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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.
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.
How about we don't use any of them? LaTeX is way better than any WYSIWYG.
It's called "HTML" and everybody is already using it.
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/US/Any government
fixed that for you.
Like the US is any less corrupt than china, just look at US copyright law and the DMCA
-- Sex is the antonym of pringles. Once you pop it's time to stop.
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.
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!
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.
What you fail to realize is that most of the Americans who claim that the US is as bad as China probably know at least some of the points that you mentioned, and they know that in truth, the US is nowhere near as bad as China when it comes to human rights. But, see, that's not the point. Most of them are just these snide little DailyKos types who want to demonstrate their moral and intellectual superiority over all of the rest of us. And we can't let the facts get in the way of that, can we?
Fortunately, they invariably just come off as what they truly are...douchebags.
I haven't used the Chinese versions of MS Office or Open Office, or any other Office suite/applications for that matter, since I have a hard time reading Chinese.
I've used MS Office to write in Japanese though, and it feels a bit retrofitted...
But one might think it logical that a Chinese-developed suite would be specifically tailored to work well with the somewhat complex Chinese writing-system.
Wonder what kind of accusations the creators of EIOffice throw at MS via China's anti-monopoly laws.
And if, say, MS is forbidden to sell MS Office in China, wouldn't that make EIOffice a monopoly. =)
But, of course, their anti-monopoly laws might only apply to foreign companies. Not entirely impossible.
Many countries have a tendency to side with "their own" companies in any international legal struggle.
Especially when there's a lucrative market to protect from foreign companies and lots of money to be saved on not importing something as abstract as bits and intellectual property.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)