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UOF Vies to Be a Third Contender in ODF–OOXML Battle
Andy Updegrove writes "Long-time followers of the ODF-OOXML story will recall that there is a third editable, XML-based document format in the race to create the documentary record of history. That contender is called UOF, for Uniform Office Format, and it has been under development in China since 2002. Last summer, UOF was adopted as a Chinese National Standard, and on Friday the first complete office suite based upon UOF was released. It's called Evermore Integrated Office 2009 (EIOffice 2009 for short). How successful could this new entrant be in China? For starters, Evermore Software Co. Ltd., its developer, is reportedly the largest software vendor to the Chinese government. And then there's price: Evermore's professional edition is less than a quarter of the price of the comparable version of Office 2007. And finally, it's clearly no coincidence that on July 11, Evermore Vice President Cao Shen called for Microsoft to be the first target for China's new anti-monopoly law, which will take effect in just ten days' time. Whether Shen is speaking to, or for, the government remains to be seen."
The enemy of my enemy is my friend. On the one hand, you have MS (anti-competitive, anti-freedom), and on the other, you have China (anti-freedom, police state). I guess which one is the 'friend' depends on one's POV.
Coming soon from MacDonald Software, the Enterprise Interoperability Evermore Integrated Office release (E-I-E-I-O).
I can't (yet) think of any reasons for them not to open up (properly) the format so that OO.org can read it.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Last I knew, they were working on a way to harmonize UOF with ODF. How is that going?
Seeing as how both ODF and UOF is based upon open standards (based on Wikipedia), what advantages does UOF offer over ODF?
They should have called it the Uniform Format of Office. UFO sounds way better than UOF.
That's how this Chinese company understand the rule. Buy the government then their shit becomes standard.
Seeing as how both ODF and UOF is based upon open standards (based on Wikipedia), what advantages does UOF offer over ODF?
Less jail time if your Tibet protest pamphlets are saved in UOF?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The AC is right. How many versions of wordprocessor extensions do we really need? Since anything official (courts government, etc.) has to be in PDF these days why not just use Acrobat for all of it? Who cares if it's closed source?
How about native support for mkv video? That would be news. How about native 64 bit software? Let's really try somthing new, code a wordprocessor to actually use multithreading! Nah! let's just cook up a new extension for text files, and then fight about it.
This whole wordprocessor thing has gone from the from the sublime to the ridiculous.
I hope they also try to ram UOF down ISO's throats. The ensuing chaos will require actual government to step in and impose a standard by fiat.
Or we could all just go back to using LaTeX. I'd be alright with that. Actually, I learned LaTeX after switching to odf, so I've always viewed LaTeX as an upgrade from odf.
The AC is right. How many versions of wordprocessor extensions do we really need?
I for one welcome our dyslexic UFO overlords.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
but it is NaN times more expensive than OpenOffice.org!
How many versions of wordprocessor extensions do we really need?
One or two. And one or two for spreadsheets, and presentations, and so on.
The point is that it should be the right one or two. It would kind of suck if that extension ended up being TXT, right?
Since anything official (courts government, etc.) has to be in PDF these days
Unless it's Excel -- which was the case last time I looked at the federal budget, if I recall.
why not just use Acrobat for all of it? Who cares if it's closed source?
PDF != Acrobat.
PDF actually is an open standard, and is well supported by several open readers. While there are many Adobe-specific quirks, and Acrobat is arguably the worst PDF reader out there (heh, I just typoed it "Acrobad"), PDF is still very useful in a lot of contexts.
There are two problems with this: First, PDF is read-only (not everything should be).
Second, your mother doesn't know how to save as PDF. She'll still send you whatever the default format for her office suite is. It would really help if that default format was something we all know how to read -- that's the point of having a standard, so we don't have to think about this anymore.
So, you see, you actually should care about this debate -- precisely because if we win, no one will have to think about it anymore.
How about native support for mkv video? That would be news. How about native 64 bit software?
Both of these already exist.
let's just cook up a new extension for text files
And that about shows your complete lack of understanding.
It's not just a "new extension", it's actually a different file format -- there's a lot more work that has to go into this than typing "odt" instead of "doc".
And it's not just word processing. It's presentations, spreadsheets, pretty much all office formats. But sure, let's pick the least useful of these for our most common example...
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
\begin{comment}
\begin{quote}
This whole wordprocessor thing has gone from the from the sublime to the ridiculous.
\end{quote}
What's a `word processor'?
\end{comment}
So I take it the UOF standard will allow you to write anything as long as its not political, anti-social or anything about human rights? I wonder if it has its own version of Clippy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clippy? "I see you are writing an article on human rights. Would you like to see a list of government agencies that are watching you?"
How about we don't use any of them? LaTeX is way better than any WYSIWYG.
Uniform Office Format explained on Wikipedia.
Here is software that will convert between ODF and UOF, written by the Open Standard Lab of Peking University. In the process of writing this software, they have been participating in the UOF standardization process and talking with ODF folks to make sure the two formats can be converted well.
The UOF is a written standard approved by the Chinese national standardization bodies - not just "whatever ElOffice does". I don't know if there is an english translation - I have been able to find one with google.
They developed a full-fledged word processor?, what are the capabilities, platform, requirements or features. Or is just the format and a convertor from-to ODF or .doc?
1. Get a team of programmers and sponsor them with big chinese govt. money
2. Put them to work to get rid of Microsoft
3. Profit!!
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary, over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore, while I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. "Tis some visitor", I muttered, tapping at my chamber door... only this, and nothing more.
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
I don't avoid MS Office or Windows because they're from Microsoft. I avoid them because they cost a lot and I don't really like them that much anyway. I also don't like the way that Microsoft doesn't give me the freedom to use them how I want to. Why should a format, OS and/or Office suite that originates from China be judged any differently?
I'm not a great fan of China or its policies, many of which I find quite abhorrent and I'll protest about them in my own way for what they are. China's a massive and very complext place, though. If UOF and EIOffice are actually beneficial and useful (neither of which I could vouch for because I haven't seen them), wouldn't it just make sense to encourage them on their individual merits?
Exceptions to this might be if you could show that the UOF specifications were developed by jailed political prisoners being unjustly forced to live in torture chambers and design document format specifications against their will, and perhaps you wouldn't want to encourage that kind of thing if it's likely to continue happening. But if you ignored ideas simply because of where they came from rather than the merits of the ideas themselves, you'd be restricting yourself a lot and we probably wouldn't have many of the beneficial things we have today.
I know this is being considered by standards committees, but I was wondering if there's a national security angle to this? Could you slip anything subversive into a standard? I mean, from the defense angle I can see dependence on a U.S. corporation as a huge deal, but other than that...?
I can see a future where English-speaking users struggle through Chinese software that's badly translated but free and effective nonetheless...
It's called "HTML" and everybody is already using it.
Well, I suspect it's something along the line of a food processor. You know the kind - you put your ingredients into it, push a button and the result is something you wouldn't recognize if you didn't know what just happened.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
it would be good to know what
UOF does better than ODF ?
(is anything possible in UOF that ODF can NOT do...)
what actually makes it better apart from some contractor having a better understanding ?
regards
John jones
http://www.johnjones.me.uk
is quite common in China. However, as for UOF, this is not totally due to the Chinese standardization body. When the idea of the UOF standard was forming in 2002, ODF had not been on its standardization track yet. It turned out that the development of UOF was slower and ODF got ahead.
Another example of this kind of NIH is the standards for Chinese character encoding. There are a series of "GBxxxxx" standards (GB is for Guo-Biao, acronym for national standard in Chinese) which are totally incompatible with Unicode, but both GB and Unicode are widely used China, causing a great deal of pain and trouble. Some Web developers, unaware of the character encoding problem, screw up the Web pages by sending the wrong header or using the wrong XML declaration. Some email programs automatically fuck up your email's encoding. This also made distributed development more difficult.
Usually the "invented-here" standards are not technically better than the others. Some of them are too restricted in scope (e.g. the GB encodings can handle English, Chinese, Japanese kana and the Cyrillic alphabet, but few others). But now it may be too late to make a change.
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
You don't get to be in a position where you're the CEO/President of a company who's standard is "blessed" by the Chinese government without having very deep tendrils into the government itself (cough...corruption/nepotism...cough).
More often than not, there are personal and/or family relations between the regulators and the regulated in China that would land all the parties in jail in a developed country. Welcome to Chinese business 101.
I'm only hoping that openoffice will open all of that junk...nothing like getting a docx that NOBODY can open...
LaTeX is great, and is very useful when writing papers or manuals, etc.
It sucks for throwing together little one-off projects though. A little FAQ sheet. A letter to someone. A notice for the door. That kind of stuff. Word or Publisher (even Powerpoint sometimes) are just the ticket for that sort of thing.
Word is also handy for doing labels and envelopes since it's mail-merge is so simple.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
It does complicate matters for microsoft, perhaps much more than it does for the odf. But I'll be supporting* the odf no less!
*I only really care marginally because there is a free format in competition. It's like fighting over what pen ink to make popular, for crying out loud.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
It sucks for throwing together little one-off projects though. A little FAQ sheet. A letter to someone. A notice for the door. That kind of stuff.
Why not use plaintext files for that kind of stuff? It's much faster, and uses up far less disk space than any zipped-XML or binary format.
I don't remember where from, but I remember hearing something about merging UOF with ODF.
The AC is right. How many versions of wordprocessor extensions do we really need?
Three and half.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
How about we don't use any of them? LaTeX is way better than any WYSIWYG.
+1
It's a shame that LaTeX isn't more widely used. There seems to be a stigma surrounding anything non-WYSIWYG.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
OOXML is 2 (at least the documentation is), ODF is 1, and OUF is .5?
Because it looks awful.
Look, even SLASHDOT, home of the nerds, uses formatting .
The goal here isn't to reduce file sizes. Honestly -- for a one off project? The disk space is negligible. And even if you could use HTML-ized "plaintext" to convey formatting, suddenly it's not "faster" to author, especially for anybody who's not a psychotic tech fiend.
The goal here is to make approximately what you want, as quickly & easily as possible. Plaintext fails at "as fast as possible". LaTeX is harder than WYSIWYG editors for loose approximations at a small scale, and easier than WYSIWYG for tight approximations (especially where math is involved) at a large scale, with never-ending arguments over the exact boundary on those two axes.
Disk space? Really? Honestly, that hasn't been a concern of mine in about 10 years or so - unless you are counting my video editing. I don't know what the total amount of space from Word documents on my computer is, but I'd wager it's well under a GB.
Faster is another non-issue these days. There is not a perceptible difference in launch time between my text editor of choice and any WYSIWYG word processor that I use, and WYSIWYG is decidedly faster.
I don't even remember how to make a plain text file come out in a bigger font on my printer - and even if I did I'd need to preview it first to make sure it all fit on one page.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And finally, it's clearly no coincidence that on July 11, Evermore Vice President Cao Shen called for Microsoft to be the first target for China's new anti-monopoly law, which will take effect in just ten days' time.
Evil seem to be experiencing some kernel-panic.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
Here in MN and ND we would like to use Uniform Format Diverse Applications (UFDA)
Because I don't know LaTeX, and don't have time to learn, especially for a one-off project. But even my grandmother knows Word. (Not making that up -- she also uses email, albeit very slowly.)
And because I can't recall ever needing the advanced features of LaTeX. I don't even use all of a WYSIWYG word processor's features -- when I use a word processor.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Because I need to format it. Trivial example: I want to print huge letters, one per page, so I can make a big sign to put in the window, for a one-night-only event (prank, actually).
Or because I'm writing up a resume. Like it or not, plain text looks unprofessional next to a proper resume, with contact info right-justified at the top, proper (graphically) bullet-pointed lists, and maybe even a photo.
So "faster" is a non-issue -- I can make a text file faster, and I do that for things like READMEs in software, but it won't do what I want for a resume, a big party sign, a "Lost dog -- Reward" sign, or any of the many other uses for desktop publishing.
And because even if I did this every day for the rest of my life, it would still use an insignificant amount of disk space -- even if I stored the XML unzipped, in a folder (which some apps can do).
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
However, $\lim_{x\to\0}\frac{1}{x}=\infty$
So, the litmus test for this new UOF format is: 'will it blend?'
Not quite what I was thinking, but it works. The 0.5 is how that one creepy admin stores his porn.
What's the value of information that you don't know?
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Whatever solution openoffice offers should consider some integration with the Global Computer users' most popular computer activities(i.e. in China QQ, movie watching, game playing, office productivity). Simply offering a document standard and tool to create those standard documents isn't enough.
There needs to be much more effort in presenting open-source solutions on the ground, in the schools, in the government. As it stands, from my standpoint as a Conversational English teacher, in the Chinese schools I see nothing but Windows and Office.
As an open-source fan, it is only natural for me to bring in a live cd of Ubuntu to show them open-office, eva, gcompris and other open-source educational software. The teachers were truly impressed with the Google English to Chinese/Chinese to English translation tools. It's a big hit for this since the browser response seems to run faster than in windows in their perspective and not mine which is good news for Ubuntu/Google/Firefox. The kids love gcompris and pydance. I even got the USB floor dance pad for them and they love to jump all over it.
On the downside, most of the computers around here only have 256MB on them and UBUNTU won't install on them, but some teacher PC's have 512MB RAM thank God.
We need more English teachers that are Linux fans in China. It would help to influence China's computer infrastructure by demonstrating what's available to them that truly competes with any other offerings out there.
Cheers :)
has to be in PDF
Only in your country. There is a whole big wide world outside of it, you know, and we don't all think that PDF is the answer to the problem.
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
What Microsoft could do is, start offering doses of opium free to the Chinese with purchases of Windows. Then, if the Chinese government tried to stop it, Microsoft could claim foul to our government, who would land troops and suppress the Chinese government enough to ensure that the opium was distributed so that people would turn to Microsoft for more opium.
This is my sig.
Why didn't you just learn traditional shorthand instead of all of that rube goldberg mess you did? About as fast as it gets, a "standard" for decades for note taking before "word processing" was even invented.
"What's a `word processor'?
Evidently something I wasn't using when crafting my rant.
"A word processor (more formally known as document preparation system) is a computer application used for the production (including composition, editing, formatting, and possibly printing) of any sort of printable material." (WIKI Quote)
When I started in IT, every office was equipped with numerous IBM Selectrics and a few standalone word processors.
The first machines that could store document text and formatting were called word processors, and that was also the job title of those who used those machines for document production.
So in your country government and courts don't use PDF? Ever? On what planet is this country? Many EU courts and government agencies currently require downloadable documents which they provide to the public to be formatted in PDF. So if not PDF filings then PDF releases. The point isn't that we should all go to PDF. The point is why introduce yet another incompatible format?
How many versions of wordprocessor extensions do we really need?
One or two. And one or two for spreadsheets, and presentations, and so on.
The point is that it should be the right one or two. It would kind of suck if that extension ended up being TXT, right?
Operating Systems using extended attributes for file types (like OS/2 and Mac OS X) have no problems when all extension are the same. In fact they work perfectly well with no extensions at all.
It's not just a "new extension", it's actually a different file format -- there's a lot more work that has to go into this than typing "odt" instead of "doc".
This is why I think IBM and Apple got it right in not relying on extensions for file formats and it would be better of if we did not have them at all. And I don't speak about hiding them - which only leads to "Summer Vacation Photo.jpg.exe" exploits.
Interesting side note on hiding extension: With Mac OS X hiding extensions is an (extended) attribute of the file so you can decide for each file separately if you want to see the extension or not.
Also note that NTFS and most Linux file systems support extended attributes as well - Windows and Linux just don't use all the features there file system offers.
And before you ask: Both OS/2 and Mac OS X support extended attributes on FAT as well (both using hidden files to keep them).
But wait: Windows and Linux don't have fall back mechanism for file systems which don't support extended attributes natively. That might be the reason they don't use them.
Martin
Good point.
I think we agree more than we disagree, (My comment wasn't one of my my best, but sometimes a little hyperbole stimulates some interesting conversation).
My point isn't that we should all go to PDF. The point is why introduce yet another incompatible format into the mix?
The average IT shop currently supports how many document formats right now?
With how many suites of apps to create them?
I've actually lost count.
LaTeX is great, and is very useful when writing papers or manuals, etc. It sucks for throwing together little one-off projects though. A little FAQ sheet. A letter to someone.
Lyx
~/.mozilla/firefox/<profile>/chrome/userContent.css
/* Override the default boxing bar */
.contain {
/* Override the boxing bar when replying */
.inline_comment {
@-moz-document domain(slashdot.org) {
border-color: -moz-use-text-color #FFFFFF rgb(255, 255, 255) !important;
}
border: 0px;
margin: 1.5em;
}
}
Rules without !important are overruled by author rules if the author sets any. Rules with !important overrule author rules.
The only thing that makes userContent.css an excruciatingly painful experience is the fact that you actually have to _restart_ Firefox after making any changes. How 1994 is that?
Perfect is the enemy of done.
Let's see, we need one in GTK, one in Qt, one in Athena, one for the native Mac look, one for Windows that won't work with anything else... that's at least five already.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Many EU courts and government agencies currently require downloadable documents which they provide to the public to be formatted in PDF.
This is news to me - perhaps I'm learning something new. Where is this requirement mandated? Is it in an EU directive? I cannot find any reference to it in UK or FR legislation. But simply because I cannot find any reference to it doesn't mean it isn't a fact, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. Cite or reference please - or are you just making this 'fact' up to bolster your argument?
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
Is there any other way to do LaTeX? :)
Lyx is cool - but still not as quick and dirty as a WYSIWYG editor when you are more concerned with layout and appearance for a single page or two.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
How can a standard be based on software? Isn't it the software which makes use of a standard?
Also sort of the idea of using a standard for data representation would be to make it possible for various software to support it.
And finally even if Eloffice was the only application supporting the standard Eloffice is written in Java and Microsoft Office is not so why the fuck would it be "stolen, bootlegged or otherwise-ripped-off software"?
So much bullshit in this thread.
The Evil of Microsoft, or the Evil of China?
I think I'll at least give credit to Microsoft for executing fewer people. At least, that I know about.
According to what I've googled, this is based on what was originally called "RedOffice", the Chinese fork of OpenOffice.
If UOF is based on a product derived from "RedOffice", that means the format is likely to have similar limitations to ODF and OOXML, both of which are based directly or indirectly on Word's document structure.
The problem is that Word's document structure is awful. It's not a hierarchical format in any meaningful sense, the only nestable structure is the table, and the basic block is a fully qualified paragraph or a fully qualified style. Every Word-compatible word processor I've used has had this same problem, and it makes any kind of automated processing of the resulting document a pain in the neck... or forced blind reliance on complex and opaque libraries.
Even raw HTML is a better format for documents than anything based on Word's document structure. Heck, even for archival purposes where layout is critical, Postscript or simple PDF is a better choice than a Word-derived format: it retains details of the layout and you don't need an editable format for archiving, and it's well defined with multiple existing implementations.
What the world needs is a good word processor that uses something like Docbook as its native format.
The only thing that makes userContent.css an excruciatingly painful experience is the fact that you actually have to _restart_ Firefox after making any changes. How 1994 is that?
So use stylish, unless you are running nightly builds or something.
Sorry, some people aren't getting the joke. (you got an "Insightful" mod?). Obviously didn't notice the use of the words "sublime" and "ridiculous" in your last sentence -- that was the tell...
So, I have to hit them over the head -
mkv video native support? Of course, mkv is a COMPLETELY OPEN format. Native support is in (most) open OSs by default.
Native 64 bit software? If you have the source, rebuild it.
Multithreading word processor? Of absolutely no benefit.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
It was worth citing the claim, I'll take that beer now. :-P
Heh, it was up to +4 Insightful, but has been down-modded and up-modded a whole bunch.
I was replying to a FP troll and trying to have some "on topic" fun at the same time, then it got all serious on me and I really hate burning up karma on a flippant comment.
So here I find myself defending an untenable position, where almost everyone missed the point to begin with.
I made the front page with a journal entry today so it's actually a good day, in spite of this thread.
Note to self: Never to make a joke when there's some dough-head around to take it seriously.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
No, please look again. I didn't say that PDFs are not used, simply that I am not aware of there being any REQUIREMENT for them to be used. And I have looked at each of the cites now, but nowhere can I find where it says that PDFs MUST be used. Can you please direct me to where that statement is made? Otherwise your cites are useless for supporting your argument that "some jurisdictions require them". I think you will find they use them but they are not forced to do so. I am quite content to be corrected on this. Simply, as of today, PDFs seem the best of the options available but they can be improved upon.
There are many reasons why PDFs are not suitable for long term archive of information. Let me give you one example - although I am sure you can think of many more for yourself - as to why they are not acceptable. Imagine in 100 years time that someone in the US wants to study decisions made in Europe early in this century which, if we follow your suggestion, will have been saved as read-only PDFs. He wants to load them into his his word processor so that he can manipulate them himself. He needs to change the font to suit the rest of the report that he is writing, plus add some links to his own work. How do you achieve that with a PDF? Do you expect him to scan each page in? There may be a solution that I am unaware of, but I have had this problem and eventually asked for the data in another format which was usable. Now I know that there are programs that will let you edit PDFs (but OpenOffice does not - I've just tried again!) - but it is not our place to dictate what software people must use in 100 years time. They should be free to use whatever word processing tool they want. That is why an open format is so important. Even if the word processor that was used to produce the original document is no longer in use, and perhaps even the original hardware that the word processor runs on cannot be easily replicated, but if the format is known then the document can be reproduced exactly as the original, or modified to suit any new page size, change of font, or whatever is needed. That is why there is such a fuss about this. Microsoft will not tell anyone how their formats work so how can someone in 100 years time reproduce the document?
If I could send you a beer I certainly would - I'm just going upstairs to enjoy one now! :-)))
Have a look at soylentnews.org for a different view
Does anyone else find it ironic that a (supposedly) Communist country has passed an anti-monopoly law?
PDF was mentioned in this interesting, now 5 years old, advisory Valoris report (as PDF, of course ;-)).
I can really recommend this as it shows how much strife and conflict we've all had the past 5 years, and how much is at stake :-/
Apparently, the next version of the European Interoperability Framework is in the making, and these months you can post public comments. So if you think UOF should be adopted by European governments, now's your chance :-)
The draft document is at this location, and probably chapter 8 is most relevant for us Slashdotters. Note MS = Member States and PEGSCO = IDABC management committee (nothing to do with SCO).
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
LaTeX is very good within its niche, which is typesetting books and journal articles (and it's particularly good for mathematical and scientific texts).
However, that doesn't mean it's perfect for every situation. Things can start getting complicated very quickly if you are doing anything other than typesetting a book or journal article, particularly if you have very particular layout desires. For example, flowing text round images can be incredibly difficult to get right.
In fact, some layouts -- even deceptively simple ones are essentially impossible to produce automatically, so you have to fall back on manual tweaking. At which point you're no longer using LaTeX for its automatic layout capabilities, which are its strong point: you're just using it as a slow and non-visual tool for manual layout, which is the one thing WYSIWYG word processors are better for.
Really? I bet she doesn't, you know. If she's anything like my grandmother, then she "knows" Word in the sense that she knows how to click on the icon to launch it with that clever mouse thing (though she always has to pause to remember whether it's a left click or a right click, and she always double-clicks just to be sure), and then she knows that you enter text by pressing the buttons with letters on them on that thing that's like a paperless typewriter. On a good day she can just about remember about copying and pasting. And that's basically it.
I wouldn't call that "knowing" Word. You could put anything in front of her and she'd use it the same way -- probably even Emacs (the weird keyboard shortcuts wouldn't be an issue, because she doesn't use keyboard shortcuts).
Look at texmacs
There's a slight learning curve - make sure to change the key bindings. I've been using it for about a year after using Lyx for nearly three and would never go back.
How about we don't use any of them? LaTeX is way better than any WYSIWYG.
+1
It's a shame that LaTeX isn't more widely used. There seems to be a stigma surrounding anything non-WYSIWYG.
I completely disagree. WYSIWYG and good formatting aren't mutually exclusive.
I've been using texmacs for about a year and have yet to find something that I can't do it that I can in LaTex. At the same time it's WAY faster: I started typing up my ( math ) problems sets in about the same time it took me to write them out by hand and re-copy them.
Look at texmacs There's a slight learning curve - make sure to change the key bindings. I've been using it for about a year after using Kile for nearly three and would never go back.
I meant to write Kile, not Lyx. Sorry slashdot.
Well... what about if this format is just basically a copy of ODF or MS OOXML with tag names and structure artificially and trivially altered. One can then reject this as the standard on the same ground as rejecting a trivial patent -- non-original no additional benefits.
I have not even heard of such office suite even though I read Chinese news everyday and in the software business. I heard of the "Gold Mountain" office suite. Everybody -- government or citizens -- use nothing but MS Office. But I'm willing to bet $100 that the above is exactly what's happening given the nature of tech standard coming from China: some guys connecting to some officials imitates an existing standard, make some useless alternation, push it as the "national standard" and wish to be able sell the software because of that. Of course, the good thing is that nobody -- not even the various government agencies -- would pay a shot for that.
Really? I bet she doesn't, you know....I wouldn't call that "knowing" Word.
It is, however, much more "knowing Word" than it is "knowing LaTeX." And yes, she can and does format things properly.
Funny how you presume to know what she's like, having never met her.
Or is it that you interpreted "knows Word" as "has used and memorized every single feature Word has"? If that's the case, I don't know word, and I doubt anyone does.
probably even Emacs (the weird keyboard shortcuts wouldn't be an issue, because she doesn't use keyboard shortcuts).
Which means, if she's doing things visually, that she still would be better off with Emacs than with LaTeX.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
The point is why introduce yet another incompatible format into the mix?
Ask Microsoft.
ODF was intended to be one standard, to replace all the existing ones. It had support from some government agencies, which were planning to mandate its use internally. That's the one thing that finally got Microsoft pretending to do open standards -- OOXML may have come first (I'm not sure), but it wasn't viable until ODF became a threat.
With how many suites of apps to create them?
And that's the point. With a standard, it's possible to actually have competing or niche apps which share the same document format.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!