Slashdot Mirror
New York Decision On ODF Vs. OOXML Approaching
christian.einfeldt writes "In August of 2007, the State of New York passed legislation requiring its CIO, Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, to gather information on the advantages and disadvantages of adopting either ODF or OOXML as a document standard, and to report her findings by 15 January 2008. As part of her duties under that legislation, the CIO issued a Request For Public Comment to get feedback on the topic. The deadline for that public comment is 28 December 2007 — so there is still time for the Slashdot crowd to be heard."
Am I the only one surprised that this was actually posted here before the deadline?
If you don't do something as quick and simple as writing to ask for something, what right do you have to complain when you don't get it. If just a small fraction of the people here write in support of ODF, that will be a huge and impressive response.
There's enough complaining about OOXML et al on this site. Put your money where you mouth is.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Mostly though emphasis on the "polite" part. Imagine how persuasive someone can be when they're not a dick about it and when they just lay out some good clear arguments :)
When is a standard not a standard?
Perhaps... it's when the company who wrote it won't pass it over to standards bodies.
Perhaps we ought to have "varying" standards for road design... or we should have ever-changing standards for building construction.
Considering this is public documents are at stake, it is our history. It is no less important than safety.
...I've just about given up on politicians in this state. Albany has not been able to pass an on time budget for...actually, I don't think I was even born the last time they passed an on time budget. Governor Pataki was a union-busting asshole, and Governor Spitzer has failed to fulfill his promise of restoring integrity to Albany. Hillary Clinton votes for one idiotic bill after another, and Chuck Schumer voted in favor of Mukasey (need I say more?).
Palm trees and 8
would the gathering of requirements not work out better if the deadline were in 1 month from now, not 11 months before now?
"The Devil does not know a lot because He's the Devil, He knows a lot because he's old." -- unknown
Not even Windows users like OOXML. Even the ones with Office 2007 usually save into .doc format. I don't see why we can't just go with plain old .doc. Sure it isn't as "open" as ODF, but OOo and Office can read them well enough (now if I got to make the plans, it would just be plain .txt, fast and easy to read, who needs formatting) to see what they are saying. But OOXML just plain isn't adopted anywhere, it lacks support for non Windows platforms and no one really knows what the "standard" actually is, and knowing MS's previous actions, they will soon "extend" OOXML to have "features" that will make the free/open source document readers have yet another thing to deal with. So why can't they go with .doc? Or better yet HTML? Even .txt would be better then OOXML, even though ODF is nice, Windows systems with Office need "plugins" to view them.
There is no "disagree" moderation, and troll, flamebait and overrated are not valid substitutes
Fuck all these document formats. XHTML, CSS, PNG, SVG and PDF work just fine for displaying virtually any sort of data.
XHTML is the container. It allows for textual documentation to be represented, and allows for other data representations to be embedded within that container. Its native support for tables makes it usable even as a spreadsheet (which can be powered by JavaScript).
CSS allows for very complex document layout and stylings to specified with ease and conciseness.
SVG can represent nearly all vector-based pictorials, including many forms of graphs. Bar charts are easily represented with rectangles, and a pie chart is easily represented as a collection of filled arcs. SVG's scalability allows for these charts to be resized really easily.
PNG images can be used for all other images that aren't best represented using SVG.
PDF is the perfect format for bundling all of those other resources together in a medium that displays on almost any system.
Best of all, those are all open standards, with free implementations available for almost every operating system and platform. There's just no need for this ODF and OOXML bullshit.
Was she required to invent a time machine to meet that deadline? ""In August of 2007, the State of New York passed legislation requiring its CIO, Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, to gather information on the advantages and disadvantages of adopting either ODF or OOXML as a document standard, and to report her findings by 15 January 2007. "
That would be stupid. I don't think "myminicity" are the people who are causing this...its just a friggn user on that page who is spamming the links...to improve his own "city" (i googled it, just to prevent giving him the bonus hit)
If you have something to say...write an email. Otherwise don't...it might count the opposite direction of what you thought it would.
No kitty, this is my pot pie!
"in other words" is not spelled "another words".
Grammar on a final examination is as important as grammar in a letter to your congresscritter.
May your professor mod up your exam score.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
is when Microsoft is going to stop the shennannigans and start playing ball with the rest of the world.
.NET? Why would I want Silverlight over Flash?
Can someone tell me when the last time they tried to compete on innovation rather than vendor lock-in?
Can someone make the argument that OOXML is all about document protection for the consumer and not about keeping everyone else on the run?
Can someone tell me that Vista was supposed to make everything better for the USER?
Can someone tell me why I need DRM in my life?
Can someone tell me that C# is open and not proprietary? It only runs on one platform, theirs? How is that better than writing natively? The UI is only for IE with
Can someone tell me why they took scripting out of the OS?
Can someone explain to me why Steve Ballmer still has a job?
Can someone tell me if they are offering ANYTHING I want? As a user? As a developer?
Can anyone explain what I'm missing here?
I'm sick and tired of them making it unnecessarily difficult to do anything with computers. I know they are a business charged with profitability but is it too much to ask them to solve my problems with real solutions?
Is it too much too ask them to sell me something without a truckload of baggage?
I guess maybe it is.
Microsoft "Standard" is crap, real crap, why? i just tried to generate a spreadsheet in excel from C# for a customer, it *don't work* i tried to open in Excel 2003 and it don't work(only read-only workbook(crap), only in certain versions of the product), in the end the only solution was generate the xls with Interop. This is the way microsoft works, upgrade to Excel 2007!. The ODF standard is the way to go, i don't know about the final outcome of the standarization process, but... try to show your bosses why develop using ODF!, develop translators from ODF to Excel 2007 via Microsoft Office API's!, the final outcome is not which standard is approved by ISO, is which standard you use for everyday work.
I think someone should notify Cleveland that Melodie is the CIO of New York now.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one less travelled by. (Robert Frost, 1916)
Perhaps because I don't want to encourage a douchebag to work for nothing for a bunch of dataminers?
I think that slashdot.org people should submit their response as a group. It may be viewed as a bit biased, but slashdot is still a well known forum. The S/D admins will be viewed as they know a thing or two.
I also suggest that some work be put into few of the submissions, i.e. doing the work of the her. That's what your counterpart M$ will be doing. There is a saying (in medicine) that if you know the literature well you can defend almost any case (or decision). Placing the right arguments for this case would make a huge difference.
Think about it: New York, politics, Microsoft's money, the need for an objective decision. It is just so cute that everyone on Slashdot is discussing this seriously and talking about sending comments in; I wish I had a camera.
Perhaps Slashdot should block you. We don't want to post you to post links to your game.
Who cares what CIO Mayberry-Stewart decides? Standards are decided by international committees and not by individual states within a country. The future of OOXML and it becoming a standard rests with the ISO. Even then the ISO has published many standards that just sit on the shelf and are never implemented by anyone. Standardization doesn't equal adoption!
Iraq billions
anything you print can be made into a pdf with all the formatting exactly retained from the original. I also like RTF.. remember that? Word actually saves into it, rather well, although MS uses curly quotes to screw other competitors' translators up.. I got the idea for PDF because Sun Microsystems has new server software that will convert several formats into PDF, including I assume word and wordperfect.
--Sam
You can't get there if you don't have javascript enabled. It's more harmless for those of us using NoScript than any goatse link.
You answered your own question. Standardization does not equal adoption, but the State of New York is asking its CIO which format it should adopt. PDF became popular and a de-facto standard before ISO 32000 was approved, so it is important to note that a government is asking for public comment about which format to implement, regardless of ISO status.
If you actually RTFA, the report is due on January 15, 2008, not 2007.
Slashdot editors, can you please fix this already?
The first one of your points doesn't matter as long as the final three are true and one more:
The standard must be completely specified. It must be able to be implemented with no other information not present in the standards documents.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Has anyone actually read this survey?
It sounds like these folks have done their homework.
Check out Part 2.
Frankly, if somebody told me that implementing to OOXML would lock me in to 90% of the world as opposed to being totally free within the 10% Open Office market share I'd rather spend my tax dollars on being accessable to the 90% overwhelmingly vast majority. And then at some point FOSS will implement a OOXML reader/writer anyway. What's the beef here?
In the spirit of open source, screw the MS Office suite. Take the open OOXML standard and write your own office suite.
Dear New York,
I would like it realy realy much if you would use Microsoft one, because that would help my cause much better. As we have a history together, I am sure you will do this.
O. B. Laden
Then IF they select for Microsoft you can suddenly 'produce' the email/letter and those who choose for Microsoft will be send to Guantanamo and be an example for the rest of the USofA.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It's too bad Anonymous Coward has also become possessed by &*^%@*-ing link-posting lowlife spammers....
Someone should write a bot aimed against that game and post details here....
I realize the truly open standard isn't widely adopted, either, but at least you can point to a couple northern European provinces which are taking it seriously.
I mean, is there anyone so masochistic that they have actually already adopted OOXML?
expandfairuse.org
After all, you get MSOffice with the ODF converter (no lock) and use with the dozens of other players via ntive ODF support. And, since there's no technical or legal reason why they can't, MS could support ODF natively.
If you think MSOOXML is open, try making your own reader. If you must agree to terms or it opens you up to legal attacks then it isn't open. MSOOXML does this.
... that such a request is being issued smells like a big cloud smoke released to cover and justify the decision, which has already been made behind it :-( Such a representative is being *paid* to do the research. Who of you believe that millions (or even thousands) of public comments are going to be read and analysed for the real information? Yes, there is another alternative - she might be plain stupid but I still take it as a second option...
Now, mod me down freely. My karma can't get any worse...
the link leads to a page that says the page is no longer in service/available. what a hoax it has become pretending to solicit public opinion. soon, most/all our inf. will be delivered from one source, in a format that most will have to upgrade to see?
you have the right to remain silent. anything you may have to say is irrelevant, etc...
reminds us of robbIE's increasingly censored (no need to upset the adverti$er$) infactdead blog.
Either way, MOOX or what-you-call-it, does not comply with the definition for open or standard.
It's not even fully documented. Heck, even M$ itself doesn't use the specification. M$ itself adds cruft like scripts, macros, digital restrictions, encryption, and proprietary hooks like Sharepoint. Nor does M$ implement all of the features described in the MOOX (DIS 29500) specification and some of the extensibility 'features' in the spec even cause MS Word to crash.
One could almost draw the conclusion that DIS29500 is just a moving target for competitors to chase but never quite reach. M$ will not catch up to ODF.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Anyone who's a citizen knows enough about the requirements to make the fundamental point: that the information a government generates belongs to the people, and should not be tied up in a format that is controlled by a single organisation. OOXML is just such a format. More than that, it's a hugely stupid format, that no developer in their right (read: unbought) mind could possibly endorse.
What about in 10 years time, or 100 years time then the W3C spec have changed, or your HTML files on the census of people in NY for the year 2007 don't display correctly anymore.
It's not about today, it's about tomorrow and the next day.
Does anyone know how to respond on this? The link provided is dead, and searching the site it links to for odf and/or ooxml brings up the same dead page... I'd really like to respond on this!
The page linked in the article comes up not found. I'm a NY resident, I want to put in my 2 cents - how the hell do I do it?
Well this can only have one outcome, the answer WILL BE..... OOXML.
Why do I say that you ask ?
I had the displeasure of working for Melodie Mayberry-Stewart at the City of Cleveland. My very brief discussion with her about Linux went something like this..
Melodie: What are you reading ?
Me: A book on Linux Certification
Melodie: We'll never switch to Linux here, that would be taking a step backwards in technology 20 years, Microsoft is more advanced.
Meanwhile Companies like Novell, HP, Dell, and IBM are all embracing Linux
Well you really have to know Melodie to dislike her properly, from that brief conversation it was pretty clear she already had a closed mind on the subject. After pitting co-workers against each other, bringing in all her friends and people who brown nosed properly, and instituting 4 meetings a week so we had no time to get work done. The IT department was in worse shape than the horrible shape it was in before she started.
I think the final straw was when she said I couldn't take the vacation, that I had scheduled and PAID FOR, prior to her starting at the city. I got annoyed enough to finally quit and turn in my 2 weeks notice. Once I did Melodie wouldn't speak to me or even look me in the eye. Sorry, after knowing her I have absolutely no respect for this woman, I was not impressed with her knowledge of IT or her technical abilities, Frankly I questioned how she got the position to begin with. I feel sorry for the State of New York for being stuck with her now..
I hear from my old friends at the City they are now working on switching the Peoplesoft financial systems over to Linux... Funny how that timing worked out..
Anyone who's a citizen knows enough about the requirements to make the fundamental point: that the information a government generates belongs to the people, and should not be tied up in a format that is controlled by a single organisation.
The latter does not follow from the former.
A responsible government should make the information it generates available to the people, for as long as it may be useful (which may be indefinitely). Whether they do this by publishing it in some popular electronic format(s), or by providing reference copies and any hardware/software necessary to read them at public libraries, or by posting a printed copy to every citizen, or through some combination of means, doesn't really matter. What counts is that the people can access the information free of charge and without jumping through unreasonable hoops.
In any case, pretty much all effective standards are controlled by a single organisation, or even a single person, even if ultimately that organisation or person makes decisions based on the input of others. Take a look at the most successful, practical tools in the programming world. Does the world refuse to use Perl or Ruby because they're basically controlled by a single person or small group and not formally specified? Heck, the Python crowd even make a joke out of it. Meanwhile, the C++ standard may be an official ISO document, but as anyone who's watched the machinery grinding knows, it's still under the control of a relatively small handful of people, many of whom have a personal interest in driving it in certain directions and most of whom effectively pay a substantial sum of money for the privilege of having their voice heard. For the avoidance of doubt, this is not intended as criticism of anyone who works on any of these languages; I'm merely pointing out that just because something is standard, it doesn't mean it's not still effectively under the control of those prepared to spend a substantial amount of money to have their say.
More than that, it's a hugely stupid format, that no developer in their right (read: unbought) mind could possibly endorse.
Ah, proof by ad hominem attack. Somehow, I doubt you'll convince many developers in their right mind with that. :-)
It may have escaped your attention, but ODF isn't exactly the pinnacle of the software standards world either.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
http://www.oft.state.ny.us/News/erecords-study.htm
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
List all the advantages of using MS Office openly.
They can make more money from payola.
MS can contribute more money to the local schools, but only as MS licenses, that will not save any money in the long term.
They can offer you a certain career stability that you might not otherwise enjoy.
They will create more jobs for local companies that will use the MS platform to make money.
etc, etc.
List them openly. Embarrass the heck out of anyone who makes a Pro MS decision.
I work in publishing, and the format that we generally use is PDF, for just the reason you state. The typeface, page sizes, etc. are all contained in the PDF file, so there's no problem with footnotes moving pages, because the contents of the pages are fixed in the file.
I wish PDF were completely open and that we could convince everyone who distributes documents to use PDF for that purpose. All the problems you mention are just as troublesome when opening a Word file on two different machines (which is why "real" writers/publishers don't use Word). I can't tell you the time wasted on some of the rinky-dink (non-paper-published) projects I've seen where two people opening the same Word file saw different things because Word displays pages based on any number of different parameters that are not the same between machines. Heck, it doesn't even PRINT the same as it displays.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Ms. Van Sickle, In response to "Part I - General Questions," under "I. Information Requested," pertaining to "Terminology - Access," in addition to the very reasonable points listed there, I define a format's "accessibility" to include openness -- namely, the format must be based on open standards, and be guaranteed to stay that way in the future. This means that those standards are completely documented and specified, and available to anyone, and will remain so. The Microsoft OOXML standard does not meet this criteria. In fact, Microsoft has failed to keep its public promises regarding control of the standard (please see http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071206131310362 for more information on this from people involved in the ISO standardization process). Essentially, once the format is approved as an ISO standard, Microsoft wants to keep the standard under its own control; they will be able to accomplish this because, rather than turning the standard over to ISO, the standards body they plan to turn over maintenance of the OOXML standard to, ECMA, has an OOXML group chaired by not one, but two Microsoft employees (http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/TC45.htm). Once the standard is in the hands of ECMA, Microsoft will then be free to add or change features at their whim, leaving any who attempt to implement their standard unable to take advantage of the now *undocumented* features. Therefore, they will fail to be in full compliance with the standard. This will have the effect of locking businesses and government departments into the use of their software, just as if they were to continue to use MS' current, proprietary ".DOC" format. It will also have the effect that, in order for taxpayers to access documents whose creation they've paid for, they must also pay a private company an additional sum in order to access that information. That is plainly wrong. As a lifelong New York State resident, I am deeply opposed to this standard, for the simple reason that it encroaches on fundamental liberty. There is no justification for creating a de facto requirement that individuals or organizations will, now or in the future, purchase software from a *private company* in order to access public documents. Please consider following the good example of the Dutch government in adopting a completely open standard, such as the Open Document Format (see http://www.odfalliance.org/ for more information), and keep private companies from hi-jacking my public documents.
The answer here should be:
C. Neither is appropriate
NEITHER
a tightly controlled monopolistic, non-compliant "standard" that would knowingly give a specific company an unfair advantage
NOR
a sort of "standard" that is not ready for public consumption
If you have to choose, choose to extend the one that you have the most access to, but don't enforce a base standard that won't do the job.
I thought everyone knew that.
Now that this format war is so heated, it would be really advantageous to *verify* all the different vendors' implementations of ODF and MOOXML, by using that DTD you mention to validate that it's "really" correct, and send in bug reports when any text processor vendor doesn't meet the standard, so they can correct their implementation. I thought this was a significant advantage of using XML for any document format, be it Docbook, ODF or anything else.
That said, I just unzipped OpenDocument-v1.1.odt and passed its contents.xml through xsltproc with a small XSL stylesheet consisting of just the xmlns: elements mentioned in content.xml's header. xsltproc spat out the readable contents of the 738-page document as UTF-8 text; does that mean it's OK?
Can anyone please do the same to a large MOOXML document and post the results! That would be a nice comparison on the merits. We already have enough FUD here.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Of course it matters! You've obviously never tried to interface different systems or to find some way of using legacy data that no one makes a reader for any more. When a commercial company goes bust (or deliberately shuts down a division), all of the contracts you have for support are null and void.
Apart from that, there's the issue of competition, and competitive tendering, which governments have a duty to their citizens (and yes, to their private organisations) to provide.
On "proof by ad hominem attack"... what makes you think it was intended to be a proof of anything? It was a statement, for which you do your own research and find your own proof. I'm not your research department. Try not to confuse the two.
On ODF being the pinnacle of software standards? Never said it was. Nonetheless, my *statement* stands.
Of course it matters! You've obviously never tried to interface different systems or to find some way of using legacy data that no one makes a reader for any more. When a commercial company goes bust (or deliberately shuts down a division), all of the contracts you have for support are null and void.
No, it really doesn't.
No matter how "standard" some electronic format is today, it's still unlikely that 50 years from now your average home computer (or whatever the equivalent is by then) will read the legacy file format, or that any standard server (or whatever the equivalent is by then) will read the legacy physical media on which the original data resides. In the meantime, even if some business with a proprietary electronic file format goes bust, it's not like their software suddenly stops working, and the history of cracks for "activated" software makes it pretty obvious that this presents no realistic obstacle to retrieving the data in a worst case scenario.
In any case, this is not your problem or mine. It is up to the government of the day to make sure any government information that remains relevant is transferred to new media, hardware, file formats or other records in whatever way is necessary to keep it available to the public. National libraries have been doing this since long before Microsoft file formats were a twinkle in Bill Gates's eye. It might be in the government's interests at any given time to adopt an open standard to assist with this, or it might not. It really doesn't matter, as long as any citizen can get access to the information freely and reasonably easily.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Do you actually have any experience of government's need for historical archiving? It doesn't sound like it. Just go listen to Peter Quinn's speech on ODF, if you want some evidence against what you're saying.
As for it not being my problem. I'm a citizen. In a democracy, citizens are RESPONSIBLE for their government: electing it, keeping it in power, and legitimising it. Every choice your government makes affects the lives of everyone around you, now, and into the future. It most certainly is our problem.
Anyway, this isn't a topic that fascinates me all that much, so I'll call it a day here.