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UOF Vies to Be a Third Contender in ODF–OOXML Battle

Posted by kdawson on from the single-conforming-implementation-gosh-that-sounds-familiar dept.

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."

3 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. I guess it's true... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:I guess it's true... by lgftsa · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Rule #29: The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy, no more, no less.
      - The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Pirates

  2. Re:who gives a fuck? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.