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Microsoft Office 2007 to Support ODF - But Not OOXML
Andy Updegrove writes "About two hours ago, Microsoft announced that it will update Office 2007 to natively support ODF 1.1, but not to implement its own OOXML format. Not until Office 14 is released (no date given so far for that) will anyone be able to buy an OOXML ISO-compliant version. Why will Microsoft do this after so many years of refusal? Perhaps because the only way it can deliver a product to government customers that meets an ISO/IEC document format standard is by finally taking the plunge, and supporting 'that other format.' Still, many questions remain, such as when this upgrade will actually be released, how good a job it will do, and whether the API Microsoft has said it will make available to permit developers to supply 'save to ODF' default plugins will be supported by a patent non-assertion promise allowing implementations under the GPL (the upgrade supplied by Microsoft will not allow ODF as the default setting)."
Chances of it having several Microsoft-specific "add-ons" that are patent-encumbered and not supported by the actual ODF spec: Approaching 100%.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
Not even they are going to implement it until the next full office release. You have to admit, that says a lot about the standard.
Honestly, the first thing I thought when I saw this article was that it had to be some kind of April Fools article come late.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
So, in case anyone was still thinking that OOXML being confirmed as a standard wasn't a bad thing...
And as far as supporting ODF goes, I'd applaud Microsoft for taking a step in the right direction if they weren't constantly declaring themselves the victors over Open Source. I only wonder how they'll spin this.
You can say all negative things you will about it, but this is a great victory for ODF.
-- Cheers!
- Will ODF spreadsheets be functionally equivalent to CSV?
- Will ODF text be functionally equivalent to plain-text ASCII with line breaks?
- WIll ODF presentations be JPEG renderings?
- Will ODF import and export take hours?
- etc.
I've occasionally been accused of having an evil mind, but I'm sure that professionals given weeks or months can come up with better kneecapping plans than the above amateur hipshots.Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
well - only if microsoft is able to buy their way through the standards process will anyone be able to buy an OOXML ISO-compliant version.
UKUUG is currently waiting on the UK judicial system to decide whether to do a judicial review of the British Standards Institute's recent decision to ratify OOXML.
clonking "comments" together in blocks of 100 for vote "yes no", towards the end of the (only) 5 day process, smells a bit fishy. especially as the comments weren't actually reviewed as having been actioned / corrected (in the 6,000 page document).
the BSI came up with something ridiculous like 900 comments on the 6,000 page document.
it's all incredibly fishy - long story. far too much to fit into one silly slashdot comment, so i'll stop.
So I guess speaking Hungarian and throwing eggs at Steve Ballmer actually did pay off.
It's all fun & games until someone loses the game.
Say what you will, this is a good thing. It'll expand the reach of ODF, which is an excellent format.
Whether or not MS will keep their mitts off it remains to be seen. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now. Suicidal, I know.
A: No, because companies are already so deep with old .xls files and macros built for said files that they will still be unwilling to transition from Microsoft Office to StarOffice.
That, and StarOffice just doesn't feel polished compared to MSOffice.
I seriously think that the macros built around companies' documents & spreadsheets are what's keeping them locked in to MSOffice, not the file format, per se
And for all you OO.o fans out there, don't even bother getting started; StarOffice is essentially OO.o, but with better support for MSOffice formatted documents, plus it has better tools like its thesaurus. OO.o may be nice for you, but there's a reason why Sun can sell StarOffice, and it's not because Sun's evil, and it's not *just* about tech support.
It may be that Microsoft is serious about supporting ODF, but I would not be surprised if it is somehow "crippled" or poorly implemented within the word processor and spreadsheet. Somehow I don't feel that you will be able to open an .odf made in Word with OpenOffice and there will be no "artifacts" or some loss of formatting, and vice versa of course. There are already issues with odf's opening across operating systems (usually a font issue causing discrepancy in formatting), and I am sure that Microsoft will use this opportunity to "make its case" for the "superiority" of its native format, whatever that format may be.
If this will not be, it will be a most astute business move. Making their office suite cost less would be even better.
For every present, there is a past
Jeeeze you people are harsh!
I think that Microsoft could announce tomorrow that they are giving out free blow jobs to anyone who uses Linux. As soon as the first blowjob was given out, someone would find something negative about it.
Andy
They may be selling it like pancakes, but I have also seen an upsurge in dissatisfaction.
1) Why do I have to learn a new interface?
2) Why is user X not able to open my files. Why can't we open our shared files?
3) Why is our file corrupted.
This issue has become so great that department managers have been asking me if we can go to OpenOffice.
Current plan is to minimize purchases of systems with Office 2007 and switch to OO next year, after the new version with file sharing comes out.
He who said 1,000,000 monkeys on 1,000,000 typewriters would eventually type the great novel, never saw an AOL chat room
"Retail sales of Office products from January through June [2007] were roughly double those of Office 2003 during its first six months on the market and up 59.6 percent from Office sales for the first six months of [2006]" - Source
Not exactly the failure you describe.
Developers: We can use your help.
The summary is a bit misleading. Current Office 2007 documents fail to validate as transitional OOXML because of some very minor differences. For example, the final standard changed an attribute value from "yes/no" to "true/false".
All major ODF implementations, including OpenOffice, fail to validate against ISO ODF 1.0 for similar reasons.
Thus, to make some big deal of Microsoft not immediately slipstreaming in an update to Office to 100% conform to OOXML, while ignoring the fact that OpenOffice still doesn't fully conform to ODF so long after ODF 1.0 was ratified is a bit hypocritical.
I know that the common perception on slashdot is that ODF is the only format we need because of its OO heritage. That is frankly a naïve position. The format was backed by IBM, Oracle and Sun for a reason. Right now MS' selling point for Office is features. Some would call it bloated - but MS Office still has more features than OO. That may not be that important to the vast majority of users, but it is a selling point nontheless.
Imagine a situation where MS could not leverage the feature advantage, because the standard persistence format could not represent the advanced feature set. Ink comes to mind; it's actually part of OXML but there's not anything like it in ODF. Representatives for Microsofts competitors could fight any extension (invoking the "err on side of caution" argument) of the format until OO/StarOffice was prepared to implement the feature as well. But that would actually stiffle innovation and hurt the customers who could actually realize a productivity gain from new features.
By creating a situation where we have two formats and already a situation where one is larger and with more features specified, Microsoft has got a situation where they can let the "conservatives" drive (or not) ODF, and Microsoft can be the primary driver of OXML, although they can now only make suggestions and requests. In short they have a situation where they stand a better chance at exposing the hidden agendas of their competitors representatives should they ever try to hold back Microsoft innovation in Office for compettitive reasons.
I don't believe for a second that the motives of IBM, Oracle and Sun were always free of hidden agendas. Of course they saw their involvement (and influence through merits) in ODF as a way to gain some control over the future of MS Office. Office has always been one of MS' best cash cows.
You can argue that we don't need any more innovation in the office productivity area. But that would be an opinion and not something you should base a standard upon.
Reading slashdot one-liner: (irm http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot).rdf.item | fl title,desc*
Sorry, but most people actually couldn't give a crap about standards. Most people just want a functional suite of office applications that works more or less the way they've come to expect such programs. Most people aren't even aware that there is such a thing as a file format, or that there are different types of them.
Most people also want to be able to easily exchange documents with other people. That's part of the reason why Office is so well entrenched. Sure, you can download a copy of OO to open an ODF file, but if you're running a business, you don't want to make your clients do that, because it's a hassle. Nearly everyone has Office, and practically nobody has OO (this is in rough marketshare percentages).
Don't get me wrong. I would rather have a clear, open standard with a decent existing implementation that's not tied to the whims of a vendor. But I and people like me really are a very small part of the market.
Office is Microsoft's biggest-selling product by revenue, even more than Windows. Since governments are mandating open formats, Microsoft has no choice but to implement ODF if they want to keep selling those lucrative enterprise agreements. Getting OOXML approved as a standard format was a huge win for them to be sure, but governments could (and will) just as easily standardize on ODF, especially given all the problems with OOXML. Microsoft used to rely on file format lock-in as a sales tool, but it seems now compatibility and (gasp) quality are Microsoft's selling points for Office. They're doing what it takes to maintain those huge sales.
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2008/may08/05-21ExpandedFormatsPR.mspx
Also, ODF will be allowed to be configured as the default format for documents.
SP2 will also include support for PDF and XPS export.
throw new SuccessException("Sig read successfully");
Comment removed based on user account deletion
(or of course like Orcs in Warcraft III we really really have misunderstood them ...).
Andy
I agree! I can't count the number of times I've been writing a letter to family and needed the wife to put in a few words. With the new Sharepoint integration its been a snap for us to collaborate on docs together (like the grocery list). All it took was an extra server, and new licensing seats. ~
I'm more scared of them supporting ODF than I am of OOXML. How do we know they aren't going to try to do what they successfully did to Netscape. They could easily add a bunch of their own stuff into ODF so that nothing but Office would be able to read the ODF files Office puts out.
If however they are really trying to comply with ODF then hats off to MS for being serious about embracing standards.
I'm glad to hear Microsoft's embracing Python.
First OOXML is not approved by the ISO yet. So by Office 14, the ISO will approve of a final format and OOXML support can be added to Office 14 and I am sure Microsoft will release retropatches for older Office versions to support it as well. Most likely going back as far as Office 2000 or Office 97.
Microsoft knows that OpenOffice.Org, Star Office, IBM Lotus Symphony, and other office suites already support ODF, and Microsoft does not want Office 2007 to be the pink elephant that does not support ODF, and Office 2007 users couldn't open up ODF format documents from friends and coworkers, and would flock to Office 2007 alternatives to open them up. Microsoft knows that would cut into Office 2007 sales as most ODF office suites are free to download and use.
Microsoft also knows that many governments have already decided to support ODF format documents, and if Office 2007 doesn't get ODF support, sales will go to Microsoft's competitors.
There have been massive online campaigns for ODF and against OOXML, this is Microsoft's way of silencing critics of Office 2007 that it does not support a true open standard.
Microsoft knows that MS-Word and PDF documents have already started to be replaced with ODF documents. Also the old RTF format no longer meets the needs of Internet documents anymore and MS-Word format is just a modified RTF format. Just as Adobe lost control of who uses the PDF standard, Microsoft knows that they can get control of the ODF format from Sun/IBM etc as well.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Slashdot sucks more and more every day.
But then, look at IE. It took some serious competition, in the form of Firefox, but IE finally did shape up and start adding features (tabs) and reasonable standards compliance.
All we really need, then, is an ACID test for ODF, in which we can show that OpenOffice, KOffice, Google Docs, and even isolated projects like AbiWord and Gnumeric do better than Office, thus shaming Microsoft into doing it right. That assumes they don't get it right the first time, although that does seem unlikely.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
When I say this sounds like a good sign...
But almost every time stuff like this happens, Microsoft eventually ends up playing their old tricks.
It would be cool if they surprised us this time, but they have far too great a credibility dept for me to think anything particularly good will come from this move.
I stole this Sig
You missed the ~ at the end of the sentence. In case you haven't seen the sigs and small discussions about it, the tilde (~) has been repurposed to indicate sarcasm.
There. Fixed that for you.
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
I've never once not been able to open my files with O2K7/8 or have had any problem sharing files.
Not a single corrupted file in many hours of use. The recovery system works fine in the event of a power outage or reboot without saving. I don't know where you're getting your data, but given my experience I'd say one of us is in the minority here. Given some of the other responses to your post I'm thinking it's you.
Then the first thing Ballmer will do is to throw him out.
When will you guys learn not to mention the word "chair" in a discussion involving Microsoft?