to disagree with Hiser, its a nice try but anyone with a hint of mental forethought and reasoning ability, can see right through the propaganda). Twenty minutes of actual research would've saved Hiser and the ODFoundation a lot of grief.

Additionally, if this isn't some backroom Microsoft inspired posturing, I'd be VERY surprised. The very essence of "CDF" in the way Hiser frames his argument is compatibility with MS OOXML. Who gives a rat's ass about specific compatibility within the framework of a particular document directly with another type of document, thats not the point of the whole exercise the odf format is attempting. The ODF is OPEN for any application to implement 100%, that allows for clearer communication between applications, and as a result, real living people.

Cheers.

Re:questions

[Planesdragon]

The ODF is OPEN for any application to implement 100%, that allows for clearer communication between applications, and as a result, real living people. Funny, that's the exact same logic used by proponents of Esperanto.

ODF won't be worth anymore than the proprietary format OOo used before it, if there isn't enough added-value that it's worth it for common people to spend the resources to convert. Right now, there isn't -- not until either Microsoft signs on, or an ODF compatible software package is able to reach the level of expert-usability that Office has.

(Tonight's list of what an ODF suite needs to do before it can dethrone MS Office? PDA/smartphone capability, and direct script control of the UI.)

Re:questions

[alx5000]

Well, of course, since Esperanto is just as easily learned by people as ODF can be taught to computers...

Universally spreading Esperanto requires an effort from a lot of governments around the world to promote it and teach it; universally implementing ODF requires some programmers, some coffee, and a couple of months, to code a filter that can be then reused in future versions or other applications.

Don't confuse intent with possibility of realization.

Re:questions

[Antique Geekmeister]

While that bit of logic is similar, Esperanto never had any country that actually used it. ODF does, in the OpenOffice and StarOffice suites of software. Thus, it never had a base of native users to support or to eveolve it.

Next strawman?

Re:questions

[Jartan]

ODF won't be worth anymore than the proprietary format OOo used before it, if there isn't enough added-value that it's worth it for common people to spend the resources to convert.

Even if only a small minority uses it an open format is always more useful to users who care. Sure its a big problem but nothing is worth saving your data in some format who's readability is controlled by a separate entity.

Re:questions

[mrsmiggs]

The software companies that support ODF might have set out to dethrone Microsoft, however the goal of a standard and the awarding body is not to dethrone Microsft but to have the format widely used. This would force Microsoft to have include compatibility in their programs.

What the OpenDocument Foundation should be promoting is compatibility of programs like Open Office with OOXML and also Microsoft Office with ODF. They need to prompt the ironing out of issues with OOXML so it can become a well defined standard, introducing a 3rd standard into the mix doesn't sound very constructive to me. It'll just cause far more work for the developers of applications, who at the end of the day provide the ability to convert between doc, docx, odf, pdf, wpf or whatever else you've got stashed away.

Re:questions

[Spudtrooper]

William Fucking Shatner.

Re:questions

[mysticgoat]

ODF won't be worth anymore than the proprietary format OOo used before it, if there isn't enough added-value that it's worth it for common people to spend the resources to convert.

Well, that's pure bullshit.

The primary value of ODF is that it reduces archival, retrieval, and distribution costs of our largest institutions. You know, the really big and long-lived ones, like nations, states, businesses that have celebrated their centennial year, and so on. We will start to see the benefits in about 10 years, in improved information services, and therefore lower taxes and cost of goods than would otherwise be the case.

The direct costs to implement this are lower than any alternative. There are only two other strategies, and one variant of the ODF strategy, so let's do an exhaustive listing:

1. Maintain the archives in their existing formats and keep software on hand, and hardware to run it, that can work with each format as needed. If you've never had the pleasure of working in a mixed environment of WordPerfect, WordStar, Word, Lotus, and Quattro files, then don't pretend you could imagine the costs of this approach. Talk to somebody with relevant experience. We've not all retired yet.
2. Update every document in the archive to the latest and greatest format whenever the current market leader declares that its time for the world to upgrade to its latest product. Uh, hello??? The idea is to contain costs and improve services, not keep a company that's lost its way rolling in profits???
3. (the ODF variant) Rather than adopt ODF (which has been in development for a few years, has a pretty good track record, and is extensible), let's all go with a format whose documentation is an order of magnitude more complicated, lacks critical detail, and will require everyone who uses the only software that will be sure to run it to pay an annual licensing fee?
4. For completeness, here's the ODF approach one more time: Adopt ODF. Use existing FOSS to convert documents to ODF for archival purposes. If the documents don't convert properly, tell the author to rewrite them in good form, without the stupid bells and whistles. Use existing FOSS and slack time to convert old archived material to ODF for long term storage.

The indirect costs of implementation are dependent on how effective Microsoft can be with its campaign of FUD, bribery, and astroturfing. They do not seem to be as good at this as they used to be— their notoriety now precedes them— but they are still a force to be reckoned with.

Hey, you damn astroturfers, get your crap out of our meadow!

Re:questions

[Goodgerster]

While that bit of logic is similar, Esperanto never had any country that actually used it. ODF does, in the OpenOffice and StarOffice suites of software. Thus, it never had a base of native users to support or to eveolve it.

Next strawman?

Actually, Esperanto was designed as a secondary international language for use on top of the local language. So I would talk to my mother in English and my French telecorrespondent in Esperanto, while he might talk to his brother in French and watch anime in Japanese with Esperanto subtitling. It was certainly never intended to replace those languages and the identity they brought to their users, though I think this would have been nice in many ways considering the overcomplication and illogicality of natural languages.

The reason it didn't fully catch on was laziness and English speakers' arrogance (continuing to this day) in assuming that their language is the one that the rest of the world must learn, despite its obvious technical deficiencies and difficult-to-learn nature. ODF is not catching on as fast as it should because, again, of laziness and Microsoft's arrogance in assuming that their format is the one that the rest of the world must use despite its glaring technical deficiencies and difficult-to-implement nature.

Re:questions

[Speaker-to-Cats]

Excuse me but why should I care about compatibility with MS OOXML?

I'm a writer who's used StarOffice 5.2 and its .sdw format for like 6 years after having to leave my Amiga and FinalWriter.
I've been slow to transition to OpenOffice and .ODT, and haven't made the leap with my novels, But I've been laying out my church's newsletter with OpenOffice and made it clear any submissions that won't open in OO will be returned.

I say screw worrying about compatibility with MS!

Re:questions

[Nazlfrag]

Oh. I, see. That's why, why he talks... talks like that. It's just that, there's quite, a few pauses, in Esperanto. You don't, you know, hear it, well not much, thanks to the lack... lack of, native speakers.

Re:questions

[SEE]

or an ODF compatible software package is able to reach the level of expert-usability that Office has. No problem. I'm pretty sure Microsoft Office has 100% of the level of expert-usability that Microsoft Office has, and Microsoft Office is ODF compatible by just adding the free ODF plug-in.

Re:questions

[Antique Geekmeister]

Excuse me, sir or madam. But that "English speaker's arrogance" has existed in every empire since the dawn of time. Mandarin Chines in Asia, Portuguese, French, Arabic in the current Muslim states, Latin for the Roman Empire and the later Christian states, even German and French for the werten scienes have all had their own speakers insist on using the "master language" of their literature, commerce, religion, and engineering.

Such "arrogance" is hardly unique, and given its small userbase, Esperanto stands little to no chance of gaining acceptance over *any* of those languages.

Re:questions

[Lotunggim Ginsawat]

For completeness, here's the ODF approach one more time: Adopt ODF. Use existing FOSS to convert documents to ODF for archival purposes. If the documents don't convert properly, tell the author to rewrite them in good form, without the stupid bells and whistles. Use existing FOSS and slack time to convert old archived material to ODF for long term storage. 2 issues with the above:-
Where is this existing FOSS apps/converter that can convert other documents format to ODF? Open Office?

And why must authors waste their time rewriting documents (that can be years old) properly so that the afore-mentioned FOSS program/converter can convert them? Speadsheets (like Quattro and Excel) are the culprit here. So are complex Word documents. Bells and whistles, contrary to what you may think, is important. There is no way authors will do away with their VB scripts and/or nested bullets/comments/annotations etc.

Re:questions

[JAlexoi]

You forgot to mention the 5th option.
5. Adopt PDF/A.

Re:questions

[Ginger Unicorn]

And why must authors waste their time rewriting documents (that can be years old) properly so that the afore-mentioned FOSS program/converter can convert them?

because depending on the volume of documents, it's probably better to do that, than adopt one of the other alternatives listed in the GP. an alternative to rewriting the documents, is to write open, documented extensions to ODF to accommodate the "bells and whistles", and improve the FOSS to do the conversion. Although you'd have to pay someone with the expertise to do it, it may work out cheaper than rewriting thousands of VBA macros. and once it's done once, its done forever, for everyone.

Alternatively you could just wait till some other FOSS developer does it anyway. It's never black and white and the cost of moving vs. savings due to liberation from legacy software is something specific to each situation. So your question "why should they waste their time" contains the unstated assumption that it is a waste of time for them to do it. In some cases it isn't.

Re:questions

[Anonymous Coward]

The #1 reason esperanto didn't catch on is because it's hardly neutral, it's a constructed romance language, and it has accented characters and genders. No language with accented characters and genders can catch on in the modern world.

Re:questions

[Lotunggim Ginsawat]

The problems with that are it is not feasible for high-volume of documents to be rewritten, especially those written by extinct software and most importantly, spreadsheets. And if you can find the author of the spreadsheets to rewrite them again (usually, auditors/accountants who wrote them are hired on contractual basis).

I think ODF is already set in stone after being approved by ISO. Why would extensions to that is needed just to support bells and whistles in the myriads of text document/spreadsheet/graphic/formula/presentation formats out there? Those extensions must be ISO-approved too or else using ODF is pointless.

The best way to do this is to have a silver-bullet converter than can seamlessly convert all formats (Microsoft or non-Microsoft) to ODF, 100% fidelity, no loss of formatting and features. This is even more important especially for spreadsheets. Spreadsheets conversion must be reliable 100% of the time, with no margin of error.

Re:questions

[malevolentjelly]

If the documents don't convert properly, tell the author to rewrite them in good form, without the stupid bells and whistles. This is not acceptable. Any software engineer should be ashamed of themselves for suggesting that human writers now need to participate in an otherwise automated process- and a format conversion, nonetheless. If you want conversion to be taken seriously, it better be seamless.

If this is an issue that is only relevant to IT, then IT should deal with it in full.

Re:questions

[mrchaotica]

They need to prompt the ironing out of issues with OOXML so it can become a well defined standard, introducing a 3rd standard into the mix doesn't sound very constructive to me.

I hate to break it to you, but introducing a second [faux] standard into the mix, i.e., OOXML, makes no sense either!

ODF already exists and is an ISO standard. Any other competing document formats, including OOXML, CDF, Apple's proprietary iWork formats, etc. have no reason to exist except for the selfish benefit of the companies that might promote them. Period.

Re:questions

[jav1231]

In a perfect world, I'd agree. And in this case, it should be the opposite. The world needs to adopt a standard and MS should be forced to have compatibility to it in order to get public contracts. Let them have all the proprietary formats they want in the private sector but for public transactions it should be required that standards be open. That way if MS decides to strong-arm the government involved or even EOL a format that government is not hamstrung to a corporate entity for information retrieval. This is a no-brainer here, Folks. Like kicking puppies: something inside you tells you it's just wrong!

Re:questions

[orcrist]

The reason it didn't fully catch on was laziness and English speakers' arrogance (continuing to this day) in assuming that their language is the one that the rest of the world must learn, despite its obvious technical deficiencies and difficult-to-learn nature.

Wrong wrong wrong. The reason it didn't catch on is because it's not a native language of a group whom anyone really wants to talk to -- that's two strikes against it. Any Linguist who has a clue knows this. For a language to become a lingua
franca it has to have a base of native speakers who have economic, political, cultural, and/or military influence. It has nothing to do with some special characteristic of English speakers.

Furthermore, the idea that Esperanto is somehow universal in nature is just arrogant Indo-European-centric thinking itself. Tell a Hungarian, or an Eskimo (e.g. Yupik) speaker that Esperanto is 'easier' to learn and they'll laugh their asses off at you. Anyone who claims Esperanto is somehow 'neutral' or incorporates the best of all worlds has never had any meaningful exposure to a non-Indo-European language; that's 95% of the languages of the world, in case you're wondering. Just for reference: Farsi (Iranian), Russian, Spanish, English are all first-cousins linguistically speaking (I bet you think they're *really* different from each-other, right?) Esperanto is their gene-manipulated bastard child.

To any speaker of a truly foreign language like Yupik there is no practical difference between learning any of those languages -- oh, except if she learns English she gets access to the whole world of business, science and international politics, as well as the best chance of asking for directions when traveling; if she learns Esperanto she can talk to a bunch of kooks, assuming she can find one of them.

But I'm sure you and many other amateur Linguists on Slashdot are going to disregard this completely and stick to your preconceived notions about natural languages with completely inappropriate comparisons to designed languages which is eerily similar to ID proponents when talking to biologists. I'm not sure why I even bother to respond to these kinds of posts. *sigh*

Re:questions

[GreyPoopon]

The reason it didn't fully catch on was laziness and English speakers' arrogance (continuing to this day)

Just for the record, the reason many English speakers (particularly in the US) don't learn other languages has absolutely nothing to do with arrogance. The real causes of the problem are ignorance, opportunity and priority. Here in the US, almost any business transaction a person is interested in, and almost every opportunity for entertainment is conducted in English. There is no "in your face" need to learn another language, and therefore the vast majority of the population is simply ignorant of the real world benefits to be gained from doing so. Furthermore, since much of the population speaks only English, there are limited opportunities to practice other languages. Almost every student has to take a foreign language in high school, but do not continue trying to learn whatever language they choose because of the limited opportunity for practice. And finally, people here are extremely busy all the time. For most adults, learning another language gets prioritized below many other things.

For what it's worth, the increase ingin the Hispanic population here in the US is having an impact. More people who speak English natively are taking an interest in learning Spanish? Why? Because suddenly there is an obvious business benefit (catering to the immigrants who are not yet comfortable speaking English), and there's a much larger pool of people to practice speaking with.

Re:questions

[biquet]

Esperanto does not have genders, at least not in the linguistic sense of noun classes. It does have infixes that indicate the biological gender of the referent--that is, if you want to, you can specify "female doctor" or "male doctor". But it's not like French, where "table" is feminine for no discernable reason.

Re:questions

[SEE]

Oh, I should have added -- Microsoft also has sponsored ODF plug-ins, which is useful if you're using Office 2007, which Sun doesn't yet support.

So if you have Office 2000, XP, 2003, or 2007, you're minutes away from having an ODF-compatible office suite with 100% of the features of Microsoft Office.

Re:questions

[coolGuyZak]

Hey, you damn astroturfers, get your crap out of our meadow!

Crap is good for meadows. It replenishes nitrogen compounds & trace elements, which attracts and proliferates a healthy variety of flora.

Nope

[Microlith]

Nothing has a chance at compatibility with OOXML except the bloated crap churned out by Word and its ilk.

Driving to achieve closeness or compatibility with Microsoft formats, except as something kept at arms length, is essentially suicide.

Re:Nope

[DerekLyons]

Driving to achieve closeness or compatibility with Microsoft formats, except as something kept at arms length, is essentially suicide.

On the other hand, completely ignoring Microsoft formats isn't essentially suicide, it is suicide. Microsoft exists, and dominates the office application market, pretending it doesn't exist and that you can 'do your own thing' without taking it into account is utterly stupid.

Re:Nope

[ShieldW0lf]

That's a possibility. It's another possibility that those companies who are chained to MS fucked up formats are going to bear ever increasing costs trying to deal with vast amounts of complexity that do not generate any return, but are obligatory for legal reasons, while their competitors who are not burdened with this defeat them in the marketplace by virtue of their not having this lead weight around their neck.

I'm inclined to think it's the latter, personally. It just takes a while.

Re:Nope

[martin-boundary]

That's typical short term commercial thinking, which is entirely inappropriate for open source. Remember, open source is about creating the best tool for the job, not squeezing users for cash. If it takes a few years longer to get there, so be it.

Open source can easily afford to take the long view in technical matters, because the bottleneck are the programmers and other volunteers. So if you want open source to thrive, make it interesting and simple for programmers to add a little bit here, a little bit there, and promote technical excellence, not compatibility to today's garbage.

Your concept of market suicide makes no sense for open source. If however some people still want to chase a moving commercial target for "compatibility", they can just put up some money and pay somebody instead of expecting it for free. They'd better do it fast, though, because in two years it will all be out of date again.

Re:Nope

[porl]

compatibility with ooxml is an *application* problem, not a document format issue. ogg, flac and aac audio formats aren't 'compatible' with mp3s, but what is the point? they serve the same purpose but they are *different formats*. mp3 might be the most popular at the moment, but that doesn't mean every format must be as close to it in implementation as possible.

porl

Re:Nope

[dhasenan]

Let me get this straight: you think that a document format should be compatible with MS formats? Isn't this an application-level thing? What groundbreakingly useful features can be expressed in OOXML and not ODF?

Re:Nope

[webmaster404]

But 2007 doesn't dominate the office market, no one saves in .docx hardly except for MS loyalists, most people even still have '97 or 2003 on their machines, the steep learning curve for 2007 is putting people off as is OOo as it retains the same look and can do most editing just fine for 90% of people.

Re:Nope

[nine-times]

On the other hand, completely ignoring Microsoft formats isn't essentially suicide, it is suicide.

That's why OpenOffice (and many other applications) have the ability to read and write Microsoft Office files (.doc, .xls, .ppt). But trying to make those your standard document formats for your office suite would be completely retarded, since they're not open standards and you don't know the specs. And Microsoft can change the specs and not tell you.

Re:Nope

[Hooya]

> On the other hand, completely ignoring Microsoft formats isn't essentially suicide, it is suicide. Microsoft exists, and dominates the office application market, pretending it doesn't exist and that you can 'do your own thing' without taking it into account is utterly stupid.

Quick, somebody tell Linus and RMS that MS dominates the OS market as well and they really shouldn't try to roll their own.

That aside, I do understand where you're coming from. We do *lots* of document generation. I mean 100,000+ in a given week. We use XML/XSLT to target PDF, ODF, OOXML and what have you. OOXML is a *major* pain compared to ODF. While we did implement the necessary software to support OOXML due to market situation, I do hope that ODF displaces OOXML. If ODF attains more 'compatibility' with OOXML, what's the point? We have OOXML now. We don't need ODF to become OOXML. We need it to replace it. If ODF becomes the defacto standard by *becoming* OOXML, that'll be a sad day for us.

Re:Nope

[Reaperducer]

(x.x) teh

You couldn't go with (^.^) ? You had to kill the ASCII bunny?

Re:Nope

[G Fab]

Maybe this is true eventually. Probably not, as there is no indication that anything will be easier to use than office, but who knows?

Thing is, Office is the cheaper and faster option. It costs too much to go to microsoft free solutions, because the truly expensive stuff are employees (who generally can be expected to know Word and Excel automagically) and training time.

I sure as hell would love for you to be right, and I think maybe Google or others will make online documents in a way that makes Word a dinosaur.

So many companies would love to provide their employees with mere html portals locked to the document program, and with no way to print or save data (unless you are screened well). Enter data, go home. I know it sounds dreadful, but it's probably the future.

Re:Nope

[suckmysav]

My GF sent me an email the other day with an attached word document with the tag that it was "amazing".

I tried to open it in OO on linux and got a blank screen.

  So I boot to Windows and open it in Word

Seems that it is simply a Flash animation embedded in a Word document, which gives rise to two questions;

1) Why the hell would somebody embed a flash animation in a fricking word document?

2) Why in the name of all that is holy is Word even capable of rendering Flash?

It is no fricking wonder that the MS Windows+Office platform is such a successful malware attractant when all their apps are capable of doing completely inapproriate things with inappropiate data.

It beggars belief.

Re:Nope

[MeNeXT]

The last time I "NEEDED" a Microsoft format was...never. The suicide that you describe is self imposed. Step back a second and ask yourself if it would make a difference?

Even Microsoft knows this, that's why they also are changing formats. With the next release of Word the "WORD" format will be broken for most people. If you invested in .doc and complain that such and such application does not render it right then you invested in the wrong technology and you are about to find out fairly quick. If you are like most companies and invested in a word processor called Word and save in .doc, then it does not matter much.

For over 10 years I've been using various word processors and have yet to find this suicide issue. Stop limiting yourself there is more to computers than Microsoft.

Re:Nope

[peragrin]

>>Thing is, Office is the cheaper and faster option. It costs too much to go to microsoft free solutions, because the truly expensive stuff are employees (who generally can be expected to know Word and Excel automagically) and training time.

Until MSFT completely changes the file format and GUI for MSFT OFFice ala MSFT 2007. Then all new training is required because those who need training memorize locations instead of actions. Indeed the loudest complaints about the new interface is from people who don't understand the differences. while I haven't used it yet and most likely won't(I'm sorry but $1000 for an OS and office suite? I don't think so), I do think it is a step in the right direction.

the problem is people are taught Word, and Excel. They aren't taught word processing or spreadsheets. Every time MSFT releases the OS the layout is slightly different. new training is required for those were taught to memorize the interface.

Re:Nope

[Gogo0]

at work i frequently get emails with no body, just a powerpoint attachment containing (in wordart) a simple message (august birthdays party at noon tomorrow!).
people around the facility learned a while ago that i dont open powerpoints from email -save for work-related ones (which iv never come across).
if its not important enough information to treat with a little respect ("cheryl has cancer and we're taking donations!" in wordart doesnt come across as serious as it should) then i dont think its important enough to waste my time looking at.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

>If it takes a few years longer to get there, so be it.

Here's the thing: I don't have a few years, I need to deploy shit NOW!

>Remember, open source is about creating the best tool for the job, not squeezing users for cash.

When you've decided what the best tool is and created a document conversion utility from ooxml and binary formats come back and talk to me. Untill then I'm going to spend thousands and thousands, and yes even more thousands on Office licenses running on win32.

You can have my money, honest, I'll spend it, if it's "good enough" for the price.

Thanks,

Your IT Director

Re:Nope

[G Fab]

Yeah, totally totally true. Office 2007 makes no sense at all as a strategic move. It is totally different from what people are already able to use, even if it is somehow better (just seems overly simplified to me).

I wonder what the hell has been going on with Vista and Office 2007. Not that MS has ever been brilliant about these things, just the monopoly.

There is a bit of a market for openoffice to fill if they can be seen as the Office 2003 successor to Office 2003. But I still think the whole model is old and we will move to web based software for basic office tasks.

Re:Nope

[marcello_dl]

Microsoft dominance is irrelevant to the cpu that decodes a document. .doc and .xls dominance is relevant but mostly cracked in openoffice.
So all is left is some obscured xml.
Wrong premise. Suicide is warming up the M$ snake you found freezing out the door.

Re:Nope

[Wylfing]

I blockquoth:

Why the hell would somebody embed a flash animation in a fricking word document?

Well, I don't know if I have a logical answer for you, but I will add this: it's amazingly common for people to do things like paste a bunch of graphics into a Word file and send you the Word file, rather than just sending the graphics themselves. I see people doing this with PowerPoint as well -- their first instinct is to paste data into PowerPoint deck and send you that.

The only thing I can think of is that they think they're helping you by giving you a way to see the graphics (or see the SWF, or whatever), under the assumption that everyone has Word but not everyone has a stand-alone program that can display TIFF files. I find it annoying.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Because you're a dumbass and don't know that word isn't rendering flash? It's an embedded object. And if OO was fully .doc compliant, it would have been able to embed the flash object without a problem. Hell, it should have been able to parse the info anyways as part of it's rendering and "seen" the flash object.

Maybe OO should get in gear?

Re:Nope

[Codifex Maximus]

Correct me if I'm wrong but... isn't the very creation of ODF an exercise in taking .doc into account?

It all goes back to Structured Storage and it's use in MS Office document formats. Structured Storage is MS proprietary filesystem within a file technology. It has it's pros and cons. As a pro, it allows MS Office formats to embed nearly any kind of file type into the document. As a con, it has the same fragmentation and structure problems as a filesystem.

To be truly compatible with Structured Storage, you'd have to implement your own free version of Structured Storage. And, as we all know, as soon as you become compatible with a MS format it will change. Moving target and all that.

Then there's OLE or Object Linking and Embedding that's worked into the mix. Another proprietary technology to try to implement. This is how files or pointers get into the Structured Storage file.

i.e. the WHOLE PROBLEM(tm) is proprietary formats and ODF seemed to be a non-proprietary solution.

Personally, I'm sick of the whole thing but realize the tremendous importance of having free and open standards. I hope that cooler and saner heads prevail.

Re:Nope

[grumbel]

1) For the same reason that some people read their mail with Emacs. For a lot of people Word is their 'workspace', it is where they get their work done, which is why they continue it even non-text-processor uses (i.e. images, email, etc.). Sure, this doesn't lead to very portable results and can cause a lot of havoc down the line, but from an interface point of view it makes perfect sense. People simply don't think in terms of application boundaries and limits, so they easily end up with an inappropriate application for the job. It simply makes no sense to have one application for entering 'email text' and another for 'paper text', experienced users simply learned that an email is something different then a word document, for an inexperienced user on the other side both are virtually the same, since both display text on the screen, they might however wonder why the controls differ so much.

This is the reason why new interfaces approaches like Archy try to go away from having seperate applications and instead just having commands that work everywhere. Its really not much different then Emacs, which also happens to be at times more of a Lisp OS then a text editor.

2) Because Windows has a working Copy&Paste functionality that doesn't care so much about the format? Sure, the implementation might suck and have very negative consequences, but the idea of being able to just copy content to wherever you like to is great.

Re:Nope

[gravij]

Sure it is stupid but being able to embed absolutely anything in a Word document is an easy way to get past email filters that strip any attachments except MS Office files.

Not that I would ever be trying to do that... *looks about for corporate overlord*

Re:Nope

[Vexorian]

On the other hand, completely ignoring Microsoft formats isn't essentially suicide, it is suicide. Microsoft exists, and dominates the office application market, pretending it doesn't exist and that you can 'do your own thing' without taking it into account is utterly stupid.

I don't really see your point it sounds like "Can't beat MS" although that may be true, that's not a good argument for supporting a format for alleged (and unproved) 'better' support for OOXML that's a very good argument to stick with OOXML and forget about other formats.

Under your logic it simply does not make to make any format at all, sure you could try to add some kind of support to open xml but that's quite lame, why would a document format have to support a different document is something I fail to understand, and I cannot actually think on how you would actually do it.

The only thing a format that is compatible with OOXML gonna archieve is to let OOXML become the actual standard and your format would just be a way to say "me too" rather than a format on itself.

Re:Nope

[LingNoi]

Dear Mr IT Director you're fired for not choosing the ISO standard which happens to be ODF.

Re:Nope

[martin-boundary]

I don't have a few years, I need to deploy shit NOW!

Ah yes, the fateful last words of every startup during the dotcom boom.

You can have my money

Keep it, just show me your code.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

What groundbreakingly useful features can be expressed in OOXML and not ODF? fail and AIDS

Re:Nope

[Kjella]

1) Because it's what they have and what they know. For example, in dealing with an IT department recently where we needed to make screenshots attachments (they were used to Notes where they pasted in, now we needed files) the solution was to have them past it into Word, save and send. Would an image editor and an image format be more appropriate? Yes. If an IT department won't do it, will regular people? No.

2) Because Microsoft has figured out there's more money in trying to do what people want, rather than trying to tell people what to do. Using excel as a pseudo-database? Using excel to do simple lists? Ok, we'll try to accomodate you. It's the complete opposite of the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well, it's the philosophy that a user shouldn't need to use more tools than necessary and applications thus should be jack of all trades, and only if it can't be shoehorned in should the user have to use a different application.

Re:Nope

[TheNetAvenger]

Yeah, totally totally true. Office 2007 makes no sense at all as a strategic move. It is totally different from what people are already able to use, even if it is somehow better (just seems overly simplified to me).

I wonder what the hell has been going on with Vista and Office 2007. Not that MS has ever been brilliant about these things, just the monopoly.


Microsoft is in the process of pulling off a in your face, quiet revolution.

A key element of both Vista and Office 2007 is the paradigm of moving the GUI away from sins of the past.

The first and biggest problem with old UI concepts was Menus. They were a fast solution to a big problem. Menus are by nature not a 'graphic' UI element, even though they are synonymous with GUIs today.

If you are using Menus, you are in effect having to memorize a list of commands, and their location. Memorizing lists of words is one of the things GUIs were supposed to remove, and failed.

(Look at the Help Search in Leopard, it is specifically designed to search for Menu Items in applications because even Apple understands Menus are still not the ideal GUI solution.)

Vista and Office 2007 (more noticeable on Office 2007) virtually removed all menus, with the exception of single list contextual menus, and they will be replaced at some point as well.

Microsoft is 'slowly' using their UI research to bring new GUI concepts that are long overdue to the Graphic environment.

What the non-Microsoft world seems to overlook is how far they will take this, and how MS could leapfrog both Apple and the current OSS world if people stop paying attention or discount what Microsoft is doing. This is how it is a 'quiet' revolution, as most people don't get the 'bigger picture' of what Microsoft is slowly moving towards.

If you take Office 2007, Vista, and especially the framework constructs of WPF/Silverlight, notice where they are heading, as the WPF aspects are designed specifically for implementing new UI concepts in new ways. Microsoft plans on bringing the results of their GUI research this to their customers now that they have the frameworks/platform to do it.

So the next time you read an article by a 'tech' person giving Office 2007 or Vista bad marks for something like 'removing' UI Menus, realize the 'tech' person doesn't get it and MS is pulling one over on them even.

Re:Nope

[DraconPern]

Every time MSFT releases the OS the layout is slightly different. new training is required for those were taught to memorize the interface.

Funny, I have the same problem with GNU/Linux, Ubuntu, Red Hat, KDE, Gnome, Gentoo, etc.

Re:Nope

[trifish]

Quick, somebody tell Linus and RMS that MS dominates the OS market

Actually, Linux dominates the small business server OS market. Windows dominates the desktop OS market.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems that it is simply a Flash animation embedded in a Word document, which gives rise to two questions;

1) Why the hell would somebody embed a flash animation in a fricking word document?

Ask your GF ... duh!

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

> 1) Why the hell would somebody embed a flash animation in a fricking word document?

Some firewalls/email servers may be set to reject flash animations / movies if sent in its original form.
So, some people thought embedding flash in a word file will get their mail through.
They may even embed a word file (with a flash animation embedded inside) inside another word file, and the
list goes on and on!

Re:Nope

[jschrod]

1) Because it's what they have and what they know. For example, in dealing with an IT department recently where we needed to make screenshots attachments (they were used to Notes where they pasted in, now we needed files) the solution was to have them past it into Word, save and send. Would an image editor and an image format be more appropriate? Yes. If an IT department won't do it, will regular people? No.

Actually, I don't know if an image editor would really be more appropriate. I save screenshots in Powerpoint files all the time, e.g., to document a storyboard. (This is in corporate environment. Privately, I don't use Windows.)

1) It's frickin' easy: One just does Shift-Print and Ctrl-C, that's all.

2) I don't have an image editor installed on my Windows; and if I had it, I wouldn't know what image format my recipients could read. But I know that they have Powerpoint.

3) My recipients don't call me to ask what they shall do with that file. They know exactly how they handle Powerpoint.

4) It's very easy to add comments (either myself or by one of my colleagues/customers). E.g., a big arrow with "Do you really want this?" or "Please change here". And even if we have no comments at first, they will be added in 50% of my use cases.

5) It's a good way to store more than one screenshot in one file. I don't know if my recipients have ZIP installed, or similar. And if they have, it's easier for them to scroll through a Powerpoint file than reopen each file in a ZIP archive.

6) It's a good way to attach this file with more than one screenshot to a document. (As an embedded OLE component that is not expanded.) E.g., one customer of mine likes to have mini-user-guides for applications this way.

So, especially as an IT person, I don't handle screenshots as single files. (I don't like to embed them in Word, though. Word moves embedded images too often around; that messes up the easy-commenting feature.)

Re:Nope

[master_p]

You haven't played any games in Excel, have you? :-)

Re:Nope

[Hal_Porter]

You can save any MS Office document in OOXML and then save it later as a .doc and not lose your formatting?

I.e. because OOXML supports all the legacy features in the office formats you can roundtrip to it and back to something that people can still edit in Office 97. Which is installed on about 90% of the computers in the world.

Re:Nope

[Hal_Porter]

Whenever I've tried to open complex word documents (e.g. with columns, word art, footnotes, frames, equations etc) in OO the result has been a mess. OO is probably OK for most of the features in the format but it gets enough wrong to completely destroy things like user manuals which tend to have been written by someone who uses lots of the obscure stuff.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe this is your colleagues' way of not inviting you to any parties ;-)

Re:Nope

[Hal_Porter]

2) Why in the name of all that is holy is Word even capable of rendering Flash?

It is no fricking wonder that the MS Windows+Office platform is such a successful malware attractant when all their apps are capable of doing completely inapproriate things with inappropiate data.

It beggars belief. Actually Word isn't capable of rendering flash. But flash is an ActiveX control and Word can host it. As to the reason why someone would do this, the free flash viewer doesn't open standalone swf files, just ones embedded in a web page or in this case a doc file. RTF files can do it too.

Re:Nope

[Hal_Porter]

OO can't do that. ActiveX controls are Windows executables. The only way OO could host arbitrary ones would be if it implemented all of the Win32 API.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

I presume you ditched your GF for this?

If so, what's her number? :)

Re:Nope

[Nosklo]

word document with the tag that it was "amazing".
Seems that it is simply a Flash animation embedded Simply?? It is AMAZING!!!

Re:Nope

[Zeinfeld]

That's a possibility. It's another possibility that those companies who are chained to MS fucked up formats [blather deleted

The problem here is that neither OOXML or ODF is what you would want a document standard to be. Both are essentially a schema dump on the internal memory representation used by existing programs.

Standardizing formats of that type does have value, just as having a standard for postscript or PDF has value. But the value is limited to creating content and add on applications for the programs they are based on. It is better than nothing.

The value of a standard of that type is no more than the amount of content produced in it. Sun started the ODF thing as a spoiler, which is a legit move, Microsoft has done the same, they did this on SSL when it was Netscape proprietary. But Microsoft also joined the SSL camp and killed their own PCT competitor as soon as Netscape gave change control to the IETF. Sun is continuing the pissing contest which does not serve anyone.

I would like to see a real open source office suite but only if it is better than Office. OpenOffice is not inovative or mould breaking. Its a conventional suite put together in a conventional way. It follows the same old concepts of separate programs poorly integrated, of a spreadsheet based on the three decades old VisiCalc model.

This fight is a distraction. Recognize both formats as legacy defacto standards and move on. This is actually a very common precursor in a standards process.

CDF provides an opportunity to do the job right. People should not be translating OOXML into ODF, there simply isn't the value there. It is much more likely that OOXML will be a live format in twenty years time than ODF.

We have a common standards based document language today - HTML. OK so I have a bias here but there is much more HTML than anything else. HTML is just a document format and it is somewhat presentation oriented but modern XHTML is changing those problems.

Rather than having a separate word processor and spreadsheet I would like a single tool that is a document editor, spreadsheet tool and scripting environment. Mathematica does this but it is fiendishly expensive and most people don't use the capabilities.

Building an open source Mathematica type environment would be a much more useful Open Source project than copying Office. The basic framework would only need to handle the basic editor and calculation engine, the community would quickly build out the analysis packages for stats and such.

Better yet we could build in type checking into the base so that when you specify a variable you can give it units, if you multiply 10 hr by $13 /hr you get $130 and so on.

I can see a program of that type sweeping Office asside but not a lukewarm clone whose only advantage is cost. Office Home and Student costs $100 or so at Costco for two machines and there is no eligibility check for registration.

Re:Nope

[afroborg]

Answers:
1) To get it thorough their work's email filter. A lot of workplaces block all attachments that are not considered to be work related - .doc files get through, .swf files don't. Often they use excel workbooks instead. I used to have to PDF everything to get it through my work's email filter. No .jpgs allowed, which made sending photos of faulty components to vendors a pain. It was easier to PDF them than ring up helpdesk every time and get them to release the email.

2) I guess it's an OLE thing - anything that supports the framework can render any content that is supported.

Re:Nope

[nine-times]

I suppose that's why it's a bad idea to store documents in the MS Word format.

Re:Nope

[Hal_Porter]

Like 90% of the computer users in the world I have loads of documents in Word format. Even if I stopped using it and converted them all, everyone I know still would and would continue to email them to me.

Re:Nope

[mrchaotica]

Probably not, as there is no indication that anything will be easier to use than [WordPerfect], but who knows?

See how stupid it sounds now?

Re:Nope

[jbengt]

"employees (who generally can be expected to know Word and Excel automagically)"

Employees are much more expensive than an office suite, true.
But employees who use Word and Excel on a daily basis cannot be expected to know Word and Excel, automagically or with training.

It amazes me that I have on several occasions seen college-educated engineers entering simple equations on their calculators only to type the result into a spreadsheet cell.

And I often encounter typists that input hard page breaks in order to get formatting looking OK, on a document that subsequently gets edited and sent out with half a blank page at the page break. Not to mention the avoidance of styles in favor of selecting text and formatting it individually, so that the next thing you type has the wrong (default) format again.

Re:Nope

[mrchaotica]

The first and biggest problem with old UI concepts was Menus. They were a fast solution to a big problem. Menus are by nature not a 'graphic' UI element, even though they are synonymous with GUIs today.

Wait, menus are a problem because they're not Gooey enough? Who the fuck decided that being Gooey was the be-all and end-all of UI design anyway?!

If you are using Menus, you are in effect having to memorize a list of commands, and their location. Memorizing lists of words is one of the things GUIs were supposed to remove, and failed.

No shit, Sherlock! And if you're using "Ribbons," you are in effect having to memmorize a list of icons representing commands, and their location. Memorizing lists of pictures is one of the things GUIs were supposed to encourage, but is fucking stupid, because then you have to memorize the mapping between pictures and concepts (even harder than between words and concepts, by the way, because it's hard to describe a verb by a picture) anyway! How is that an improvement?!

Re:Nope

[mmoroz]

And business is about making cash, it can`t afford long time view or whatever. This are basics and if it doesn`t make sense for "open source " than open source doesn`t make sense for market. So in short this is typical thinking of a "kid" which is entirely inappropriate for real life business.

Re:Nope

[Steve001]

Kjella wrote as part of a post:

2) Because Microsoft has figured out there's more money in trying to do what people want, rather than trying to tell people what to do. Using excel as a pseudo-database? Using excel to do simple lists? Ok, we'll try to accomodate you. It's the complete opposite of the Unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well, it's the philosophy that a user shouldn't need to use more tools than necessary and applications thus should be jack of all trades, and only if it can't be shoehorned in should the user have to use a different application.

Concerning using Excel as a database, I think the reason that people use Excel as a database is that it is much easier than using Access. My own experience with Access has been that it takes a while to set up even a simple database, and you need to know what you want ahead of time.

I've found creating a database with Access such a massive task that, for me, it was not worth the effort. With Excel (and StarOffice/OpenOffice.org Calc), I can create a usable database in a few seconds.

When it comes to which program to use, I've used the following guide:

• I know what I want ahead of time: Use Access
• I'm creating a long-term database: Use Access
• I don't know what I want ahead of time: Use Excel
• I need a usable database from a list of data quickly: Use Excel

Re:Nope

[starfishsystems]

Not to mention how anyone is supposed to communicate such use to someone else.

It's bad enough now, having to write instructions like "First select Edit -> Preferences -> Security -> Certificates -> Manage Certificates. In the resulting Certificate Manager popup, select Authorities. Now click Import..." and so on.

Anything that forces a graphical representation also forces us to converse in terms of graphical representations. And guess what, humans don't do that very well.

Re:Nope

[TheNetAvenger]

Anything that forces a graphical representation also forces us to converse in terms of graphical representations. And guess what, humans don't do that very well.


If done poorly this would be a major concern. However what you mis-estimate is how we store information. All words are image associations in the human brain, so pattern matching a ribbon bar is multitudes faster than menus, and why 'toolbars' were a welcome introduction to the GUI paradigm.

Besides, it isn't any hard to tell someone, hit Alt, Type H, Type A. I'm pretty sure that even if you stick with visuals, people will know what what images are when described, although it would not be neccesary if the GUI menu replacements are designed right like in Office 2007, where two to three keystrokes access every command in the software and even allow users to select complex choices like virtually infinite colors without having to use a mouse.

Mindsets that reject new directions in thinking, are why Menus have hung around so long, even if the new direction 'is' more efficient and easier to use. Just like watching a tech geek use a GUI and 'think' through what they are doing like it is CLI or a FileManager list instead of abandoning old thought patterns and NO LONGER thinking about 'list' constructs. This is how 90% of most techs and users still think, and this type of UI paradigm has been replaced on all consumer OSes for over 10 years.

Re:Nope

[starfishsystems]

All words are image associations in the human brain

Where on earth did you encounter this bit of nonsense? It's commonly held that words are constructed by metaphor but the root of the metaphor need only be experiential, not necessarily visual. If it were as you claim, then blind people would be unable to construct sentences.

it isn't any hard to tell someone, hit Alt, Type H, Type A

It's not hard, but it's semantically impoverished, and it depends on a fixed keybinding scheme.

Sorry, I couldn't follow the reasoning in your last paragraph.

Re:Nope

[TheNetAvenger]

In preparing to post a rather lengthy reply, I stopped myself after I looked ar you tagged website. I see you have no conceptual grasp of UI if you allow this kind of 'presentaion' to represent you and your software.

If it were as you claim, then blind people would be unable to construct sentences.

Should I have qualified my statement with 'seeing people' since blind people don't need or use the technics specific to a GUI? Kind of like auditory processing constructs would be lost on deaf people.

Go look up brain studies, even primates that are shown visual images 'reflect' the image pattern in activity in their brain. (i.e. the picture is recreated in electrical impulses in the same pattern)

Then go look up mirror neuron studies with regard to memory retention and subconsious response.

The whole 'blind people' couldn't construct sentenaces is about as far off track or idiotic of a response I have seen in a while.

Re:Nope

[ShieldW0lf]

I think you're way off base with your estimate of how people use their computers. They don't look at things at all after the first few times, they use motor reflexes and muscle memories.

Most computer users can type the keys of long held passwords without remembering what they are by allowing their fingers to do the work. Most can shut down the computer by doing a precisely measured flick of the mouse without looking at the destination. Even if their screen is turned off on them, most can get pretty close.

Good user interface design should be designed around these principles. Lots of labels and instruction for those who have never used it before, because they will be reading everything, and proper placement of GUI elements to allow easy muscle memorization.

The pictures or lack thereof really don't have anything to do with the quality of use, or learning how to efficiently use the interface once you understand it. If a ribbon is going to be easier to locate blind, time and time again, then it's an improvement. If it's going to be harder to locate blind, it's a step backwards.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you are using Menus, you are in effect having to memorize a list of commands, and their location. Memorizing lists of words is one of the things GUIs were supposed to remove, and failed."

          Yeah, sweet, so instead I can try to memorize what a bunch of nearly-identical looking icons mean. Microsoft is not facing it, some people just aren't good at telling these little icons apart, like me.. removing the option of using menus if I want is not a good thing.

Re:Nope

[TheNetAvenger]

Good user interface design should be designed around these principles. Lots of labels and instruction for those who have never used it before, because they will be reading everything, and proper placement of GUI elements to allow easy muscle memorization.


This was basically the foundation of my point regarding the UI direction MS is going. Less locate and use, to more just 'use'...

MS gave clues to this several years ago when they said we are nor longer looking at ways for users to 'find' information and features as a goal, but redesigning the UI so people just know where their stuff and the features are.

Menus are the hiccup to productivity via bad memorization and cascaded access to features, that are then additionally nested in dialog boxes.

Office 2007 shoves the user to a new approach, be productive and not have to 'hunt' for features, even if they are complex once you have used the software for a few minutes.

Everyone though Office 2007 was going to tank, but in reality the users 'really' like it, and that is why you don't see massive complain forums dedicated to bad talking Office 2007 anymore than you see for any other release, and yet Office 2007 was a major UI paradigm shift, and just the start of what MS has up it sleeve.

Additionally, you would not believe how many 'existing' features users like about Office 2007, that they never knew existed in previous versions. This is another area of success in adding to user productivity.

Re:Nope

[Anonymous Coward]

If you are using Menus, you are in effect having to memorize a list of commands, and their location. Memorizing lists of words is one of the things GUIs were supposed to remove, and failed.

Not true if you use WordStar-styled menues (or if you prefer, you can call them help screens). Best thing about WordStar was that you didn't had to memorise anything. After using a command a couple of times it was usually part of your motoric memory anyway (unless you changed keyboard layout). Off course, you still had to understand the principles of what you where doing.

And you didn't have to touch a smelly rodent to use it.

Use the JSTAR version of Joe's Own Editor, to get a trip back in time when simple tasks still where simple.

Could someone please...

[Anonymous Coward]

...get me those guys heads ?

Seriously?

[bakuun]

This, if something, will convince people that Microsoft's competing standard is better for them. Dropping support for the very format that they've been pushing for so hard, so recently?

That will have agencies and large corporations running away from ODF - and any successors - right into the welcoming arms of Microsoft.

I almost hoped that it was April, 1st - but when I checked, it was still October. Damn.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

I almost hoped that it was April, 1st - but when I checked, it was still October. Damn. Don't worry, the "foundation" that sold-out for Microsoft money is just a bullshit organization with an authoritative name.

Re:Seriously?

[erroneus]

OpenDocument Foundation is not any sort of official or central proponent for ODF. Looks to me like Microsoft bought this two-man operation off and are attempting to throw in a little more chaos in with the threat to OOXML.

Re:Seriously?

[ShieldW0lf]

Hiser acknowledged that ODF supporters are angry with the foundation because of its change of heart.

Indeed, Andrew Updegrove, a partner at Boston-based law firm Gesmer Updegrove LLP and a vocal supporter of ODF, criticized the OpenDocument Foundation in an e-mail on Monday.

"It's a shame," he wrote, "that a group that was expressly formed for the purpose of supporting ODF is now actively working against the standard -- especially given the fact that its tax exemption is based upon supporting that same standard."

What I want to know is, why is this not fraudulent? Sounds like someone forming a non-profit-anti-smoking group, accepting donations and not paying taxes, then speaking on behalf of cigarette companies with the funds collected. Will this organization not at the least be forced to dissolve? What happens to their legal status?

Re:Seriously?

[dvice_null]

Let's start OOXML support foundation and claim that we will drop support for OOXML.

Huh?

[LiquidCoooled]

is it April 1st?
Is this posted on theonion?
is taco drunk in charge of a keyboard?
has darl got a new job?

How much has ballmer paid to give such a turnaround?

Re:Huh?

[Eggplant62]

How much has ballmer paid to give such a turnaround?

This was my first thought: How much did MS pay off the OpenDoc Foundation?

Re:Huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

How much has ballmer paid to give such a turnaround? Or a reacharound, as may be the case here.

Re:Huh?

[owlstead]

"How much has ballmer paid to give such a turnaround?"

As I am reading the postings, probably a garage, with a few chairs thrown in.

Damn, probably to late to be modded funny...

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

For more info, check here: http://netcraft.com/

Oh, My - What will PJ say?

[eer]

Looking forward to reading her reaction on Groklaw...

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[SargentDU]

No, Sun and IBM, Wordperfect and others are still working with it. It is strange to me that the so called Open Document Foundation can do this as was pointed out in the article link, that it is a non-profit established to help with Open Document Format, that they would steer their organization to an opposite position to its namesake. I think all the officers should be kicked out and a realignment with their charter should be taken.

someone wake me up please

[polar red]

a better shot at compatibility with Microsoft's OOXML WHY? OOXML is not an open standard if they include obfuscated word 97 sh@t in it ...

Instability

[dotancohen]

It's instability like this that usually plagues proprietary software, not open source software. Even if they no longer endorse odf, programs like Abiword, Open Office, and Koffice should still support it. That's the future-proofness of FOSS. In fact, it was stupid, arbitrary changes like this that drove me from MS Office to OOo in the first place, way before I discovered Linux.

While this decision will only hurt them, I do not think that it will undermine the value of odf, nor will it have governments such as South Africa rethink their open source strategies.

Re:Instability

[davidsyes]

"Dear God, hope you got the letter and
I pray you can make it better down here
I don't mean a big reduction in the price of beer"

Sorry, I just had to...

http://www.positiveatheism.org/mail/eml9624.htm

Re:Instability

[Anonymous Coward]

Again, the OpenDocument Foundation has absolutely nothing to do with the OpenDocument Format or with OASIS. They're just a two-man group who prefer to talk about how superior their (never seen) work is to everyone else.

Boards, Foundations and Working Groups, OH MY!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is why having "boards" and "foundations" and "working groups" equals death for free software. They get bogged down, undermined and subverted by politics and beaurocracy.

Re:Boards, Foundations and Working Groups, OH MY!

[Grishnakh]

From what I'm reading in other comments, this "foundation" was never meant to promote ODF at all. Basically, it's a couple of shills, probably paid off by MS, who set up this cleverly-named "foundation" to make it appear as if they are some official body in charge of ODF (they're not), just so they could tarnish ODF by speaking out against it and in favor of Microsoft formats. Basically, they're a form of astroturfing.

Re:Boards, Foundations and Working Groups, OH MY!

[Antique Geekmeister]

Sadly, Microsoft often doesn't have to pay shills like this. They can sell their services in "promoting compatibility" to third parties who don't know any better.

Witness the career of Meng Weng Wong, who naively cooperated with Microsoft in accepting SenderID into his SPF standard and watched Microsoft's proprietary, patented XML lunacy effectively destroy further SPF deployment, while allowing Microsoft and SenderID to take credit for all the good SPF had already done.

It's like dealing with Wal-mart: you may be forced into doing so in the short term by the need for expansion, but in the long term, it's usually death for you company or your project.

Re:Boards, Foundations and Working Groups, OH MY!

[iperkins]

Unless they were founded with the purpose of muddying the water to begin with...

Quote from TFA:

[rumith]

"All Sun cares about is its application," Hiser claimed. "Sun never thought of the format as being more important than the application. Sun's position has always been that interoperability with Microsoft formats is outside the scope of ODF." A solid and justified position, if you ask me. Has this Hiser guy had a heat stroke recently?

Re:Quote from TFA:

[Chabil Ha']

Especially since MS cares more for its application than the OOXML format too. I smell a buy-off.

Compat with OOXML??? WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hiser noted that the requirements for a universal file format include full compatibility with Microsoft Corp.'s Office formats, including Office Open XML"

Does it matter?

[chill]

If OpenOffice.org, Sun (StarOffice), IBM (Lotus Symphony) and KDE (KOffice) all continue to support ODF, what difference does it make what the Foundation does or says?

Re:Does it matter?

[DaleCooper82]

None for you and me and others here... I am afraid though that it will have negative impact on decisions about the format used by corporations, countries (like SA last week?). They want to see support behind whatever format they choose... and well, marketing is (unfortunately) huge player these days... And there will be ODF version of 'Get the Facts' soon. How sad.

Re:Does it matter?

[Pecisk]

Yes, but ODF un OOX is already enough. If even some document format looks good on paper and concept, it doesn't mean that they missed the train. Actually, I think OOX even did, because no way Office Vista will be universally acepted as old Office releases and lot of people already fine with OO.o/NeoOffice.

So it is just someone's wet dream to add another format in this brouhaha. I even thing it is done intentionally to add confusion. Yes, you can say that it is nuts, but Microsoft have done ANYTHING and then some to have ODF brought down, OOX accepted universally and even corrupted ISO system to push it trough as ISO standard just because they want so.

I guess it talks into volumes that Microsoft can easily use such proxy to move their agenda forward. Unfortunately, I don't believe in any such organistaions which consists from business people, because they only know business, how much it costs, not concepts in long term.

Re:Does it matter?

[imemyself]

It gives other people less incentive to implement ODF in their own products. If there is an non-biased organization backing it, the makers of other office suites would be more likely to consider implementing it themselves.

Re:Does it matter?

[hritcu]

What foundation? Never heard about it until now.

Re:Does it matter?

[RealGrouchy]

Hopefully and theoretically none, but this decision provides more FUD fuel to discredit claims that ODF and other open standards provide longevity for documents better than corporate closed formats do.

- RG>

Re:Does it matter?

[acidrain]

what difference does it make what the Foundation does or says?

Did it matter before? What credibility if any did they just throw away?

Re:Does it matter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Text Edit in Mac OS X 10.5

Re:Does it matter?

[malevolentjelly]

I think the market for the applications you just mentioned is small enough to easily justify Hiser's point. The more intelligent approach would be to use existing standards rather than creating new ones. The convergence of web formats and document formats should be front and center- not some mess of new "Open" formats. At very best, ODF will lead to another confusing dual format market which everyone must now adhere to. Microsoft Office is the real deal- it's here to stay. Just ask someone not actively involved in the Open Office movement. Most people just save open office documents in MS DOC 97/2000/XP.

Just because you mentioned alot of names doesn't mean you mentioned a lot of users.

Hmm

[evil9000]

Did Miguel of Gnome have anything to do with this?

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[lbbros]

Foundation or not, ODF is still an ISO standard, don't forget.

Have you been bought, sir ?

[unity100]

compatibility with Microsoft's OOXML what the f**k does that mean ? we are trying to make ODF THE format, we dont care about what ms is pushing or its compatibility. ms should try to make whatever they have compatible with it. they have forced enough stuff to the i.t. world already, its time they adapt their ways to what majority wants.

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[RightSaidFred99]

Hate to break this to you, but MS is the majority. To the victor go the spoils. Microsoft will have no real reason to implement a standard developed by some arbitrary group of its competitors unless/until many large governments and corporations force them to. Personally, I don't think it will happen. Most people don't really give a shit one way or the other.

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[Macthorpe]

they have forced enough stuff to the i.t. world already, its time they adapt their ways to what majority wants. Does the majority want ODF support though? It doesn't seem that way.

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[Torvaun]

This is why I use RTF for everything. Everyone reads it. It was originally developed for interoperability. Of course, now Microsoft will have to change it...

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck you. it's a standard that is open. that should be good enough. not everyone has your little hidden anti microsoft agenda. face facts, cunt, ms is going to be around for a long time. you open source bitches really need to stop acting like a bunch of little fags and get with it.

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[PMuse]

Time and again, Microsoft had said: "what the f**k does that mean ? we are trying to make [M$] THE format, we dont care about what [anyone else] is pushing or its compatibility. [They] should try to make whatever they have compatible with [M$]. they have forced enough stuff to the i.t. world already, its time they adapt their ways to what [M$] wants."

And thus, to defeat M$, we became M$ . . .

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[Smauler]

Governments are currently demanding change, within departments, to open document formats. That is where the change is coming. When you can only send a document in an open format to governments, rather than proprietary formats, people will have to start using open formats. And that will cut into Microsoft's monopoly, slowly, but surely. Of course many will continue to use MS products, because of inertia, and some genuinely do prefer them. However, Microsoft will not have the artificial leverage over the document format it does now, it'll be closer to an even playing field.

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's what I want to know. We normally associate the word compatible with something that works with something else. A format may incorporate other formats, but it is never going to work with another format, so compatibility is never an issue. JPEG format is not compatible with PNG and that is fine. A software can be written to be compatible with both format. DVD-R format is not compatible with DVD+R format, but a DVD drive can be designed to read both disks. And so on.

So, the compatibility for ODF and OOXML should not be at the format level, but at the software level like a reader or a plug in or a converter.

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[Chandon Seldon]

Everyone reads it. It was originally developed for interoperability.

RTF has *never* been an interoperable document format. There may have been a simple version of it once, but that version is now lost to antiquity and buried under mounds of incompatible proprietary extensions. Hell, even Microsoft Word 97 format is probably more compatible than RTF.

Apple and Microsoft have both tried to confuse the issue by presenting RTF as a compatible document format, but for what the subset of RTF that actually is compatible provides you might as well just save as HTML.

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[Torvaun]

Wikipedia thinks I'm right.

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[trifish]

world already, its time they adapt their ways to what majority wants.

Which is MS Word and .doc or at least compatibility with them.

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[jmodule]

Wikipedia thinks I'm right.

But the parent poster's point is that it has been so overloaded with incompatable extentions, that it is no longer open.

My evidence is only anecdotal, but I've had better luck opening .doc files with "interesting" formatting than .rtf. Recently a technology vendor sent me a quote in RTF that only MS Word could open. That's hardly open to me.

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought you were speaking on Microsoft's behalf there.

Re:Have you been bought, sir ?

[Torvaun]

Fair enough. My anecdotal evidence follows what Wikipedia says, but I generally don't have to worry about getting a lot of exotic formatting in my docs.

Smells like someone got big check from Microsoft

[Pecisk]

Yeah, another stupid, flaming, fanboyish, conspirancy loving comment.

But...I really don't see any other reasoning here. Compatibility with OOXML?! Last year?! Wtf!

ODF went ISO in 2005. In last year it achieved some kind of visibility because of OOXML ISO fight. What is his arguments?

Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[Ungrounded Lightning]

My department has been migrating TO windows .doc format (over my objections) for internal documentation - apparently due to inertia among the managers.

I'm not just annoyed by getting tied to a proprietary format: I'm particularly worried about all the windows tools running, since IMHO our company is a prime target for Spear Phising. (And I know there's been some harvesting going on by ordinary malware because, just today, I got some spam coming in from outside forged to claim it's FROM an internal mailing list.)

I've been pushing for standardizing on an open format - specifically ODF - for some time now. (This has been hard, because the last time I edited a .doc format document with Open Office it broke the hyperlinks, and the last spreadsheet I touched ditto lost a bunch of graph annotation.)

Now the rug gets pulled out from under my credibility (yet again) by the open community itself.

I'm throwing in the towel on this. I'll just sit back and use the Microsoft tools and let IT handle the malware. Open documents can wait until somebody in upper management drives it when it becomes the latest management fad (which probably means when the winter olympics is held in hell). If the company's crown jewels get stolen by a spear-phisher I'm on record for an "I told you so!" and I have enough squirreled away to retire.

W3C is already owned by Microsoft at this time.

[expro]

This is just another way of Microsoft getting everything they want with no real influence by others, which is pretty much what has happened for some time now at W3C with many important standards. Look to W3C to relax their requirements further. No one with any sense wants the de-facto MS document standard to become a recommendation. We already have that. It will be telling to see what kind of patent declarations come out of it.

OpenDocument Foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Forgive me if my memory is bad, but aren't they that unimportant bunch of nobodies who formed their own organization and decided that Microsoft compatibility was their #1 goal?

As I recall, in spite of the grand-sounding name, the people in that organization don't have anything to do with anything. They're busy recommending this and that, but they don't actually do anything.

Ahh, here we go, here's my source on this:

The mythology of Silicon Valley is filled with stories of two guys and a garage founding great enterprises. And here we have two guys, and through blogs, interviews, and constant attendance at conferences, they have become some of the most-heard voices on ODF. Maybe it is partly due to the power of the name? The "OpenDocument Foundation" sounds so official. Although it has no official role in the ODF standard, this name opens doors. The ODF Alliance , the ODF Fellowship, the OASIS ODF TC, ODF Adoption TC (and many other groups without "ODF" in their name) have done far more to promote and improve ODF, yet the OpenDocument Foundation, Inc. seems to score the panel invites. Not bad for two guys without a garage.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[oldosadmin]

As one of the founding members of the OpenDocument Fellowship http://opendocumentfellowship.com/ (although I no longer consider myself a member due to time constraints), I can say that in every effort made to get a real community going with ODF/OO.org there was always a pushback from Sun, and it's really sad to see. I don't think Sam is right that CDF is the answer, but I do think that his comments about Sun not caring about ODF are probably very true.

OpenDocument is an already vetted ISO format. Why should we return to the back of the line now? We have our format, it's approved, and has support in many applications. No need to start bickering between ourselves when we're already fighting a lot of the corporate proprietary software makers.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[harlows_monkeys]

Wow. Someone who is paid to promote ODF doesn't like people who have problems with ODF. Is there going to be film at 11?

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Randle_Revar]

Thanks for clearing that up.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Daengbo]

Additionally, the CNET article and the descussion there point to the fact that there is too much loss in presentation switching between MS Word and ODF, and that the world needs something better. ODF is NOT a presentation format. It is an office suite format. Geez. Can't they get that?

If they want perfect presentation, use a presentation format like PDF (even make your own international format ... I don't care). "ODF wasn't designed with this in mind." No shit, Sherlock! It doesn't make it a bad office suite format.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Reaperducer]

Is there going to be film at 11?

If you set your wayback machine to 1978.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait a second here, there is the OpenDocument Foundation and you say you used to be with the OpenDocument Fellowship. Is that a 12-Step program? Monks? Secret Society?

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

One does not simply WALK into Microsoft.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[LiquidCoooled]

BRIAN:
        Are you the Judean People's Front?
REG:
        Fuck off!
BRIAN:
        What?
REG:
        Judean People's Front. We're the People's Front of Judea! Judean People's Front. Cawk.
FRANCIS:
        Wankers.
BRIAN:
        Can I... join your group?

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[oldosadmin]

501c3 Foundations under US law cannot lobby the government. The Fellowship was created with the idea of promoting ODF to everyone -- including governments, so we chose to not go the foundation route, and some other people made up the foundation.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[risk one]

As the founding member of both the OpenDocument Federation, and the OpenDocument Alliance (both very recently founded), I can now officially state that we support a move back to unformatted text files. We are also in favor of increased funding to OpenDocument organizations, people paying attention to us, and we are in talks with Microsoft about our recent "Porsches for founding members" program.

If these initiatives are successful, we intend to combine our operations with the OpenDocument Union, the OpendDocument Pan-Atlantic Pact, the OpenDocument Coven, the OpenDocument Reading Group and the OpenDocument David Hasselhoff fanclub in hopes of getting many more people to pay attention to us.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

What? They can. There are restrictions on using public money for lobbying the government but there is no restriction on 501c3s. There are certainly reporting requirements as well.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Plaid Phantom]

You kidding? We're turning this film all the way up to twelve.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[kisielk]

Splitter!

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

You need to clear the path first, preferably by throwing a chair.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

BRA-F'IN-VO Mod Parent Up!

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[argiedot]

You're such a forker.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[tsa]

I can't understand why it's important to make a document format that is compatible with OOXML. Come to think of it, I can't understand what they mean by a document format being compatible with OOXML. Did MS push a few bucketloads of money in the direction of the OD Foundation to help them change their mind?

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

> decided that Microsoft compatibility was their #1 goal?

I wonder how they will accomplish that. It would only be possible with an identical format or a superset of the Microsoft format.

Given that OOXML is a superset of rules never defined, I am very interested, how a superset of OOXML will be made.

cb

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Wiseman1024]

Ha ha ha. Mod parent god. He described exactly what's happening.

BTW, I don't give two tenths of a rat's ass for what any OpenWhatever foundation pulls out of its ass, in fact I don't even listen to these kinds of organizations and their "recomendations"; it's a matter of mental hygiene. If they didn't create any product, they are nobodies, and they can all close tomorrow for what I care.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

But what about the People's Republic of OpenDocument?

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

>If they didn't create any product, they are nobodies

So, what priduct have you created?

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Hal_Porter]

The CDF specfication bears an inscription in OLE, foul language of Microsoft that I shall not utter here. In the common speach it can be translated as "On fileformat to rule them all, one fileformat to find them, one fileformat to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. In the land of Redmond where the shadows lie".

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Wiseman1024]

Some stuff here ( http://wiseman1024.googlepages.com/ , page outdated too) and I have two applications in test stage (not going to release them until they're stable enough).

But whether I've created software or not is not important, what I'm saying is that I won't care for the recommendations of a foundation of nobodies', just like you shouldn't care for the recommendations of the Wiseman1024 Foundation on agriculture if I don't even have a farm. You can personally recommend something to a friend, but it's pointless to start a foundation and pretend to be a respectable source of software recommendations if you don't even write software.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Chris_Keene]

- "What ever happened to the United People's front?"

- "He's over there"

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Andy Dodd]

The article makes no sense.

How can a document format be "compatible with" OOXML without BEING OOXML???

It's like somehow saying that PNG is more "compatible with" JPEG than GIF is - it makes ZERO sense!

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, that's just silly -- naming an organization in a such a way that it seems to promote the opposite thing. Why, that would be like if Microsoft made a document format with the words "Open Office" in th... Oh, right.

The proper response to this move is to form the "OpenOffice eXchange Method League", which would promptly author a report recommending a surprising new direction in which to take the OOXML standard (hint: "Section 2.15.3.6 - autoSpaceLikeAbiWord").

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Culture20]

You could have a format which is a limited version of the other, which supports some data, and have your application ignore the extra stuff in a file created in the larger format as garbage.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[Andy Dodd]

For document formats, that's an unholy nightmare, and is the biggest problem with typical third-party application support for existing MS formats. Basic documents transfer fine, but documents using certain features will break horribly.

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[dlymper]

You could say so... From the article:

"Hiser said he suspects that the nearly $2 billion payout Sun received from Microsoft as part of a 2004 legal settlement aimed at improving interoperability between the two vendors' products may have something to do with what he sees as Sun's apparent disinterest in making ODF work with Open XML."

Re:OpenDocument Foundation?

[mlyle]

To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for exempt purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not be an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.

from http://www.irs.gov/charities/charitable/article/0,,id=96099,00.html.

W3C strikes again

[L4m3rthanyou]

Leave it to the W3C to shit all over an existing standard and introduce/promote a new one for no apparent reason. Why do people even listen to these assclowns?

Re:W3C strikes again

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the stupidest comment I've yet seen on Slashdot.

First of all, ODF makes heavy use of W3C recommendations behind the scenes. Secondly, if you'd bother to read the "CDF specification", you'd notice that it's not in fact a document standard; it is a standard for combining different XML dialects in one file. ODF already makes use of this capability. What I've seen of the "OpenDocument Foundations" "CDF Format", they chose the name so they can pretend that it's a W3C Recommendation.

For me, that makes the decision easy

[Trojan35]

That means sticking with Microsoft's solution in the workplace. At least it will have someone guaranteeing support 5 years from now (even if it's crappy support).

I can't believe they bailed on ODF that quickly. Just makes my decision a no-brainer concerning other document standards they push in the future.

Re:For me, that makes the decision easy

[Grishnakh]

I can't believe they bailed on ODF that quickly. Just makes my decision a no-brainer concerning other document standards they push in the future.

Who's "they"? This OpenDocument Foundation has nothing to do with ODF the format. They're just some shills paid off by MS who picked a clever name for their "foundation" to convince people like you that they're in a position of authority over ODF, which they're not. They just run around trashing ODF, and get paid under the table by MS to do it.

Re:For me, that makes the decision easy

[Repossessed]

Um, did you not read any of the other comments?

This 'ODF' group is a couple of nobodies with a name that would make trademark lawyers salivate in the proprietary world.

Their decision to to support or not support ODF means about as much to whether or not ODF will be used in five years time as my vote matters on whether or not Mike Smith will be the next president.

Though if people are really dumb enough to fall for a ruse like that perhaps it's time we take a page from the corporate world and force these people to change their name.

Re:For me, that makes the decision easy

[Anonymous Coward]

The Office Open XML Advocacy Group which I founded dropped support for OOXML mere seconds after creation. You'd better switch away from Microsoft quick.

Follow the Money

[jimicus]

that it is a non-profit established to help with Open Document Format

Stop right there. If that is the sole purpose for the organisation to exist, then it makes no sense at all for it to start promoting an alternate format.

The most logical reason for this change of heart I can think of - given that nobody seriously expects "compatability with Microsoft formats" to ever be anything more than a pipedream - is a big bag of cash.

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[hey!]

Splendid! Who wants to contribute to a foundation to "promote" OOXML?

The only thing that really matters is that developers of products that people use support the format. A foundation is just another entity that has its own peculiar interests to pursue. The importance of a foundation is in who decides to work with it, no more or less. It's just a mechanism for cooperation.

They are *nobody*

[paugq]

"The OpenDocument Foundation", in spite of its name, is nothing. They are not the "official" foundation backing ODF. They are just two guys, with a good name and without a garage, which used to develop a OOXML ODF converter. Read this for more information: Cracks in the Foundation.

Re:They are *nobody*

[seanellis]

Oh, mod parent up, up, up, please.

Is this just a big storm over nothing?

Re:They are *nobody*

[Bryansix]

Wow, that's an eye opener.

Re:They are *nobody*

[vogon jeltz]

Right, I'll comment. Not mod.
Parent has it correctly, they're scums.
For further, "official" information see: http://www.odfalliance.org/

Yet another slow day on /. ?

Re:They are *nobody*

[Hal_Porter]

Well they said this

The conversion to XML [document formats] must be nondisruptive" meaning it fits into existing business processes which are increasingly dominated by Microsoft middleware. This implies a requirement for high-fidelity, loss-less round-trip conversions. Which seems eminently sensible to me. It also means that any open document format should support all the hairy legacy compatibility stuff that OOXML does of course, in which case why note use OOXML?

Just in time for halloween

[phorm]

The foundation setup to promote it has abandoned it.. so it's a walking corpse now

It's not dead, it's... UNDEAD!

Crawling in the womb

[VeteranNoob]

I can understand them wanting to give up ODF if only for solid technical reasons.

What gets me is that they feel compelled to create a standard that is compatible with OOXML. I understand why it might be a bonus, but to consider it mandatory is backtracking on the progress that FOSS has taken lately. I no longer see GNU/Linux as following in Microsoft's footsteps; In many respects it has surpassed what Redmond and others have to offer. We've shown that we can innovate.

While I don't completely agree with the mantra of "Linux MUST be usable by the average Joe," I do see this as our chance to make things happen. So why play follow-the-leader again?

Why would vendors take Linux seriously and start supporting it when they see it as a second-rate O/S that has to feed from leftovers?

On another note: Does this give any credence to Microsoft's claims that OOXML is superior to ODF?

Re:Crawling in the womb

[fejes]

Actually, this gives nothing whatsoever to Microsoft's claims. This isn't the ODF Alliance, which is the real representative for ODF... it's just a bunch of microsoft shills who came up with a "close enough" name to cause confusion, and seem to have caught you with it.

Some will find this confusing until...

[Bryansix]

Among ODF's weaknesses is its provenance from a specific application and the unwillingness of its originators to release it into the Bazaar. Merchants of irony will note this is the identical problem that paralyzes the incumbent gorilla's format.

Some will find this confusing until you see the Open Document Foundation's Slogan: Achieving Universal Interoperatability through Open Formats. I think it's dumb that they are trying to create a format that will magically work with all systems instead of pushing all of the systems to work with one format.

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

so it's a walking corpse now.. So it's in with a chance as the official document format for Plan 9.

You must love Microsoft tactics

[Pecisk]

First, it was disability support. It was shot down.

Second, it was not supported by Microsoft Office. It was shot down too, with developed plugins already available for organisations.

Third, it was "let's have two formats and let's live together peacefully". Yeah, right. Formats don't get accepted by ISO just because there are "very important to keeping in touch with old good ole Microsoft Office".

And finally, we get "interoperability with Microsoft formats" argument. What a croak.

Get this people - truely open document format will NEVER have anything to do with Microsoft Office wet dream to keep domination. NEVER.

Major Faux Pas

[klui]

Flip-flopping like this won't help ODF/CDF's cause. Better compatibility with OOXML? Why not say ODF will give up and sell itself to OOXML? Someone at ODF got a big chunk of change or something? If CDF is compelling, why not fold CDF into ODF instead? Sorry for all these questions.

Re:Major Faux Pas

[Smauler]

Did you even read any of the other comments? These two are not in any way affiliated with the ODF specification. They're just a couple of guys who may or may not have been paid off. Even if they have not been paid by MS, they're nobodies in terms of ODF.

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[Grishnakh]

I've been pushing for standardizing on an open format - specifically ODF - for some time now. (This has been hard, because the last time I edited a .doc format document with Open Office it broke the hyperlinks, and the last spreadsheet I touched ditto lost a bunch of graph annotation.)

Now the rug gets pulled out from under my credibility (yet again) by the open community itself.

This isn't the "open community", this is a group of shills paid by Microsoft who have cleverly selected a name for their "foundation" to make it appear as if they have some power over the ODF standard. Blame MS for pulling the rug.

Is it possible... (acronyms)

[mr_josh]

Is it possible, or perhaps even likely that the open source community is suffering from an over use and increasing ambiguity of acronyms? I mean, ODF drops ODF for CDF? Hmm.

Re:Is it possible... (acronyms)

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it possible, or perhaps even likely that the open source community is suffering from an over use and increasing ambiguity of acronyms? I mean, ODF drops ODF for CDF? Hmm.

None of this has anything whatsoever to do with the open source community.

Reading his words...

[Skiron]

"Hiser believes CDF has a better shot at compatibility with Microsoft's OOXML, and says that the foundation has been disappointed with the direction of ODF over the last year."

All he is saying here, in honest truth, is that MS monopoly is allowed to continue.

What ODF was about is OPEN format so that all can produce, create and save documents read by any other. The above statement now concedes that we go back to 'trying' to read a proprietary format designed to lock-in users in a monopoly.

It gets from bad to worse.

This is Sun's Fault

[harlows_monkeys]

Blame Sun for this. With a few small additions, ODF could have supported Office formats as well, but Sun would not allow this. Their policy is that ODF will support what is needed for StarOffice, and nothing more. They control the ODF technical committee, and their patent license allows them to stop the ODF TC if the ODF TC goes in a direction Sun does not like.

They did the same thing with Java. If they had let people implement Java as an ordinary language, with platform-specific features, so that I could have used Java instead of C on Windows or Mac for writing Windows or Mac apps, when I want to take advantage of the specific platform, and still have used Java for portable apps when I didn't need platform-specific stuff, Java would have become one of the main languages for application programming for desktop systems. But Sun decided that it must remain pure, and only be usable for the kind of things they wanted it used for (writing portable code), and so we all had to write our non-portable apps in C, and it was usually easier to just write our portable apps in C, too, and use #ifdefs to deal with different platforms, and Java became insignificant on the desktop.

Part of being "open" means letting people do things that you might not like, such as interoperate with Word, or write Mac programs that use Mac features in Java. Sun needs to realize this, and let us use their interesting technology without telling us HOW we have to use it.

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[Bryansix]

Java is platform independent for a reason. If they would have allowed platform specific code into Java it would have muddied the waters. People would no longer know when a Java App was for a platform or worked on any platform. Java has the problem of being slower because of it's just in time compiler but this is why Java is also so nice for developing in because you can rid your mind of platform dependant issues and focus on writing the application.

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[mmurphy000]

Blame Sun for this. With a few small additions, ODF could have supported Office formats as well, but Sun would not allow this. Their policy is that ODF will support what is needed for StarOffice, and nothing more. They control the ODF technical committee, and their patent license allows them to stop the ODF TC if the ODF TC goes in a direction Sun does not like.

Citations, please. If you're going to lob grenades like this, you owe it to your readers to offer proof of these accusations. I'm not saying you're wrong — I can see some factions within Sun taking this approach — but it'd be nice if you offered some proof.

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[Antique Geekmeister]

And after seeing what Microsoft did to Kerberos and to HTML, Sun was very wise to prevent Microsoft from doing their classic "embrace and extend" procedure to proprietize it in their own favor.

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[slashqwerty]

They control the ODF technical committee, and their patent license allows them to stop the ODF TC if the ODF TC goes in a direction Sun does not like.

OpenOffice.org is licensed under the LGPL. They can not license it under the LGPL unless they allow all associated patents to be used in any LGPL code including LGPL'd code to support competing document formats.

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

LGPL has no such patent grant, that's why the needed to make GPLv3. (not that I'm saying anything about Sun or OOo -- I'm just clarifying the license issues)

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

With a few small additions, ODF could have supported Office formats as well

Additions like what, "LineSpacingLikeWord6"? Or disallowing all dates before 1900?

Fortunately, whatever "this" is you're blaming Sun for, the "Open Document Foundation" has nothing to do with the ODF specification other than having the same initials.

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[harlows_monkeys]

People would no longer know when a Java App was for a platform or worked on any platform

Sure they would. If the box says "Super Space Blaster for OS X", then they should not expect it to work on any platform other than OS X. If the box says "Cross-platform Super Space Blaster! Works on any Java system!", then it works on any platform.

Java has the problem of being slower because of it's just in time compiler but this is why Java is also so nice for developing in because you can rid your mind of platform dependant issues and focus on writing the application.

And sometime people need to write a platform-dependant application. Why should they have to use a separate language for that?

Why can't Java be both a language AND a platform? If you need cross-platform, use the Java langauge AND platform, but if you need to write a Windows-only program, or a Unix-only program, or an OS X-only program, use the Java language but not the Java platform.

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[WebMink]

Blame Sun for this.

Sounds like a populist position, or maybe troll flamebait. I'll be generous and assume the former, despite the fact your post seems like a digest from an anti-ODF briefing paper. Disclosure: My job includes the task of receiving complaints about Sun and trying to get Sun to fix whatever causes the problem. If you have proof of any of your accusations, let me know. I may have some of my facts wrong below as I'm working from memory; I'd welcome correction.

With a few small additions, ODF could have supported Office formats as well, but Sun would not allow this.

That is indeed the constant assertion that the three guys who comprise the Foundation make. However, I have personally asked members of the ODF working group at OASIS and they tell me its not so.

• The Foundation guys wanted to add structures to ODF to preserve untranslateable tags in translated documents so they could be regenerated on the reverse translation. Sounds OK at first glance, but in practice it results in very brittle software solutions that work well in demos but not in real life.
• The proposal was thus rejected by the whole working group (not just the Sun employees).
• Rejected, that is, in conversation. A complete solution was never proposed for voting.
• To say Sun would not allow it ignores the actual dynamic of the working group (see below).

Their policy is that ODF will support what is needed for StarOffice, and nothing more.

Naturally every member of a standards group in the traditional standards process is looking out for the code base where they implement a standard, and will have serious questions of any feature that they regard as unimplementable. The features actually put to a vote by the guys from the Foundation would have resulted in very brittle implementations, highly dependent on the version of MS Office with which they were coupled. It may have been possible to come up with a solution that reduced this problem, but the discussion was not sustained. The assertion you make is not true in the general case.

They control the ODF technical committee

Untrue. The ODF TC can have no more than three members from any one organisation and is not under the control of any organisation. The Foundation guys actually flaunted that rule at one point and sent many, many more representatives - OASIS had to step in to fix it. That intervention is one of the issues they have with OASIS, in fact. Sun happens to employ the people who act as Chair and Secretary to the TC but the voting remains democratic.

and their patent license allows them to stop the ODF TC if the ODF TC goes in a direction Sun does not like.

I've heard that interpretation of the patent non-assert covenant that Sun has made regarding ODF, but it's untrue. Sun covenants not to enforce any patents against ODF implementations based on any spec it participates in. To the extent that versions of the spec after Sun's departure are based on version in which Sun was involved, that covenant remains in effect even in the unlikely event of Sun leaving the TC. Sun can't stop the TC from continuing its work.

Are you relaying this all as hearsay, or do you actually have data to back up your accusations? If you have, I'd like to see it (genuinely).

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[Bee1zebub]

There are Java compilers for creating Win32 binaries, although you would need to use JNI wrappers to use windows GUIs rather than AWT or Swing.
The GCJ (GNU compiler for Java) includes both a bytecode and binary compiler, and work with the GDB, although it only supports up to Java 1.4 (see http://gcc.gnu.org/java/)

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[SnarfQuest]

With a few small additions,

Beyond the addition of an optional "doc" flag, which would contain the Word file encoded using a highly advanced and extended version of double rot13, what else would Microsoft want?

Re:This is Sun's Fault

[Anonymous Coward]

...I could have used Java instead of C on Windows or Mac for writing Windows or Mac apps, when I want to take advantage of the specific platform, and still have used Java for portable apps when I didn't need platform-specific stuff...

Is it just my imagination or did you just describe Java Native Interface (JNI)? True, JNI isn't all too sophisticated, but it pretty much covers what you ask of Sun's Java.

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

The foundation setup to promote it has abandoned it

If I founded "The Windows Foundation", promoted Microsoft Windows because it was a very window-y thing, then moved on to promote french doors because they were doors you can see through, Microsoft Windows would die?

The "Open Document Foundation" has to do with open documents not the Open Document Format. They promoted ODF because it was what met their needs at the time, now they're promoting CDF to meet their needs.

Opendocument Foundation isn't related to ODF

[fejes]

The Opendocument Foundation isn't officially related to the OpenDocument standard. They're just a bunch of guys who took the same name so that they could ride on the coattails of the ODF movement, and doing MS's bidding, derail the process... and look, they're trying hard.

Before taking this article too seriously, you might want to read this posting too:
Cracks in the Foundation

is it complete?

[bogaboga]

How complete [or incomplete] is CDF? the last time I checked, ODF still lacked a number of pertinent capabilities.

Isn't the point to be "Open" - not compatible?

[Zantetsuken]

I thought the name "OpenDocument Foundation" would imply their goal is to create a document standard that is open, and can easily enough be implemented in a document editor without having to understand how the universe works just to see what line of code leads to some other line? If thats the case, why the hell are they concerned with being compatible with something that isn't open?

Compatibility is a great bullet to have on your feature list, but I think that instead of trying to play catch-up and only be in second place, they should stick with ODF - or even if they do switch to some other format, that which-ever they go with they market by its own merits (being a truly open standard, for example) instead of trying to become a horrid beast created by a committe that wants to always chase MS (or somebody elses) tail...

Re:Isn't the point to be "Open" - not compatible?

[Antique Geekmeister]

No, the name is clearly designed to create an impression of a relationship with the Open Document Format. It's a common tactic for gathering webhits and credibility, much as the "Open Source Foundation" pretended to be about open source, which it never really was.

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[AuMatar]

Splendid! Who wants to contribute to a foundation to "promote" OOXML?

Miguel de Icaza?

Well...

[JK_the_Slacker]

At least the chairs are safe?

Everyone's bought

[dedazo]

The problem for "you" is that Microsoft is the one who has 400 million or so installs of the dominant de facto office suite in the planet. "You" can either try to get them to play nice with you by applying pressure intelligently, or you can organize an exciting jihad to stick it to them. In a make-believe world where companies choose technology based on, well, technical merits and openness, the second approach will usually work. In the real world though, the former option would have been a better idea. But when you have well-paid shills like Rob Weir (courtesy of IBM) and his co-religionists who rarely take a break from hating Microsoft (except for lame attempts at making fun of Microsoft) it's difficult to get away from the join-us-or-die approach. It just feels so right, I guess.

I'm going OT here but seriously, Weir is just the cat's meow. Every single time Microsoft has challenged his hyperbolic rants and outright lies he's essentially ignored them or just penned some more. He thinks the OpenDocument Foundation is an irrelevant fly-by-night fanboy club (which I guess is possible), but he has no problem quoting obscure African groups and his groupie bloggers to prop up his "Microsoft is evil and Office sucks and remember, IBM had nothing to do with this post" arguments. If the man spent 1/10th as much time writing some code or documentation as he does bitching about the Office toolbar buttons, ODF would have conquered the world by now.

With people like that at the helm it's not difficult to see why a document format controlled by a single company and an elite group of testy technorati has gotten to where it is now. Not that I think OOXML is a particularly good idea, but at least there's someone out there with the balls to point out that the emperor is buck naked. I guess they better get ready for the DoS attacks, hate mail and death threats.

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[imemyself]

Honestly, using .doc makes sense. It is supported by *everything*. All versions of MS Office, all versions of OpenOffice/StarOffice, and by pretty much every other office suite as well. It's not necessarily a wonderful format, but its the least common denominator. You're not going to have to worry if the person you're emailing it to can open it. The same thing can be said for PDF's(which I think is probably a better choice for finalized documents or documents that are being given to the public). I'm not necessarily sure what spear phishing has to do with open/proprietary document formats. And using Linux isn't going to stop people from replying to phishing emails.

unacceptable

[m2943]

ODF an ISO and ECMA standard, and a lot of people have fought hard for both the standard and its adoption. For anybody in the ODF camp to abandon it at this point is unacceptable; any political or technical problems with ODF should have been resolved before

People complain about "the unwillingness of its originators to release it into the Bazaar". Excuse me, it's an ISO and ECMA standard. There should be "nothing to release", this standard should be cast in stone for at least half a decade. If extensions are needed, there should be an extension mechanism (which, I believe, XML namespaces provide).

And what is supposed to replace it? A non-existent W3C standard? Heck, the W3C hasn't even been able to replace HTML with XHTML; the notion that they can replace ODF/OOXML with CDF any time soon is laughable.

Of course, something like CDF is going to happen eventually; but the proper way of introducing it would have been to emphasize ODF as the near term solution and use it as a bargaining chip to get Microsoft to settle on CDF in the long term. What is going to happen now is that Microsoft is just going to declare OOXML the winner and point at ODF/CDF as another example of how open source and open standards are unstable and can't be trusted.

The ODF is handing Microsoft's OOXML victory on a silver platter. How much did Microsoft buy you all off for?

Re:unacceptable

[macshit]

You've probably read this in other comments already, but "OpenDocument Foundation" has no official connection with ODF (the format) -- they're just a couple of losers with a grand-sounding name, who apparently got some MS shill money recently.

Re:unacceptable

[fejes]

Since they're a bunch of shills for microsoft, the question isn't how much they were bought for, but how much seed money they got.

Or, if you like SCO-type conspiracies, how many licences MS bought for their "OOXML to ODF translator".

"we"

[unity100]

here are many people in i.t., who actually decide what is going to be used in their respective companies as it people, and many big i.t. companies in the field against microsoft. i dont see any "majority" or "power" on microsoft side apart from being able to grab casual, irrelevant old-age user in a remote state by the balls, because s/he doesnt know jack about computers. these kind of majority dont dictate anything, unless it is during a tea party in a suburb.

Re:"we"

[dedazo]

No offense, but you've clearly never had a real job at a real company. Your views are commendable, but flawed.

Re:"we"

[Chandon Seldon]

I've had real jobs at real companies, and I've really managed to avoid dealing with Microsoft Office to any significant extent in the process. In the real world, people can read PDFs. In the real world, you can get actual people to download and install OpenOffice because it's $0 and takes them a couple minutes - and then they're usually overjoyed to find out that Microsoft's monopoly is incomplete.

It's only bureaucrats with degrees in stapler management and paperclip accounting who actually insist on Microsoft Office for everything - at least in the real world.

Re:"we"

[dedazo]

I'm sorry, but no one at any company I've worked at ever got "overjoyed", downloaded Open Office and proceeded to install it in a corporate XP or Vista image on which they usually don't even have administrative rights. Your "real" jobs must have been at mom and pop shops with no control over what software goes into their machines. I bet that's loads of fun.

stapler management and paperclip accounting

That's cute. Never worked with one of those, but I'm sure you have.

Re:"we"

[unity100]

from what it seems, you are choosing wrong jobs, wrong workplaces.

Re:"we"

[dedazo]

Judging from the amount of money I make per year and how much I love to do what I do, I'd say that's a big no.

Re:"we"

[unity100]

members of the nazi party made heaploads of money, and just loved what they did. but that didnt make what they did right.

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[uniquename72]

My department has been migrating TO windows .doc format... Then they'll be very sad when you move to Office 2007, where .doc has been downgraded in favor of .docx. Yes, you'll still be able to open and view .doc files, but trying to get 200 employees to understand why they can't open Word2007 files on their home copy of Word2003 without downloading the patch is a fucking nightmare.

With XHTML?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm ok an XHTML based standard.

But I would not expect open office or any other app to save to XHTML/CDF for several years.

No-one would abandon one standard before a replacement is available.

Re:Quote from TFA: another quote from TFA

[darealpat]

"In a blog posting, Jason Matusow, director of corporate standards at Microsoft, said the new controversy over ODF proves that what really matters are the desktop applications, not the file formats. "When you are speaking about document formats, you are really speaking about an adjunct technology to the applications, which are the real 'solutions' in this discussion," Matusow wrote." So I suppose that Microsoft also shares Sun's position about desktop applications, and experience bears this out. See what are Microsoft's greatest sources of cash, and greatest sphere of influence: Their OS, and their flavours of Office. That latter is what the common man, and the common business worldwide have an exceedingly hard time withdrawing or migrating from. It helps that the document created with said applications cannot be 100% reliably opened with anything other than their applications. it's called "vendor lock", and MS is the item in the dictionary next to the word.

Some elaboration

[g2devi]

Actually, it's just three guys:
http://opendocumentfoundation.us/we.htm
Not much of a foundation.

The *real* ODF group is:
http://www.odfalliance.org/memberlist.php

I think that the only honest thing the "The OpenDocument Foundation" can do is rename
itself "The Compound Documents Format Foundation", since to do otherwise would be as
deceitful as Microsoft choosing to name OOXML "Office Open XML". But honestly, I doubt
they will. Their comparison chart between CDF and ODF betrays a few lies:
            http://opendocument.foundation.googlepages.com/GOSCON_Chart.pdf
In particular:
* CDF is not OOXML compatible, nor has any implementation shown this to be possible. ODF at least has a not-100% compatible conversion.
* ODF has a lot more big vendor support than CDF
* Neither are universal formats, but ODF is supported by more vendors and software projects at the moment.

Personally, I think that the reasons for "The OpenDocument Foundation" changing it's
support from ODF to CDF is self-interest. When ODF was first introduced, there was
money to be made for a small company to write MS Office/Corel Office/Mac Office plugins
and other conversion services. But then Sun and others started offering free converters
and conversion services. There's just too much competition too quickly

CDF, OTOH is not as well supported universally, so there's a lot more room for
a small company. And if the CDF growth rate is slow, the "The OpenDocument Foundation"
has the chance to become *the CDF conversion experts* and make a lot of money.
Also, since CDF (if you believe their claims) is more web oriented, it would be good
for transactional converters of many types that need to be used for each message.
With ODF, you convert your document once and don't have to worry about going back
(by purpose....ODF is best for documents that have to be read, as is 100 years
from now). The difference in profit between one-time business and licensed per
transaction business could huge, even if CDF has a smaller market.

Re:Some elaboration

[Anonymous Coward]

Note to self, never trust a "Foundation" that makes their website with

Re:Some elaboration

[Anonymous Coward]

So sue already! It appears from all these comments that this ODF is misusing a mark in misleading ways and is therefore guilty of misrepresentation. Is there a lawyer in the house? Perhaps allied with the "opendocument alliance" who appears to be the one most damaged by the "opendocument foundation"? If you can't grow your own spine, maybe you can buy one.

Ok, I'm confused ..

[zrq]

From the blog :

Among ODF's weaknesses is its provenance from a specific application and the unwillingness of its originators to release it into the Bazaar.

- Sam Hiser

From the article :

"All Sun cares about is its application," Hiser claimed. "Sun never thought of the format as being more important than the application.

- Sam Hiser

... and from the same article

In a blog posting, Jason Matusow, director of corporate standards at Microsoft, said the new controversy over ODF proves that what really matters are the desktop applications, not the file formats.

- Jason Matusow

... and from the other blog

All of this seems to make the point stronger than ever that when you are speaking about document formats, you are really speaking about an adjunct technology to the applications which are the real "solutions" in this discussion.

- Jason Matusow

Umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's true that Rob Weir is an IBM employee. How does that impact the accuracy of his story? Can you point to any fact in that story which is wrong or misleading? It matters not who he likes or hates if his arguments are sound.

Now then, it's also true that this "Foundation" has no official role in ODF whatsoever. It was started by a couple of random people who do little more than blog, attend meetings, and feed quotes to the press. And right now, the "OpenDocument Foundation" is abandoning ODF for CDF. Let the "Closed Document Format" jokes begin.

So, really, why again should we care about their opinions? They're certainly entitled to them, but like so many Slashdot posts, do they actually matter? Or is this fuss unseemly given that the "support" the OpenDocument Foundation offers amounts to little more than words? It's not like they're actually coding anything, developing the standard, or any actual, useful work.

It's tantamount to trumpeting "Anonymous Coward drops support for Windows!" when I can't really imagine that my opinion of Microsoft's code is worthy of front page news. Though I'll certainly settle for a (+5, Insightful) or two :-)

Re:Umm...

[tsa]

Clueless people like me think they're important because of their name. That's why we should care.

Toys and prams

[Colin Smith]

From their web site, it looks like they tried to have a pet feature added to the format and threw their toys out of the pram when it was rejected.

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Which layer of that is the funny one? Icaza likes OOXML, so it wouldn't make sense that he would "promote" it, in the same sense that the ODF group is "promoting" the ODF standard by dropping it. Is it funny because we secretly suspect his love for open sourcing MS is an triple cross maneuver to bring them down from the outside while appearing to be on the inside? Explanation required.

I think the mods just didn't get the joke, and should be prevented form moderating anything funny. Thats an idea for Taco, if he's lurking around here. Make the categories of moderation, dependent upon how their mods have held up in meta moderation. Some folks might have a skill at modding insightful posts, but have the humor of a wet sponge.

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[qedramania]

Ungrounded Lightning sentiment is precisely what this little exercise seems to be about. As other have noted, the Open Document Foundation isn't ODF. The likelyhood of them being agents from dark side whose aim is to increase uncertainty in the public about the viability of ODF is pretty high. Certainly for 2 guys without a garage but a substantial public profile and no other real claim to fame, they fit the bill.

Headlines like the Computerworld one are priceless in the media world and producing the reaction of fear and a sense of defeat in the minds of your opponents is the prize.

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[Antique Geekmeister]

Excuse me, but there is no such thing as ".doc" format. There at least half a dozen, if not more, mutually distinct formats labeled ".doc". Each of them has features and capabilities not available in all the others, and transformations among them are non-reversible: translating a document from an old Word 95 format to Word 2003, to Word for Macintosh version whatever, will not reproduce your original document. It's even worse for spreadsheets, which are also part of the format.

The denominators for it are not "common", they're nearly fractal in their complexity.

Re:Quote from TFA: another quote from TFA

[Anonymous Coward]

In a blog posting, Jason Matusow, director of corporate standards at Microsoft, said the new controversy over ODF proves that what really matters are the desktop applications, not the file formats.

I see... the fact that people are dicussing file formats so much proves that they don't matter. Typical Microsoft shitspeak.

What this is really about

[iabervon]

The key point is that, with ODF v1.2, which is in progress as a further ISO specification, ISO wants the format to be able to handle conversion of all of the world's existing legacy documents. Some of these documents only make sense based on errors in the legacy applications that were used to generate them, and getting actually correct calculation would destroy the comprehensibility of the documents. For example, if a spreadsheet has a calculation error, and this error leads to the final results being different, and the spreadsheet is part of a document justifying taking a particular action based on the result, understanding the document depends on being able to see the calculation that the author saw, and not the correct calculation, which would be incoherent. Current ODF is fine for making correct decisions going forward, but it is inadaquate to understanding past mistakes. And it means that, if you use a broken old program like Excel 2007 to prepare your taxes, and you convert it to ODF and send it in, the ODF document will contain no clues as to why you're trying to pay a different amount from the total given at the end, because the information that the math is broken in the source in a particular way is not representable in ODF.

Furthermore, the OASIS committee responsible for developing ODF has broken down entirely, at least in Sam Hiser's view, over the issue of how this should be handled, with Sun ignoring the need entirely, while the OpenDocument Foundation, trying to go forward in ISO, insists on having something get done.

As far as I can tell, CDF is actually totally irrelevant to this whole thing, except that it's from the W3C, which is simply not the OASIS ODF TC, and hasn't broken down. CDF is essentially the concept "do the obvious XML thing for putting compound documents together". It doesn't specify the format of any component office documents, except for SVG for figures (it specifies a bunch of other formats for particular purposes, but nothing interesting or different). The main benefit of CDF seems to be that the group doesn't have the level of bad blood that there is over at OASIS, so there's a chance of producing some specification for the next version.

On the other hand, it's hard to corroborate any of this with any evidence outside of Sam Hiser.

Re:What this is really about

[roystgnr]

the information that the math is broken in the source in a particular way is not representable in ODF.

Isn't this true with *every* format, both the already existing ones and all humanly conceivable ones? If the application is broken, it doesn't matter that it can't write an "I'm broken" tag to its output file, because it *won't* write such a tag. Only in a hopelessly irreparable program would programmers see a bug and think "let's make this part of the file format standard" instead of "lets fix this".

Re:What this is really about

[iabervon]

The reason this comes up is that (reportedly) ISO wants to have a standardized file format for office documents that everybody can convert all of their old documents to, preserving the meanings of the originals, even if that meaning depends on doing something oddly or wrong.

New documents wouldn't be created with errors marked, but documents converted from formats defined de facto by hopelessly irreparable programs, where the conversion is done competantly, would mark the errors they contain.

Re:What this is really about

[Anonymous Coward]

Got any links for the evidence that ISO wants ODF to be able to preserve errors in the original programs? Because I don't believe it for a second. ISO deals with all kinds of standards; they of all people know that not every error can be preserved in a specification, and I seriously doubt they'd ask for something they know full well could never happen. For all of Microsoft's marketing, the only reason "errors" are preserved in OOXML is because they toss in a preserveExcel2003Error attribute that tells Excel to use the old wrong method for doing calculations and so on. For a universal document format, attempting to chronicle all possible errors is a huge paper tiger.

Then again, Microsoft has a lot of money to use marketing claims that files have to be "backwards compatible with legacy documents", without bothering to mention that the key to that is to know how legacy applications handled their documents.

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

...wow, seriously? You write a two-paragraph reply, accusing other people of having no sense of humour, to a two-word comment? FYI, it's funny because it was an unexpected yet related name to use. I laughed, apparently several mods laughed, and probably lots of other people. Except you.

What a disaster

[rastoboy29]

Perfection is the enemy of completion.

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[Enderandrew]

Someone please mod parent up.

Not one bit!

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to answer a rhetorical question, but this foundation, in spite of its grand name, is little more than the fancy name for a couple of people who blog a lot and attend meetings and whatnot. They have no official role in the ODF committees and they don't code anything, so I'm not sure what support they have to withdraw.

Well, unless you count speaking out in favor of ODF on blogs and such. But hell, I can do that...

So whats their name now?

[kcbanner]

The No Document Foundation
Documents, who needs em?

There's a joker in the pack - governments...

[Joce640k]

Many governments are mandating open standards for document archival. That's the only thing which is pressuring Microsoft. If it wasn't for that they'd just be ignoring open standards like they've always done.

I don't know why ODF isn't supporting ODF. I suspect Microsoft may have a hand in it though.

It's sad that Microsoft has everybody locked in to its file format but open ideals on their own aren't going to change that.

Paid for by Microsoft

[HermMunster]

First, the idea of more compatibility with OOXML is not even remotely the issue. These are separate specifications. They are by nature incompatible. One format is not compatible with another. Second, you don't pull the rug out from underneath an existing format that has been approved by the organizations that matter, and Microsoft is not one of those that matter. As far as performance goes, what is he talking about? Milliseconds, adoption?

This whole thing sounds like complete malarkey to me. Something is awry. If you can't buy the standard organizations I guess they can buy the ODF key players.

everyone wants ODF

[Anonymous Coward]

Because everyone but clueless windoze users expect their documents to format the same way across printers, operating systems and decades. People worth dealing with always care and even if they were the minority they would still be a majority of those that count.

Re:everyone wants ODF

[Macthorpe]

Down to anonymously trolling me now?

How low you've sunk, Twitter.

Re:everyone wants ODF

[Tim C]

Out here in the corporate world, believe me when I say that all anyone wants is to get the job done and go home on time for once. If ODF helps that, then great I'm all over it. If ODF doesn't help that, perhaps because my customer doesn't/can't/won't use it, then it is less than nothing to me.

All the fine ideals and long-term goals are nothing if I can't get my job done now. (And believe me, I recognise the need for open standards and open formats; I'm just not willing to sacrifice my already too-short free time to be one of the early adopters)

Religion doesn't help people understand.

[jbn-o]

When do people who use the word "religion" as you did get around to describing the proprietary advocates as "religious" and thus recognizing how useless that term is in this context? After all, the proprietors are quite zealous in their advocacy for things that keep their users helpless to fix their own problems or get help elsewhere including file formats nobody else can really master (even their own software sometimes has problems), software patents to preclude competition, and FUD to keep would-be competition at bay.

trademarks?

[m2943]

but "OpenDocument Foundation" has no official connection with ODF (the format)

Then Sun, OpenOffice.org, ISO, and ECMA screwed up on trademarks. "Open Office XML" and "OpenDocument Foundation" should refer to nothing other than ODF and OpenOffice.

Re:trademarks?

[Just Some Guy]

"Open Office XML"

Correction: that's "Office Open XML", so named by it's owner, Microsoft, for the sole purpose of confusing people.

Re:trademarks?

[m2943]

Correction: that's "Office Open XML", so named by it's owner, Microsoft, for the sole purpose of confusing people.

That is my point: that is exactly why "OOXML" should be a trademark violation.

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[MeNeXT]

Amen! where are the mod points when you need them....

What is the optimal solution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Would it be for Microsoft, too, to adopt ODF and help its development? Why so, and what would that accomplish?

And, how can government help push that optimal solution so that it occurs? What, specifically, should government do?

Some amazing swallows in Capistrano want to know.

I'm going to start the OOXMLF

[Anonymous Coward]

And then denounce OOXML for not being more compatible with ODF!! Who's with me?!

Important message from the OOXML foundation

[Anonymous Coward]

The future is HTML 3.2

It's no secret that we at the OOXML foundation have been unhappy with the direction that the OOXML format has taken over the past year. The failure to disrupt the ISO process and mount a successful ballot stuffing campaign has had a detrimental effect on the future of the format. This has completely ruined the joke.

You may be thinking that Microsoft are not known for humor but think again; how else can you explain Windows ME or Vista? The truth is that OOXML was in fact little more than a running gag for Microsoft executives. The downright lunacy of the binary in XML spec, the "open" moniker and the failed attempt to get it ratified by the ISO should leave no doubt. Since the punchline has been ruined by a coalition of tech companies promoting a sensible document format, we have decided that there's no future in OOXML.

We are now hopeful that HTML 3.2 can provide humor where OOXML failed. With immediate effect we are ceasing all OOXML related work and commencing work on a .doc to HTML 3.2 converter.

Enjoy the font tags, suckers!

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[Daengbo]

The foudation's name is irrelevent to the format. The foundation understood little about the format and was formed much later. The format would have been approved for ISO without the foundation.

The foundation was just set up so that the original members could start attending meetings. Read the article. That fact's hidden in the middle.

ODF is a standard and, as of now, sits alone in that regard. It's not dead.

Emulating errors is a terrible idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

Emulating old errors is a terrible idea. Better instead to FIX them during translation and leave them out of any new formats.

Yes, perhaps not everything will work wonderfully, but leaving old errors in a new application is like allowing the foundation of your house to rot away. Eventually, it's all going to come crashing down on you.

That's quite possibly the only thing Vista did right, even if (ironically) it's one of the main reasons why Microsoft's grip is weaker now than it has been in quite some time.

Re:Emulating errors is a terrible idea...

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't fix them in translation if you want roundtrip conversion that re-establishes the bug in order to provide predictable and consistant results.

Now you can argue that users don't want that if you want feature, but they do, and that's why OpenFormula has bug markers on their functions such as CEILING

Appears that CDF incorporates ODF (and others)

[UnderCoverPenguin]

Looking at CDF - "Compound Document Format" - appears that it is not so much a document format, but rather a "format aggregator".

I don't see CDF itself replacing ODF, rather, ODF would be one of many formats that could be contained in a CDF file. OOXML very likely could be another such format.

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[MightyMartian]

Where the hell did you get the idea this was the foundation? You've just been scammed pal. Congrats. Just because two things share the words "Open Document" doesn't mean that one relies upon the other.

HEY SLASHDOT FIX THIS STORY'S WRITEUP

[Nicolas MONNET]

As has been mentioned several times in the comment, the "Open Document Foundation" has no real connection to the Open Document Format, and the writeup reads like a MS-shill press release. So please fix it with an addendum so that casual readers of Slashdot don't take it at face value.

Foundation or Fellowship?

[Anonymous Coward]

You mention being from the OpenDocument Fellowship, this story is about the OpenDocument Foundation. Just to be clear, we're talking about two different groups here, right?

Because if not, I'm rather confused.

Re:Foundation or Fellowship?

[oldosadmin]

OpenDocument Fellowship == http://opendocumentfellowship.com/

OpenDocument Foundation == http://opendocumentfoundation.us/

Could this be any *more* misleading? Editors? WTF!

[Torodung]

Are you going to edit this article so that it clearly states that the "Open Document Foundation" has nothing to do with Open Document Format (ODF), other than that they are also in the "document" business?

For crying out loud, this is a garbage summary that deliberately leaves out necessary context for no other apparent purpose than to mislead the reader into thinking it matters what this "foundation" thinks.

FROM TFA:

The OpenDocument Foundation Inc. doesn't have any control over ODF. Contrast with the OASIS ODF specification boilerplate:

The names "OASIS", "OpenDocument", "Open Document Format" and "ODF" are trademarks of OASIS, the owner and developer of this specification, and should be used only to refer to the organization and its official outputs. OASIS welcomes reference to, and implementation and use of, specifications, while reserving the right to enforce its marks against misleading uses. Please see http://www.oasis-open.org/who/trademark.php for above guidance. This is hogwash, not Slashdot. The only point of leaving it "as is" is to spur OASIS into trademark action, and I think there are better ways of doing that.

--
Toro

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

I think it was funny that people thought it was funny. Its like an optical illusion, but with humor. You laugh because your brain does a quick scan of it with out doing much processing, but then the thread in your brain in charge of deeper thought realizes that it doesn't actually make sense as a regular joke. Then you laugh because it everyone else laughed at it, cause their deep thought thread is just as delayed as yours, perhaps even more.

Two paragraphs are really just scratching the surface as you see. I take my humor very seriously. A study of humor is a study of what people believe and how they think. I think that is deserving of a great deal of time for anyone who is curious about such things.

OASIS needs to sue. Now.

[Torodung]

This is a textbook violation of trademark. If they don't sue at this point, they will lose control of the name "Open Document Format" itself. "Office Open XML" was pushing it, this is just plain pure trademark violation so some smart-ass Microsoft executive can claim that "the Open Document Foundation has abandoned the Open Document format."

It's also probably defamation, and if there is a money trail between the Foundation and Microsoft, there are damages to be had.

It's time to serve some papers. If anyone works with the organization, forward their legal department a copy of the article with a brief reminder that trademark violations must be defended, or you lose your trademark.

--
Toro

On the base of internet!

[Qubit]

If you want to learn more about CDF you could go read some dry technical document... or you could go to the w3c website for CDF and click on the link "How Does Compound Document Framework Benefit Us?". I suggest the latter.

"Not everyone knows but W3C standards like the compound frame work changed the works of integrated communications on the internet effects everyday lives and benefits us all."

If w3c standards effect anything, I hope that that they effect a nice Scottish accent.

"As you read through this article you alone will better understand and be able to see why this was an important step in today's and then world as the implementation of a common ground script writing could make your life a little more convenient"

I'm trying to understand it, but I'm still so confused...

"In today's world, we do a lot of our work and play on the base of internet."

The base of Internet is, of course, 2.

Bored with this tech.. move on..

[LingNoi]

1) Create new Technology
2) Hype the Tech to oblivion
3) Get bored and pronounce it dead
4) ....
5) PROFIT!!

List of the currently deceased off the top of my head..
Java, ODF, SecondLife, Linux, Web 2.0

In other news...

[Craig Maloney]

In other news, McDonalds has decided to stop selling the Whopper, opting instead for the Big Boy Classic.

Dropping ODF

[RassilonInc]

Dropping ODF after it has been ratified as a standard and after it stands a chance of being more standard than Microsoft is just ridiculous. A move like this would empower Microsoft because they'd be able to say that the ODF (and the replacement format) aren't stable. Do this and you can retire the open source office systems tomorrow.

A bit offtopic

[Dark_MadMax666]

But damn I am mad that OpenOffice is not being adopted more widely. While I do not think linux is ready for desktop or enterprise directory/messaging platform OO is the open source product which is quite mature by now.

Thing is , sadly, that I know the answer - tons and tons of little automation done in house using vba. You wouldnt believe how mnay critical production processes rely on these things .And well a lot of api specficially written for VBA (factset ,bloomberg - from finance industry). So well odf, ooxml -whatever. It has to support VBA I would say before mass migration happens . Same reason I think office 2007 will fail (unless they have VERY robust convertor)

W3C Credentials

[eennaarbrak]

Completely agree on your sentiments with W3C. These are the same people who gave us standards on CSS, web services, XHTML. What a portfolio of inter-operable open standards! Even their one success, HTML, is actually a mess that they have been trying to fix (unsuccessfully) for years.

Who the hell pays retail list?

[westlake]

I'm sorry but $1000 for an OS and office suite?

This would be list for the most expensive retail boxes of both.

I have at least three options as a home user for a legit, discounted, price on Office 2007. The cheapest is through my employer: about $35 for the media with shipping and handling.

Local adult education programs in Office start at a subdized $5 per course.

No age restrictions. No income restrictions.

Your ticket out of welfare, your chance for a job past retirement, if you have need of one.

Re:Who the hell pays retail list?

[peragrin]

I don't qualify for legal version of discounted software. in fact the majority of people who work for small businesses don't. If I asked a friend to buy it for me through his discount I could get them at a decent price but that would be illegal and immoral.

Besides why should I spend $399 for Vista ultimate when I can get Leopard ultimate for $129 and Neo Office J for free?

As a home owner I don't use office software often enough to justify anything other than free as in beer solutions.

Re:Who the hell pays retail list?

[Arterion]

Besides why should I spend $399 for Vista ultimate when I can get Leopard ultimate for $129 and Neo Office J for free?

Because you'll have to pay a considerable premium for Apple hardware to run it on? And if cost is an issue, you can't ignore that. Also, how does it relate to being a homeowner?

I can understand some FOSS advocates...

[jsight]

wanting a complete implementation of MS office xml. But what is the deal with this? Trying to split the open document format? ODF is far from perfect, but a couple of morons trying to split it is the last thing it needs.

These people need to go away.

World Wide Web Still The Best Word Processor

[gig]

It is quite obvious that HTML+CSS+JS is the standard electronic document format. It is even sharable over the Internets. These other formats are like finding old soldiers marooned on an island, they don't know the war is over. Once we have 8.5x11 300 dpi displays you won't want a print out anyway, the print out is just a photo of the page, not the real page, which can still grow and change.

The way MS Word handles HTML is very Web 1.0: you make a DOC and then you save a copy as a really badly stamped-out dead HTML document. For Web 2.0, you make a live HTML document. It's as plain as the browser window I'm typing in.

Re:World Wide Web Still The Best Word Processor

[The Master Control P]

Hardly - Show me a web page that presents a large, complex math formula by using HTML/CSS/JS rather than a gif, png, or pdf created by (La)TeX.

Re:World Wide Web Still The Best Word Processor

[Anonymous Coward]

ODF handles a different segment of the market than HTML, and technically ODF uses XHTML behind the scenes where it is appropriate. People seem to forget that ODF is simply a grouping of PROVEN XML standards (XHTML, SVG, RDF, XLink, MathML) glued together by an agreed-upon combination grouping created by OASIS. Technically, ODF already is a CDF. So's OOXML, from a pragmatic standpoint (doesn't make it a good standard).

New Obligatory Dilbert

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071031.html

yes, but functionality is different

[misanthrope101]

How do you find stuff in the body of an email? Ctrl-F forwards the email. When I use Outlook (which I don't hate, though I can't read msg or pst files at home) Word is used as the composer, supposedly, but it doesn't work like it should.

So any complex email I have to compose in an actual Word document and either copy/paste over or send as an attachment. And don't even get me started on Outlook stripping out tables, "extra" line breaks, etc. I'm not saying it absolutely sucks, but I'm not digging it. I really like the way Gmail does stuff, where you can view attachments in-line without loading (or even downloading) the file. Outside of work, I rely completely on webmail.

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[Serious Callers Only]

Honestly, using .doc makes sense. It is supported by *everything*.

If you'd ever looked inside a .doc document, you wouldn't say that. It's a horrendous format, more a memory dump than a structured document, and trying to use it as a standard for interchange/storage is just insane. Even Word can't open different versions consistently.

What actually is CDF???

[Anonymous Coward]

I understand it combines multiple formats together and the result is a XML document that browsers can then display. Did I get it right? If I did, can you edit the result??? I don't think so...

So these guys are totally clueless if they claim CDF is the solution instead of ODF! CDF is about being able to display any content. ODF is about being able to edit any content! See the difference! Apples and oranges! :D

That is exactly the point

[an.echte.trilingue]

>the problem is people are taught Word, and Excel. They aren't taught word processing or spreadsheets. Every time MSFT releases the OS the layout is slightly different. new training is required for those were taught to memorize the interface.

Bingo, and as my company's IT guy, I am not going to tell my employer to spend his resources training people who will only be with the company for a few years how to "word process" and "spreadsheet" when he can just hire people off the street who know Word and Excel. An MS Office license costs my company about 400 euro per machine. I have to renew that 400 euro every five years or so to upgrade.

Teaching people stuff, however, is very expensive. When we migrated from Access to MySQL recently, I spent 3 business days teaching the company's three data entry people how to use the OpenOffice Base front-end. Assuming that we average 12 euros an hour take-home (to which you have to add about 8 euro an hour in taxes that my company pays), we spent 1920 Euro on training alone, plus the amount that my boss had to pay me to spend a few weeks redesigning, migrating, and testing the new database. I still have to teach the two bosses how to use it, and their time is very expensive. Every time we get a new data-entry employee (about once a year), I or one of the data-entry girls will spend three days or so teaching that person to use the database (so, about 500 euro a year maintenance costs). So, over the first five years, the move will have cost us just under 4000 euro as a low-ball estimate. For each fiver years after that, it will cost around 2500 euro. Compare that to Access: training took one business day because access works just like all the other MS programs and people pick it up quickly, plus the 3 licenses comes out to 1800 every five years.

Now, I can justify this cost because Access wasn't doing what we needed, and MySQL is truly a better solution that will allow us to save time and money on other tasks, but what about office? With MS Word/Excel/Powerpoint we can:

• Expect even the interns to know how to use it to make professional looking documents/presentations
• Expect people that we send documents to to be able to open them, including formatting and macros
• Expect to be able to open documents people send us, including formatting and macros
• Have working internationalization-- but now I am getting into gripes

Those four factors right there cost us a lot less money than the few thousand euro every few years we need for the licenses. Now, I know that somebody is going to read this and think "well, you should be exporting documents to something like pdf if you want it to look the same, not using a silly word processor". I agree. However, in the real world, people use Word.

The problem is indeed education, but it doesn't make business sense for this company to try to change the world.

Can someone interpret this for me please?

[Anonymous Coward]

'cos it reads like marketing fluff to me.

Re:Can someone interpret this for me please?

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah, I agree. Context sensitive lists generally suck badly for me. I use my computer for so many different tasks and in rather unpredictable order. Context sensitive lists/menus within an application are fine, but in the OS they often get in the way. I'm not great with a CLI, but the menus that the "market speak" poster says MS is moving away from allow me to use keystrokes to open programs and do many of my tasks without "mousing around" and generally increase my productivity over the default methods I see in Vista.

Re:Can someone interpret this for me please?

[TheNetAvenger]

I'm not great with a CLI, but the menus that the "market speak" poster says MS is moving away from allow me to use keystrokes to open programs and do many of my tasks without "mousing around" and generally increase my productivity over the default methods I see in Vista.


If all the items normally included on a menu is still available through other UI elements, how does this hinder your work? Additionally, if ALL keystrokes are STILL available for every feature, how can moving to a new UI paradigm from menus affect your productivity?

Take Office 2007 for example, no menus, and keystrokes still work for everything, in fact faster than with menus as more options are available on the 2007 Ribbon Bars, and you can keystroke to the various options faster than digging through the menus. Simply hit the Alt key and the keystrokes light up on the screen.

I would completely agree with you if Microsoft wasn't on top of the keyboard accessibility angle with the new UI push they are going for. Windows is still the most consistent and keyboard accessible GUI, and this is not something their geeks would allow them to remove, as it is a fundamental aspect of productivity, especially in typing centric applications like Word 2007.

If my observations and shedding some light on the MS UI movement is seen as market speak, then MS will be able to leapfrog the OSS world easier than I expected.

It costs money when the tools are broken

[porpnorber]

Thing is, Office is the cheaper and faster option. It costs too much to go to microsoft free solutions, because the truly expensive stuff are employees (who generally can be expected to know Word and Excel automagically) and training time.

I've never understood people who say this. My experience with word processors, in particular, is that with Word it takes all fracking afternoon just to get the paragraph breaks to look vaguely normal, because the damned thing is always trying to intuit what you want, and then it leaves magic poop in the cracks so that everything you ever did wrong can come back from the dead. And then of course it crashes and you get to start over. Even if it were really true that the training were 'free' (rather than a constant 20% overhead in your office where the local 'expert' is stuck doing other people's work for them while gawkers stand around and try to learn from it), broken tools impose real costs.

The problem is, 'normal' people derive a sense of personal satisfaction from coercing broken tools to do what they want, in much the same way, I suppose, that musicians often prefer bizarre and impractical instruments for their 'character.' And, Scotland forgive me, Word is the bagpipes of the software world.

Re:It costs money when the tools are broken

[Lotunggim Ginsawat]

Stop using Office 95 and upgrade. Word 2003 (didn't have 2007) do not have the problem, and if you need a fracking after noon to solve it (assuming it exists) I doubt your skills in using a word processor. Using Writer will probably not help you.

Re:It costs money when the tools are broken

[G Fab]

Whether you're right or wrong, the fact is that I can go out on the street and find someone in one minute who knows the basics of word and excel enough to confidently use it. I cannot do the same with virtually any other similarly useful program.

The crazy problems that Office has had over the years, and in my opinion has in 2007, only show how powerful the monopoly is, as I'm sure you'd agree.

It would be freaking expensive to move away from Word at a large company, because the costs would go on and on forever. I can fire my secretary and not have to retrain the next on on how to use Excel and Word.

Re:It costs money when the tools are broken

[porpnorber]

Do you know, I (yes, I know this dates me) have worked in places where every single person who created documents, both technical and secretarial, knew and vastly preferred Word Perfect. So management made everyone use Word, "because it's standard, and everyone knows it." The problem is much bigger and weirder than is believed - for some reason, all overheads associated with Microsoft products are disregarded; overheads associated with its competition are charged.

Re:It costs money when the tools are broken

[porpnorber]

You want me to spend more money on something that already doesn't work? It is the idea of Word that is broken, unless perhaps they have added a "show codes" mode, removed (or possibly shifted to user-programmable macros) the attempts to be 'intelligent' about interpreting keyboard input, centralised and rationalised the layout control mechanisms, and stopped cacheing in-memory data structures in files?

You say that you doubt my word processing skills - well, it's certainly true that I'm not a professional secretary and have not devoted my life to mastering a single software tool. But my experience of what constitutes 'expertise' with Word is that experts know when they're screwed and change the design of the document when it's outside the rather small core that Word actually implements: any increase in efficiency derives largely from not trying any more.

Now, you are right; as I have already said, Writer isn't clearly better - it is also subject to bizarre glitches where bullet points want to change their formatting, unasked non-deletable blank lines insert themselves between tables, page breaks seemingly have more memory than they have control interface, and so on. But as I say, Open Office isn't more expensive to use, and it is much cheaper to buy. So until someone figures out how to make a product that uses what we learned from Emacs and TeX and package it for the end user (and, please note, the attempts to make LaTeX-based word processors are the exact opposite of what I mean - it's the power, not the lameness, of previous research that should be preserved!), it's still Writer for me.

Re:It costs money when the tools are broken

[Lotunggim Ginsawat]

Now, you are right; as I have already said, Writer isn't clearly better - it is also subject to bizarre glitches where bullet points want to change their formatting, unasked non-deletable blank lines insert themselves between tables, page breaks seemingly have more memory than they have control interface, and so on. But as I say, Open Office isn't more expensive to use, and it is much cheaper to buy. So until someone figures out how to make a product that uses what we learned from Emacs and TeX and package it for the end user (and, please note, the attempts to make LaTeX-based word processors are the exact opposite of what I mean - it's the power, not the lameness, of previous research that should be preserved!), it's still Writer for me. While O.O is not expensive to buy, it is more expensive to use. Unless of course you can demonstrate that people can switch without being trained. Even switching from Office 2003 to 2007 need some kind of retraining, don't get me started on Office --> O.O migration. Just like someone else says in this article comments, it is the users that are most expensive, not the software.

There are plenty of people out there that are more proficient in Office suite compared to those that is good at O.O suite, to the point they do not have to struggle with paragraphs for a whole afternoon. This by itself gives an advantage over O.O when it comes to the PHB CIO deciding which suite he/she wants to deploy.

Re:It costs money when the tools are broken

[porpnorber]

The argument is structurally valid, but I do not think it is supported by the data. Otherwise, why do I recall so many forced migrations from Word Perfect to Word, where the entire staff was happy and productive with Word Perfect, and only the PHB favoured Word? I can't honestly think of a sinister explanation for this, but I can't think of a reasonable one, either! It was, and remains, just a mystery to me.

I will acknowledge that my timeout for negative experiences is quite long. It is possible that recent versions of Word are usable, and I simply wouldn't know, because I am still feeling burned from my previous attempt to use it, five or ten years ago. I still won't buy from Apple, because I'm still upset about the way support for the Newton was cancelled overnight, and I can't bring myself to trust them again, either.

Maybe I'll calm down in another decade or so (or maybe not, because I was cornered into getting a machine with Vista pre-installed, and now, after I was previously told that XP would not be supported any more, people are actively refusing to support Vista. At this rate I may be stuck in Prisoner's Dilemma hell until I die).

Re:It costs money when the tools are broken

[G Fab]

I can't believe Word Perfect isn't still a player. I used to love Word Perfect 5.1 (and still use the blue background and white text on Word 2003).

But I think what happened was that in high schools all the kids were using Office in high school typing and computer classes. (it was clarisworks for a while, but that ended pretty quickly I think).

is there a logical reason why everyone knows Word and not Word Perfect or whatever? Not really, Word is not that much more intuitive. But that attitudes out there (yeah, even from me), form a huge barrier for competitors.

you're right, most of the reasons for sticking with Word are a bunch of baloney. But the baloney is believed, and that's what counts.

ODF prior to PDF

[Anonymous Coward]

ODF is the prior document state of PDF, so in order to keep things close to its original state, we shall use ODF for archiving and PDF for printing.

PS: OOXML become history in 2009 when a PDF came out in a "newspaper" saying: "I've written this text exclusively in ODF format" signed by the president of MacroSoft

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[Antique Geekmeister]

They may not actually be paid for by Microsoft, that's merely the obvious suspicion. This may be more of a "People's Front of Judea" vs. "People's Judean Front" sort of splinter group, who've discovered that their particular prized functionality will not be done at the expense of the stability of core format. A casual look at CDF, which they seem to be supporting now, shows it focused cell phones, which is a nightmare to support due to the small screen real estate and modest system resources.

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[Anonymous Coward]

There at least half a dozen, if not more [...] Actually there should be a significantly larger number of incompatible *.doc formats, since Microsoft, in their infinite wisdom, used to translate the function names and (some) keywords of the macro languages of the assiciated word versions. For 100% compatibility, one would need to have support for the english, german, french, italian... Word macro language. I'm still not quite sure if this is a security feature or just plain insane.

Hardly being ignored

[CarpetShark]

No one is "ignoring" microsoft's document formats -- quite the contrary. They're working their butts off to try to compete with a monopoly, and the monopoly keeps winning. At this point, in any non-corrupt society, Microsoft's format would just be made illegal for future documents (given some time to make the switch).

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Alright, so you're not humourless, just overly analytical ;) But I'll bite...

You laugh because your brain does a quick scan of it with out doing much processing, but then the thread in your brain in charge of deeper thought realizes that it doesn't actually make sense as a regular joke.

It may not make sense as a regular statement, but as a joke it doesn't need to, to succeed in making you laugh. There's no reason that all humour has to come from logical or sensible statements; often the nonsensicalness contributes directly to the humour. In this case the obvious unlikelihood of the situation (Mr. de Icaza promoting OOXML in order for it to be poorly received) serves as a subconscious tip-off that the statement isn't meant to be taken seriously.

Had the poster instead used the name of someone who actually would set up a foundation to sabotage OOXML, should such a hypothetical person exist, there would really be no joke there at all.

Stuff like this

[idontgno]

makes me long for the days of "rough consensus and running code".

PenOcument Oundation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah, that's a much sexier acronym. Good choice.

Wasn't ODF supposed to rule the world?

[Anonymous Coward]

I felt a great disturbance in the FOSS, as if millions of irrelevant voices suddenly cried out in terror... and were suddenly silenced.

Unless ..

[cheros]

If someone discovers that OOo Calc can accept and process trading feeds faster than MS Office you'll find Office ripped out of trading offices faster than you can say 'more profit'.

Traders don't really care one iota about what platform they run either - AFAIK most trade processors already prefer Linux with kernel mods for speed. In summary - if anyone proves this it's curtains for Office, and possibly Windows..

Thanks; that makes sense.

[roystgnr]

I still don't see that it's something which needs to be addressed in the document format specification, though. The idea is to make it clear that the original document interpretation was broken (and in what way it was broken), right? But if you put a special "I'm broken" tag into the format, that's just one more very irregular feature you have to build into every reader implementation. Is every office suite supposed to know that it should highlight broken spreadsheet cells in flashing red or something? It seems like it would be easier for the document converter to save two copies of each output document, the first with the formulae etc. intact and ready to be reinterpreted correctly, the second with the formulae replaced by raw output that matches what the broken office suite would have rendered. Properly deciding how to handle a broken document like that is always going to require someone to be able to look at both versions, isn't it? I'd think that figuring out a clever way to keep both versions in the same file (even if you use an existing mechanism for change tracking) would just obfuscate that requirement, not make it easier to meet.

And in other news

[Anonymous Coward]

Major League Baseball, Inc decides to stop playing baseball, in favor of becoming an extreme football league.

Harley Davidson Motorcycles, Inc decides to stop making motorcycles, to focus on making buses, light rail, and other mass transit systems. . .

Coors Brewing Company announced today it will stop making beer products, because it believes that bottled water and coffee is a more profitable business venture. . .

The Foundation For a Better Life announces, "Life Sucks! Pass it on." . . .

The American Lung Association issues press release, "Life is short, and if we could cure cancer, we would have by now. Enjoy Marlboro Cigarettes".

Re:So is ODF (the format) dead, then?

[Bill, Shooter of Bul]

Dear lord, I've been called over analytical on Slashdot. Maybe everyone else in the world is right?!?

Like, I repeatedly said it *can* be funny in a number of ways. I think most people who read it laughed at the gut instinct level. No that there is anything wrong with that, it just creates another layer of humor for those who get the irony.

Re:Thanks a lot, guys. B-(

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Thanks to you (and others) for setting me straight on this pair of sock-puppets.

Slashdot proves its worth again. B-)

(Too bad their status as big-sounding non-persons wasn't in the original post, but had to wait for the truth squad to assemble. B-( )

put it on Google Docs

[spage]

When someone e-mails you an evil Office attachment, upload it to Google Docs, http://docs.google.com and remail everyone a link to your version. Some smarter recipients will realize they can browse and collaborate on your version and still save it locally (in Office and ODF formats). Eventually Office gets marginalized, along with the moronic drudges that use its tool set inappropriately .

As a wise man once said: "I'm trying to ban e-mail attachments. I just want an ASCII e-mail. If you want to show me something, put it in a Web page, publish it, give me the URL, and I'll look at it. That's the new model."
Scott McNealy, CEO of Sun Microsystems, in May 1997 Upside magazine.

amazing swallows in Capistrano just need to know

[unity100]

that it would suffice for ms not to hamper any other format's development, like trying to bribe out standards board, bribing state senates in various countries to convert them from already made odf choice. if one plays legal, AND ethical, not exploiting legal system, there is nothing to be talked about it. if not, then the other party gets tougher too.

in the utopic option it would be good for microsoft to cooperate with odf in order to make both formats easily usable, and add odf to their office applications too. therefore they do not need to spend any unnecessary resources on developing ooxml, make use of a format that is already being developed and adopted by many sources, get on good side of the developer community, and get a good pr. many birds in one shot.