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.
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?
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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
Thats the thing. You cannot make your own office suite.
The 'open' standard is incomplete in addition to being a complete mess.
Only Microsoft has the blobs required to make MOOXML work. Only partial compatibility can be attained by other in the best of cases. OTOH ODF actually *is* an open format which is properly documented and which does evolve in the open.
On top of that, I'm not certain whether all of the Microsoft users can actually read/write MOOXML files. A large number haven't switched to the latest version of Office and don't seem to want to (or cannot if they're on Macs). In small structures I doubt they even know about the translator add ons for their version of Office (if it's even available for their version).
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
... 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...
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.
Agreed.
Let's switch to ODF then explain to millions of other people that we would be appreciative if they ignored the money they spent on Office 2007 and switch to an older interface that doesn't do quite as much.
I love OpenOffice and use it on my desktop at home, my company is part of the ODF alliance, but I would never switch my day job's network to Open Office simply because of the fact that we have to do business with the rest of the world. (Which bothers me quite a bit, considering I love the concepts behind Open Source)
"Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
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.
There are ODF readers and writers for every major office suite already. I'm sure eventually there will be OOXML readers and writers too. That isn't the issue. This is nothing to do with MS Office or any other office suite. This is nothing to do with open source software versus proprietary software.
/. can't keep this basic distinction clear, we are definitely doomed.
This is to do with open *standards* for *information*. The beef is about control over your information, for reasons of interoperability, automation, preservation and a having a vibrant, free-market, competitive software industry that benefits everyone. Standards, standards, standards.
If people on
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?
Parent has a valid point. Only Office 2007 users can actually create MSOOXML. There is a tool for Office 2003 SP2+ users to read those documents.
If you are running Office XP, or God forbid 2000 you're forcing constituents to "upgrade," which is certainly no help to them.
I do not have enough Mac experience to know - Does Office 2004 have a plugin to read MSOOXML? I'd bet not. That locks out even more people.
At least with ODF, users can create plugins for the Office 2003 and earlier users to *create content.* Or they can get a freely available suite if they don't want to pay. I'd say that gives opportunities to anyone who wants it.
Gah. Here's a FAQ you may find useful:
Q: What does open office and MS Office have to do with a document standard?
A: Nothing.
Q: What does the GUI of your word processor have to do with the format you save a document in?
A: Nothing.
Q: Why do you need to use open office if you use ODF?
A: You don't, use whatever software you like.
Q: What does the open source software development model have to do with open information standards?
A: Nothing.
Q: Does using ODF mean that communists will steal my children?
A: No.
Q: Will aliens eat my brain if I equate information standards with software implementations?
A: Yes.
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.
Part of the rationale for OOXML is that organizations and developers can extend it with additional features: (http://www.ecma-international.org/news/TC45_current_work/OpenXML%20White%20Paper.pdf)
So users (including application vendors) can extend the format to meet future needs. Sounds good, until you realize the claim made above is technically impossible: you can't guarantee semantic interoperability with vendor extensions, only syntactic interoperability. In other words you can parse the custom bits into their components, but you don't necessarily know what to do with them.
The upshot is that you are not only locked into MS products, you are thoroughly chained to their upgrade cycle as well. One of the great attractions of having a standard is the idea that you should be able to interchange documents between Word 2020 and Word 2015; however this can't be guaranteed. On top of this Microsoft's own track record with consistently rendering its own formats between app versions is poor, and combined with the sloppiness of the OOXML standard, you can't even count on upward compatibility.
OOXML fabricates entirely new component standards for things like vector drawing instead of using existing standards like SVG. This means you are not only locked into MS products in cases where 90% of the world uses them, but you're nudged into MS products where only 10% of the world uses them.
Finally, it is inaccurate to frame this as a choice between MS Office and OpenOffice. It would appear that MS is the only organization that can create a fully compliant OOXML implementation, whereas ANYBODY can write ODF, whether they are commercial vendors like IBM/Lotus or open source projects like Abiword or Gnumeric. Furthermore if Microsoft refuses to implement an ODF standard, MS Office users could still work with ODF by several mechanisms, such as an Office VBA extension, through an XSL transformation program, or by saving in a legacy format and processing with the OO import filters. The undocumented proprietary features of the document would of course be stripped out by this, but that's the very point of having a standard: to have your documents in a completely documented format.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
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
It can't.
Try hand-creating a MOOXML file with a text editor, then loading it into Office 2007. It's VERY easy to write documents which conform to the "standard" but aren't correctly parsed by Office 2007.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
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.
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?
I wish! Then we'd be rid of idiots like him!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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.