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
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. "
"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
Actually, they do have DirectX, and with it a lot of games. Can anyone explain what I'm missing here? As long as MS is still making a profit, they'll keep doing what they're doing. 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? Yep. Money is their only motivation. Is it too much too ask them to sell me something without a truckload of baggage?
I guess maybe it is. Guess you answered your own question there.
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.
She has OS 10.5, so no worries.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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