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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."
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
Seeing as how both ODF and UOF is based upon open standards (based on Wikipedia), what advantages does UOF offer over ODF?
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.
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.
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.
Probably less jail time than the people incarcerated in Guantanamo -- or in other parts of the American empire:
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!