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ODF Toolkit Announced

Posted by Soulskill on from the building-blocks dept.

Sweetshark writes "IBM and Sun joined at the 2008 OpenOffice.org conference in Beijing to announce the ODF Toolkit Union. The ODF Toolkit project will be independent of the development at OpenOffice.org, and will operate under the liberal Apache license. It goes from small tools that simplify using ODF in the software development process to large ODF Java and .NET libraries that can be used within other projects. 'The future of accessing and distributing software is here today,' said Michael Bemmer, senior director of Collaboration Engineering at Sun. 'It is no longer an acceptable business practice to have silos of office document data stored in proprietary formats. The industry has moved forward and is replacing the silos with business content, such as on-premise business applications, software solutions offered over the Internet and applications supported by mobile devices that are critical in Service Oriented Architectures.' Will this help ODF to make inroads in the business world after the successes on the desktops of users at home?"

71 comments

  1. Will this help ODF to make inroads? by verbalcontract · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Will this help ODF to make inroads in the business world after the successes on the desktops of users at home?"

    Short answer: no.

    Long answer: As long as there are PHBs who think "writing = Microsoft Word," good luck getting rid of DOC.

    1. Re:Will this help ODF to make inroads? by trjonescp · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Long answer: As long as there are PHBs who think "writing = Microsoft Word," good luck getting rid of DOC.

      That answer is useless. The question, essentially, is, "Will this help people realize that Writing does not necessarily equal Microsoft Word?"

      --
      Only speak when it improves the silence.
    2. Re:Will this help ODF to make inroads? by peragrin · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      that question is only useless to the intelligent. PHB's aren't intelligent.

      --
      i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
    3. Re:Will this help ODF to make inroads? by aproposofwhat · · Score: 1

      Long answer - yes.

      If there's a framework for document transformation, summary, indexing, etc. that works for an open document format, Microsoft are going to have to do a lot of catching up.

      Not all bosses are PHBs - and with the credit crisis in full swing, open formats and the savings that they can bring will soon be flavour of the month.

      --
      One swallow does not a fellatrix make
    4. Re:Will this help ODF to make inroads? by .orvp · · Score: 4, Funny

      I see a PHB has modpoints, thus proving they are on Slashdot, and therefor not intelligent.

      Waaait a second there.....

      --
      My other sig is just as lame
    5. Re:Will this help ODF to make inroads? by wzzzzrd · · Score: 1

      I beg to differ. It is a huge convenience if you are able to process data from documents like spreadsheets in code you write. Especially when it comes to requirement documents or test descriptions. Removing the barrier that usually stands between documents and implementation is a big thing. Yea, there are some libs that can process excel stuff, but we usually have to convert everything to csv files and load them. But having full programmatic access to odf documents makes it possible to integrate those documents into the whole development process. Sure, those people will still use excel or word, but they will export their docs as odf files and that's what matters. Who cares what "editor" they use?

      --
      On second thought, let's not go to Camelot. It is a silly place.
    6. Re:Will this help ODF to make inroads? by maxume · · Score: 1

      What?

      Moving from whatever system is currently being used to a system that uses open formats is invariably going to involve costs. People looking after their pennies are going to stick with what they have, not incur development and training costs.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    7. Re:Will this help ODF to make inroads? by tjstork · · Score: 1

      That answer is useless. The question, essentially, is, "Will this help people realize that Writing does not necessarily equal Microsoft Word?"

      The problem with Open Office is that, in the corporate world, writing equals Microsoft Excel, not Word, and Calc isn't anywhere close to what Excel is.

      --
      This is my sig.
    8. Re:Will this help ODF to make inroads? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Here, let me fix this for you:

      The situation with Open Office is that, in the corporate world, writing equals Microsoft Excel, not Word, and Calc wasn't anywhere close to where Excel is (as of older versions).

    9. Re:Will this help ODF to make inroads? by tjstork · · Score: 1

      The situation with Open Office is that, in the corporate world, writing equals Microsoft Excel, not Word, and Calc wasn't anywhere close to where Excel is (as of older versions).Here, let me fix this for you:

      Calc still sucks compared to Excel dude. I have the latest version of Calc, and an older version of Excel, and Excel is still better. Why don't you -fix that-?

      --
      This is my sig.
    10. Re:Will this help ODF to make inroads? by Mr.+Slippery · · Score: 1

      People looking after their pennies are going to stick with what they have, not incur development and training costs.

      That's penny-wise and pound-foolish. Ignoring the costs and dangers of proprietary data formats - the dependence on a single vendor, the loss of old data - because of development and training costs, is unwise.

      --
      Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
      You cannot wash away blood with blood
    11. Re:Will this help ODF to make inroads? by maxume · · Score: 1

      Not when what you have is working and your primary goal is to reduce spending in the short to medium term (which is implied in the post I replied to).

      Over the long term, sure, open formats make loads more sense.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
  2. The future is here today!* by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    *toolkit not yet available.

  3. QOTD! by girlintraining · · Score: 1, Troll

    "It is no longer an acceptable business practice to have silos of office document data stored in proprietary formats."

    No, but it's still perfectly acceptable to have executable code stored in "jars", right Sun? -_-

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    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:QOTD! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

      Jars are just zip files, they are completely documented, as the java class structure. Multiple JVM implementations exist. I'm unsure what your point is.

    2. Re:QOTD! by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Well yeah except you don't need Sun to open your jar. You can use Winrar to extract the info so it's not like it's a closed format.

    3. Re:QOTD! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I see what you did there.. Use a closed proprietary program like Winrar on zip files, very funny :)

      For those that actually think that was good advice, switch to PeaZip

    4. Re:QOTD! by girlintraining · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Just that it's "proprietary". I don't get how people think that because something's proprietary that automatically makes it bad. All proprietary means is that it's owned by someone. JAR is a specification, owned by Sun, and as such it is proprietary -- however well-understood and documented it is. Shouldn't the discussion be on how well the format performs relative to business cost, since that is the target use?

      --
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    5. Re:QOTD! by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 1

      Yeah it's as proprietary as the English language seeing how anyone can speak it. Woe is me!

    6. Re:QOTD! by Braino420 · · Score: 1

      Just that it's "proprietary". I don't get how people think that because something's proprietary that automatically makes it bad. All proprietary means is that it's owned by someone. JAR is a specification, owned by Sun, and as such it is proprietary -- however well-understood and documented it is.

      Maybe that's what proprietary means when not referring to software.

      --
      They call me the wookie man, I guess that's what I am
    7. Re:QOTD! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just that it's "proprietary". [...] All proprietary means is that it's owned by someone

      All software is owned by someone (all software has copyright), so I don't think you know what proprietary means when it relates to software. Proprietary software means is

      Proprietary software is computer software on which the producer has set restrictions on use, private modification, copying, or republishing.

      Java is under a variation of the GPL (with some exceptions for statically linking to particular public APIs, so in practice their GPL is like LGPL).

      Java is not proprietary.

    8. Re:QOTD! by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 1

      Well yeah if you want to be anal then they can be opened by any zip program. :P

    9. Re:QOTD! by Tubal-Cain · · Score: 1

      What if he doesn't want to be?

    10. Re:QOTD! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      On occasion I get handed MS Word or Excel files with images in them and I want the images out to do something else with. What do I do? Take the file, load it into OpenOffice, change the extension to .zip and unzip the puppies. Then I have a directory of images at whatever their full size was. This was also true with the older OpenOffice format.

    11. Re:QOTD! by ozphx · · Score: 1

      Well we would use 7zip, but theres bugger all point in having that installed where theres so much rar'd shit that it can't handle properly.

      Also Winrar is like... ten bucks. I got pissed off to at least the value of $10 last time I found out that a bunch of shit I downloaded wasn't in fact corrupt, and it was just 7zip lying about it.

      That ten bucks is a hell of a lot cheaper than wasting my time with a bug report / *gasp* patching it myself.

      --
      3laws: No freebies, no backsies, GTFO.
    12. Re:QOTD! by jopsen · · Score: 1

      Nah... I think the one shipped with Windows would fail unless you rename from .jar to .zip :)

    13. Re:QOTD! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      These are completely different issues. The debate with MS Office / OOXML is that companies are taking data which they own (i.e. documents of any kind) and storing them in a format which is owned by Microsoft and subject to change at their whim. Although this format is a 'standard' it would be very difficult indeed for a third party to create an equivalent to manipulate those documents, hence a company's valuable data is effectively outside of their control. There is therefore a big fear within companies about using anything other than Microsoft software in case it doesn't work - which is right, sometimes it doesn't.

      With Jars, if a company develops a Java app they will have the source code (which is plain text files) and use Jars as a distribution mechanism. They will always have their source code so they are never left in a lock-in situation. They can use any Java compiler to create executable code and therefore are not locked-in to Sun.

      The most important example of this is with publicly-owned information. In the 1980s it was understandable that data be stored in proprietary formats, but 20 years later there are a variety of fully open and well-documented formats that are more than adequate for most data and there is really no excuse to be locked-in. Microsoft has realised this and produced OOXML which pretends to be open but really isn't.

      (posting Anon because I've just been trying to remove your Troll moderations because you're clearly not trolling...)

  4. Beating Word will be hard by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I've struggled to get people to convert people at work and they won't. It's not because ODF is inferior it's because they know Word and it's safe for them. Forget that OOo does docs...Word as well is safe too and god forbid they learn something that's nearly the same GUI-wise, imo.

    1. Re:Beating Word will be hard by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

      In an ideal world, beating Word won't be necessary. Word itself isn't the enemy here. The enemy here is the notion that document format X must imply program Y(read .doc and word respectively). I don't care what word processor people feel like using. I do care what format the documents they send me are in.

      In this case, the ODF Toolkit mentioned isn't a word processor at all, it's just a layer that makes it easy(er) for any sort of program to interact with ODF documents. Whether that means server side programs that parse information out of ODF formatted resumes that get uploaded, programs that generate ODF documents for various purposes based on database input, somebody's eccentric hobby word processor that needs to speak a standard format, whatever.

      I'm not a huge fan of word, personally, and I'm very glad indeed that there are Free alternatives; but word isn't a big issue. Undocumented, badly documented, or deliberately obfuscated formats, that force us to all use a particular program just to communicate are the issue.

    2. Re:Beating Word will be hard by DragonWriter · · Score: 3, Insightful

      In this case, the ODF Toolkit mentioned isn't a word processor at all, it's just a layer that makes it easy(er) for any sort of program to interact with ODF documents.

      Exactly. Where this really seems likely to help is in integrating ODF as a message format within the SOA/Messaging/Web Services world.

    3. Re:Beating Word will be hard by TeknoHog · · Score: 2, Interesting

      IMHO, the enemy is the notion of using a glorified Paint for making structured documents. While I can't imagine everyone using TeX instead, there must be ways of promoting logical structure (e.g. with a TeX frontend like LyX) as opposed to WYSIWYG.

      I think the problem of format X being tied to program Y is a symptom of this problem. Word processing has become monstrously complex, and while new features creep into the structure, people still expect a perfect preservation and control of the looks. Thus the logic of using the program becomes increasingly entangled with the storage format, as witnessed by Word documents being memory dumps.

      Of course, a needless focus on the looks takes time and energy from the writing itself. It doesn't help that some universities here have ridiculously precise specifications for the looks of your final thesis.

      --
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    4. Re:Beating Word will be hard by maxume · · Score: 1

      Yes please. I am currently at the wrong end of a project that is using Word as the glorified paint that you describe and it would save me untold amounts of grief if I had been able to deliver what I meant, rather than a nice drawing of what I meant. Of course, that part of the discussion was out of my control, and I'm not sure anybody actually involved in making the decision even understands the idea of separating meaning from presentation.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    5. Re:Beating Word will be hard by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      Let me guess, at least one of your team members considers hitting tab a lot and squinting to be a valid substitute for the use of line breaks, page breaks, and typographic alignment. If so, I'm so sorry.

    6. Re:Beating Word will be hard by maxume · · Score: 1

      No, to some extent, I'm that jerk.

      I was engaged to create content in Word (No, really, the overall process specifically involved using Word), and that content is now being stuffed into a layout system, and the stuffing process is broken, so the layout is broken and no one with any control is doing anything about the systematic problem (from what I can tell, it is all more opaque to me than I would like, but that bridge is behind me)...

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    7. Re:Beating Word will be hard by Daengbo · · Score: 1

      You just need to have structure enforced. Us OO.o with only headings, or use Google Docs. There's almost no formatting available there at all. ;)

      --
      Put identity in the browser.
    8. Re:Beating Word will be hard by calmofthestorm · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm a big FOSS fanboi but OOo does not have mature doc support. It doesn't support any complicated documents, or most of the important embedded attachemtns being sent to me from rich businessmen in Nigeria...if you catch my drift.

      --
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    9. Re:Beating Word will be hard by cheater512 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Erm I've *never* had a problem with OOo reading doc formats (or even ppt and xls).
      Apparently there are the occasional glitch when saving complex documents in Microsoft's format, but I havent seen any.

    10. Re:Beating Word will be hard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ugh! I had to do that.500 pages of neatly typed MSWord doc, retagged in plain text with all the chapter endnotes on a separate page

      It was miserable work. Turning each chapter into plain text wiped out the endnotes. Copy/pasting the endnotes into a separate file, then turning the doc into plain text lost all the footnote markers.
      In the end I played around with RTF too. That helped.

    11. Re:Beating Word will be hard by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1

      TeX has no support for structured documents. It is a drawing language with good support for text layout, but it has absolutely zero support for semantic markup.

      LaTeX is a semantic markup language written on top of TeX, but it doesn't have a clear separation between the semantic and syntactic markup. Because TeX, and hence LaTeX, is Turing complete it is very difficult to process.

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    12. Re:Beating Word will be hard by calmofthestorm · · Score: 1

      I was actually being quite serious, aside from the obvious joke. Often if I open a doc that's much more complicated than headers, fonts, etc things are messed up, tables are half out of the lines, etc. I know my way around a computer so it's less of an issue but I can see people being turned off to switching because it's not a drop in replacement. OOo's saving to .doc is even more problematic, but generally I can get away with just printing to .pdf for that.

      Still, it has (partial? not enough data to know, all of those I tried worked perfectly) docx support. I thought that was patented, or are those just the proprietary extensions?

      --
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  5. Re:Toolkit, lol by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Where is that "- 1 poops" when you need it?

  6. Wasn't ODF invented by shampoo? by blueZ3 · · Score: 1, Funny

    Just asking

    idle really IS pants

    --
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    1. Re:Wasn't ODF invented by shampoo? by mhall119 · · Score: 4, Funny

      This person is being extremely rude, please do something about it or I will be forced to document it excessively.

      --
      http://www.mhall119.com
  7. Re:Toolkit, lol by moderatorrater · · Score: 1

    What I do care about is my fellow Slahsdotters

    Are you hoping that the mods are in this German club of yours, Mr McFly? Frankly, I've never heard of it and I don't like it.

  8. I for one... by InSovietRussiaTroll · · Score: 0

    ... welcome our new McFly overlords!

    1. Re:I for one... by networkBoy · · Score: 2, Funny

      I'm sorry, your meme has been rejected as inappropriate to your user name.
      Please restate Soviet Russia meme in the form of you.

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  9. what the heck are you talking about by Xtifr · · Score: 2, Informative

    Comparing ODF to Word is like comparing HTML to IE. A data format is not the same thing as a program! Sheesh!

    If you want ODF and Word, try here (works for me) or maybe here (haven't tried that one).

    1. Re:what the heck are you talking about by thetoadwarrior · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Well yeah except for the fact that everyone knows that the doc format is synonymous with Word so you know wtf I'm talking about and if I want Word's doc format and ODF then I'll use OOo rather than a plug-in for Word.

  10. Re:Toolkit, lol by Miseph · · Score: 2, Funny

    If you really want to be modded up (or to get votes), just remember the magic words: "my friends". It almost worked for McCain.

    --
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  11. A good strategy by krisher · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Sun and IBM are opening a community that will help propel adoption of the ODF standard by making the format more useful. By providing free libraries to access the data inside the documents, they encourage applications that consider the importance of the content, and minimize lock-in for a single presentation tool.

    1. Re:A good strategy by blueos · · Score: 1

      They are 'opening' something that already exists : ODFDOM and jOpenDocument.

    2. Re:A good strategy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ODFDOM is a joke! I was never able to make it work as expected...

  12. So does this mean... by Al+Al+Cool+J · · Score: 3, Interesting

    that one day I will finally be able to use command line tools to work with odf documents -- like convert them to pdf or postscript, cause that would be awesome (it would also come about six years after I really really needed that kind of functionality, but oh well)

    1. Re:So does this mean... by jeffstar · · Score: 2, Informative

      you can already do this - I made a perl script that took the contents of a web - form, inserted it into a .doc form (converted to odf) and then printed it as PDF and emailed the PDF file to the powers that be.

      yeah, so there are already perl modules to do what this toolkit is about. no surprise there!

    2. Re:So does this mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I suppose that depends on how clever you are.

      I already do.

    3. Re:So does this mean... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There already is unoconv: "unoconv - convert any document from and to any OpenOffice supported format"

  13. Use JOpenDocument or ApachePOI by pallmall1 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    It is a huge convenience if you are able to process data from documents like spreadsheets in code you write.

    I agree. The problem is there really is no working "ODF Toolkit". It's vaporware. Sun and IBM have been promising an odf toolkit since 2006, but to date nothing of any use has been produced. The current "ODF Toolkit" has virtually no documentation or example code, and is generally useless for importing data from an openoffice.org spreadsheet into a java program. If readers here don't believe me, they can go ahead and try it for themselves. The best thing available for odf handling in java is JOpenDocument. Hopefully the "new and improved" odf toolkit project is now working with the JOpenDocument developers.

    I don't know if they are, because I gave up waiting on Sun and IBM and decided to use the Apache POI libraries to read and write excel spreadsheets that can be created/opened by either MSOffice or OpenOffice.org.

    --
    3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
    1. Re:Use JOpenDocument or ApachePOI by mvdwege · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The problem is there really is no working "ODF Toolkit".

      Are you sure about that?.

      I know Perl is not considered sexy by the fad-hunting 'programmers' that haunt sites like this, but it works. And OpenOffice::OODoc is a very nice toolkit to programmatically create and manipulate ODF documents.

      Mart

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
    2. Re:Use JOpenDocument or ApachePOI by pallmall1 · · Score: 1

      I agree, the CPAN OpenOffice-OODoc tools are good, but I didn't realize they were part of the ODF Toolkit.

      Perhaps you can tell me when they did become part of it?

      --
      3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
    3. Re:Use JOpenDocument or ApachePOI by mvdwege · · Score: 2, Informative

      I see. You're waiting for an official, branded 'ODF Toolkit'(tm). Sorry, no, but OpenOffice::OODoc is not part of that. I sincerely hope that is not what is stopping you from using it.

      Mart

      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
  14. Same old by kraemate · · Score: 1

    The ODF toolkit project isnt new. [http://odftoolkit.openoffice.org/]

    Ive been using the ODFDOM code for a couple months now, and i wonder what this announcement will bring for the development prospects.

    One key change so far has been the shift to Apache 2.0 license from the LGPL v3.

    Its ironical that an open format like ODF doesnt have a fully functional toolkit and is inferior to Apache POI which is the toolkit for MS binary formats.

  15. Yes, probably by jesterzog · · Score: 1

    From my perspective at my own work (where we tend to write smallish apps from time to time that are usually based on DotNet), I'd guess that if we were writing software that needed to generate documents that'd open in MS Office, the fastest and easiest way to do so at the moment is probably to use the OOXML SDK (yuck).

    If there's something similar for ODF, we'd definitely at least look at it, especially if it ended up being easier to work with. With Microsoft at least claiming they'll support ODF with MS Office, it might easily be enough to go with, without even requiring OOXML support at all... especially since ODF is supported by a much wider range of apps than just Microsoft Office. At the very least (if I was writing it), I'd make a special effort to keep things flexible and make it as easy as possible to switch between SDKs and generate ODF documents if and when they were wanted.

  16. Decoupling ODF from OOo by GeekDork · · Score: 1

    That is why this is a good move. Face it, OOo is the horrible bastard child of "development by committee" that has not really moved forward for several years now. The text processor part is almost usable, but the rest is just a bloated bugfest. Having this as the primary association to the document format cannot be a good thing.

    In the long run, I hope alternative tools will emerge (no, KWord does not count yet, it still produces rather interesting results on most documents that are not walls of text) that are not based on ancient mystical code someone found in a cave.

    --

    Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.

    1. Re:Decoupling ODF from OOo by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you don't like OOo and you don't have anything else to recommend. Got anything helpful to say?

  17. Endless story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    After an experimental odf4j, a slowly evolving odfdom, a GPLed jOpenDocument, and now a 'union, what's next? In 2008 they discovered that developers need to manipulate document files. It's hot.

    IMHO Ballmer is laughing... Mom is still using the preinstalled Office 2007 on her new computer!

  18. easy command line tools by hey · · Score: 1

    That site seems to be about library. I think it would be handy to have simple command line tools - like:

    txt2odf myfile.txt myfile.odf

    odf2txt myfile.odf myfile.txt

    getcell d7 mysheet.cal

    changecell d7 123 mysheet.cal

    etc.

  19. All tools receive simultaneous updates? by DaVince21 · · Score: 1

    If they do it well, they could change/update the ODF spec when necessary to include whatever new feature and then have the new stuff QUICKLY supported through ALL the new tools/libs they made, right? That should be pretty awesome: applications using some of these tools or libs not losing compatibility.

    Let's hope it's all going to be lightweight enough, I don't know how much you can trust Sun with that, considering OOo and Java are both pretty big beasts.

    --
    I am not devoid of humor.
  20. Toolkit? Yawn by Krigl · · Score: 1

    Wake me up for ODF rootkit.

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