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Office 2007SP2 ODF Interoperability Very Bad

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the are-you-really-surprised dept.

David Gerard writes "Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 claims support for ODF 1.1. With hard work and careful thinking, they have successfully achieved technical compliance but zero interoperability! MSO 2007sp2 won't read ODF 1.1 from any other existing application, and its ODF is only readable by the CleverAge plugin. The post goes into detail as to how it manages this so thoroughly."

19 of 627 comments (clear)

  1. What did we expect? by TechForensics · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I mean, really?

    --
    Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others.
    1. Re:What did we expect? by Vanders · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Did you really think Apple was different from Microsoft?

      That's unfair. Apple have never made an iWorks product intentionally produce a broken ODF document! *cough*

      --
      Syllable : It's an Operating System
    2. Re:What did we expect? by just_another_sean · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually there was a time when Microsoft was hailed as the white knight in the shiny armor freeing us from the evil IBM empire.

      Yeah but that was ~twenty years ago, which is like two hundred in do^H^H computer years.

      Since then Lancelot has screwed the king's wife and is off in the wilderness slowly going insane.

      --
      Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
    3. Re:What did we expect? by mevets · · Score: 5, Insightful

      | Actually there was a time when Microsoft was hailed as the white knight in the shiny armor freeing us from the evil IBM empire.

      I've heard this said, but somehow I managed to miss it. I started work in the industry in 87, and had first encountered microsoft probably in 84. Outside of ziff-davis style vanity press, everything about MS was about what crap they were technically and ethically. The white knights were DEC, BSD, Borland, Commodore, ...

    4. Re:What did we expect? by Zero__Kelvin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Who wants to target a moving standard?"

      Software Engineers. It is what we do for a living.

      --
      Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
    5. Re:What did we expect? by Vegard · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yah. The real heros bringing us the PC revolution was the guys reverse engineering the hardware/BIOS, and made cheap clones. The OS was just what became the de facto standard.

      As we all know, DOS won over CP/M. CP/M was technically superior at the time, but lost for political and/or contract reasons, whatever.

      Digital Research then went on to create a better DOS to compete. MS fought it with all means it could, and it went into oblivition.

      At early stages, MS Windows was just a graphical shell on top of DOS. It wasn't particulary good either. There were competing graphical shells, for example Digital Research' GEM. Digital Research lost the patent lawsuit that MS essentially won, and GEM was limited to have only two windows simultaneously...who knows what it could have been.

      MS has not had the technical best/superior solutions at any time. It was just better at legal and marketing stuff than anyone else.

      The PC revolution would have come with or without MS. We'll never know how much innovation MS have killed on its way where it is, so to hail it as a savior is just plain stupid.

  2. Problem with the Spec by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    So, this is either a problem with the specification or a problem with other implementations. If MS has made a compliant program, who are we to complain?

  3. Which means it won't get used.... by syousef · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...which is probably the point of this. The only reason to use ODF instead of MS native formats is for interoperability. When people don't use it, MS can point and say "see people don't want or need it and didn't care when we put it in". Useful at all manner of legal proceeding (antitrust anyone) to show that it's not important.

    --
    These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
  4. Re:I just hope by arthurpaliden · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They won't. All they will see is the ODF box checked off.

    --
    Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
  5. The article speaks about spreadsheets. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The article speaks about spreadsheets, which the slashdot blurb neglected to mention.

  6. Unfinished sayings by Bogtha · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is the trouble with people saying the first half of a saying and then trailing off. The people who know the saying get the point, and the people who don't remember a fragment and repeat it even though it makes no sense on its own.

    To the people tagging this "embraceandextend". Embracing and extending is not a particularly bad thing to do. Many formats, including XML (upon which ODF is based), are built with this in mind. The complete saying that is referred to with "embrace and extend" is embrace, extend and extinguish . The extinguishing is the goal here, the former two are merely tools to help them achieve this.

    --
    Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
  7. Everybody pile on Microsoft... by Blakey+Rat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In the meantime, how the HELL is it possible the spec is so bad that you can be technically-compliant with it, and yet not be read by (almost) any existing implementation?

    --
    Comment of the year
    1. Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft... by Vanders · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The current spec doesn't cover spreadsheet formulas: it has a big whole and basically says "Do what OpenOffice.org does for now". ODF 1.2 will cover spreadsheet formulas but it isn't finished yet. So yes, it is valid to say "Well the spec doesn't cover formulas, not Microsofts fault".

      Except...Microsoft already have a perfectly good plugin that can read & write ODF documents. It appears they've gone out of their way to break that existing code and do things differently to how everyone else (including themselves) are already doing things. As the author of the blog says "If your business model requires only conformance and not actually achieving interoperability, then I wish you well.".

      If Microsoft have put all that effort into adding ODF support without actually achieving interoperability then it's a thinly veiled paper exercise on their part.

      --
      Syllable : It's an Operating System
    2. Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft... by clone53421 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Self-replying, I know, but I just thought of something else.

      According to TFS, Office fails to load ODF files created by any other application. If those files are compliant with ODF standards, the blame for this lies squarely on Microsoft. They fail to open standards-compliant ODF files.

      --
      Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
  8. Re:Really? by plague3106 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well, from the article: "First, we might hear that ODF 1.1 does not define spreadsheet formulas and therefore it is not necessary for one vendor to use the same formula language that other vendors use."

    Seems like a rather large hole in the spec itself. ODF 1.1 doesn't define spreedsheet forumlas? So, what version will? I wouldn't put any effort into guess, nor making my application read various other vendor formats.. when I may well have to recode again when 1.2 comes out.

    If anyone's to blame here, it's the ODF people for not having a COMPLETE spec. If formulas are so important to spreadsheets (and they are), why the hell would your spec not include how to store said forumlas?

  9. Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft by golodh · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Seriously, Microsoft has a huge cash-cow to protect in MS Office. And the first layer of defense is lock-in. If MS Office were truly inter-operable, then that would remove an enormous barrier against the introduction of Open Office.

    Clearly Microsoft's best interests are served by denying their customers interoperability.

    That's what drives Microsoft's policy: cash. Everything else is PR. Which is duly born out by their actions.

    1. Re:Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Microsoft does not want interchanging of information. They want everybody using MS Word on an MS operating system. The end.

      Every major vendor would probably like their own product to dominate. The difference is not the motivation, but the methods. Some vendors honestly try to make the best product and win customers by so doing. MS prefers to leverage monopolies to artificially break competing products and prevent users from being able to choose based upon the individual merits of the products in question.

      I have no problem with MS wanting their OS and office suite to dominate. I have a problem with their breaking the law and hurting the industry, innovation, and end users to make that happen.

  10. Re:Really? by rekoil · · Score: 5, Insightful

    In order to claim (in a legalistic sense) technical compliance with the spec in order to be able to sell Office to companies/governments who have adopted policies requiring this, while at the same time making it virtually impossible for those organizations to actually USE a competing office product.

  11. Counter-adage by SteveFoerster · · Score: 5, Insightful

    There's another saying, and one that I think better applies here: "Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a conspiracy."

    And with Microsoft we're way past three times.

    --
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