Slashdot Mirror
ODF Alliance Warns Governments About Office 2007 ODF Support
omz writes "The ODF Alliance has prepared a Fact Sheet for governments and others interested in how Microsoft's SP2 for Office 2007 handles ODF. The report revealed 'serious shortcomings that, left unaddressed, would break the open standards based interoperability that the marketplace, especially governments, is demanding.'"
post?
Malice, or simple incompetence? Given Microsoft's track record, I can believe either one.
I know there are a lot of smart people working for Microsoft. But somehow it's as if there's a reverse gestalt phenomenon going on in their company - the whole is less than the sum of the parts.
#DeleteChrome
Shouldn't the file be an ODF format?
is Ctl-Alt-Del.
Yours In Socialism,
K. Trout, C.I.O.
Yeah, ever since the whole 'teabagging' thing, this is officially the replacement for 'foot in mouth.'
Just wondering, is Microsoft warning governments about OpenOffice's .DOC support?
That the standards created for the ODF formats are no where near perfect.
In fact, the ODF specification for spreadsheets doesn't state where formulas should go in a document. Something OpenOffice and Microsoft handle very differently. Because of these loopholes it's possible for software deveopers (Not just Microsoft) to do what they think is best instead of follow the standard.
What the OpenOffice and Open Source communities should be doing is working to resolve these loopholes so Microsoft and other developers can follow.
I know Microsoft is being its usual self, but perhaps the ODF alliance should promoting a certification program and a compliance logo to raise the quality of interoperability of ALL ODF based applications.
I don't get the section on Office 2003. Their gripe is that it doesn't support ODF. Well if MS doesn't release a service pack, why complain that 2003 doesn't support ODF when 2007 doesn't either (without SP2)? Focus on their current (insufficient) efforts to update software, not on software they haven't yet decided to update. There's no threat to ODF interop in 2003 if it can't read them at all...
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
If you write a standard and clamor to get it adopted by law, don't leave Redmond-sized holes in it. Someone might just try to drive a Microsoft through it.
The difference is that one is an open standard and the other is a closed standard. MS's docs on docx come nowhere near close enough to implement it and office relies on many proprietary extensions to the standard.
Really.
Whatever sort of incentives or punishment officials come up with, MS will make the odf support half assed on purpose. Simply because they see that as the most lucrative solution for themselves.
Of course third party plugins and open source office suites have better support for odf, they are made by people trying to implement the best possible support. MS want lock-in, "forcing" them otherwise is not going to help.
MS' business model haven't changed. And it won't in a long time.
Although nobody is really surprised that Microsoft has made their software comply with the letter of the law and not the spirit, is this really a big issue? If, as the summary says, the marketplace is demanding a grand interoperability between software products, then we might see the rapid uptake of OOO in the near future. Failing that, if nobody switches, then the market has spoken loud and clear, Nobody cares.
Honestly, the single most productive thing you could do to ensure the rapid uptake of open standards would be to make openoffice.org an amazing product. Put all of your time and effort into making it clearly superior, and at that point everyone will use an ODF by default.
Shouldn't the file be an ODF format?
You're not trying to let them edit it. You're trying to influence them with a fixed document. So a display-only format is fine.
Further: You're trying to influence people who are NOT YET onboard with ODF. So you want a format that is viewable by as wide an audience as possible while displaying conveniently in an easy-on-the-eyes form. Right now that's PDF.
Putting it out in ODF means it's only viewable by people who already have ODF installed. That's mainly the people who are already onboard and don't need to be convinced. So it would be a case of "preaching to the choir" rather than "converting the heathen". Useful for giving your evangelists more talking points perhaps. But not all that useful for the purpose intended.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Um, the difference is Office 2007 formats aren't a standard. OOXML is, but even MS's own implementation doesn't match up to the specs.
ODF on the other hand has an open implementation, free source code, open specs, royalty free, etc.
ODF alliance warning about sub-par ODF support on Office 2007 which ODF is totally open, is different than MS warning about not supporting their closed, undocumented format.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Having spent three years as the sysadmin for a high school, managing the imaging for several computer labs, I observed the following:
- Even as late as 2007, I used Office XP on everything, mainly to eliminate the XP->2003 learning curve.
- I had to install some Microsoft add-on to allow Office 2007 documents to be opened in Office XP, since some students came in with Office 2007 documents.
- I think I had to install some add-on for Office 97 too, for the same reason.
- Ditto for MS Works, IIRC.
- I also installed OpenOffice in the labs, for the very small number of students who had OpenOffice documents from home.
- Even though I had OpenOffice, I could not remove MS Office, since I would be accused of "removing the Microsofts" from computers. The word "Microsoft" is apparently very reassuring to idiots/teachers.
So maybe MS should warn governments about MS Office's sub-par support for MS Office formats.
To be fair, and all...
Perhaps, but the format is in plain xml for Office2007; xlsx, docx, etc are merely zip files containing xml documents which could be transformed to other formats. As long as you have the schemas for the right and left the program to make the document becomes irrelevant.
-- if you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine
your code written from it is MS licensed too?
Bullshit.
Algorithms are not copyrightable. Non-expressive elements are not copyrightable. If there's only one way to do something, you can't copyright it.
Actually, the difference is one is a standard used by most businesses and governments in the world. The other is used by very people people. Guess which is which. Remember, open source software isn't a goal in itself to anyone who matters. You have to come up with a good reason. Simply saying "It doesn't work with our stuff!!11" isn't a good reason.
Nope, that was 12 years ago.
Are we done with these yet?
"Good news, everyone!"
why is this a troll? its a fact
No spec can be so thorough that someone cannot find a loophole. It is a simple job to create something that complies to the letter of a spec and yet is totally worthless.
"Nowhere in the spec does it say that, upon loading an ODF document, all fonts should NOT be changed to Wingdings!"
That's a very insightful, proactive suggestion. Why bitch about the usual MS attitudes if you can provide a constructive path ahead, right?
Actually, it shouldn't be all that hard (but, it may well be tedious work) to put together a document that includes samples of *all* features of the spreadsheet / text editor / drawing / presentation document.
Providing verification is probably a bigger challenge. I wonder if it could be done as macros in any of the ODF-supporting suites, or if that's akin to an SOD violation?
"Good news, everyone!"
If anyone is interested in specifically what is "broken"(read: incompatible with OpenOffice.org 3.0)... which I doubt... here is some very good information detailing which decisions were made in implementing ODF and why they were made:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/default.aspx
The last couple blog posts should be what everyone is looking for.
Beyond this, Microsoft is simply implementing ODF 1.1 because ODF 1.2 is not done yet. If Microsoft is going to support a standard, they will support the standard not the most popular implementation's interpretation of the standard.
Microsoft followed the ODF specification to the letter
Are you paid to astroturf? Thy did not follow it to the letter and they ignored the reference implementations and if they tested for compatibility like everyone else they did so to make sure things would not work. Given their market share, that's criminal.
It makes Open Office look bad!
Must have been modded by an angry troll, and that's how he signs his name.
A wise man once said, "Where is my other quotation mark?
For a commercial vendor, GPL licensed code is not "open" or "available" at all.
No, but BSD licensed code is and MS has already incorporated BSD code into several of their important products (TCP/IP stack for Windows for example). There exists a BSD licensed plug-in for MSOffice which MS helped to fund the creation of, but they somehow managed to make their new implementation incompatible with that plug-in and every other implementation.
They have to code it to the spec, and code to the spec they did.
Excepting, of course, that complying with the spec does not mean crap when it comes to antitrust law. Complying with the letter of the spec while still being incompatible with every competitor when such compliance is not difficult, is still leveraging their monopoly influence to harm competition and artificially break competing products... but then when did MS ever have scruples about breaking antitrust law.
How is it their fault that the spec is busted?
They broke the spec. They didn't test to make sure they are compatible. They failed at a task even small hobbyist projects managed. They did so in a way that harms competition because they are so dominant in that market. That is 100% their fault.
There's a couple reasons why they'd do it differently:
1) The whole reason they are doing the ODF thing is pressure from the EU with regards to anti-trust. Part of that pressure is that "You have to do it according to the standard." They don't want MS to go and say "Well we implemented some of the standard, but changed it in ways we like." So MS has been sticking strictly to the standard. Not all the other implementations do. So, you get a difference in results. Now you can argue that the right way of doing things is everyone else doing the same thing, even if it isn't the standard, but that really isn't an option for MS. They need the CYA ability to say "We implemented the standard 100% to spec, no deviation."
2) All the other ODF stuff I've seen is open source. As with most open source, they borrow heavily form other open source projects. In the case of ODF, the modus operandi seems to be "Do what Open Office does." Ok that's great, but again not an option for MS. They can't take OOs code, of course, or they'd have to open up their software which they don't want to do. In theory they could look at it and then "reverse engineer" it so to speak and reimplement but that's dangerous. They won't want to fight claims of violating the GPL. So best to just have your dev team pretend it doesn't exist and do their own thing.
Basically the ODF spec isn't clear and precise. So there are areas where you kinda have to decide how you want to do shit. MS isn't going to look at how it was done in OO's code, so their own design culture, which is different, will dictate how things are done. So you get differences right there. Then there are cases where the popular ODF implementations aren't compliant with the spec. They work because they are all not compliant in the same way, but then that won't work with MS's compliant implementation.
More or less it looks like the ODF alliance needs to shut up, and write a better standard. For something like this, a good standard will be very complex and extremely specific. There's just no avoiding that. If you want to be able to have all of this different, rich functionality, and you want it to work the same way and display the same way everywhere, the standard has to be very very detailed. Everything has to be specified precisely. You can't leave it up to the developer on how to do anything, or you are going to get differences.
What do I mean ? It starts by assuming that you know what ODF is, giving it a name ''the OpenDocument Format'' doesn't really help -- the average Member of Parliament/Senate/Dictatorship/... will not have a clue what you are talking about. All sorts of other buzz words abound, there are names of unknown things like KSpread and Symphony -- who has heard of them ?
I am sympathetic to what they are doing - it is a great idea, unfortunately it won't get much legislator/bureaucrat/... eyeball time because it doesn't explain what it is all about. It needs to be prefixed by a page that explains it all in nice, friendly words that everyone can understand and say that the technical details are on the next pages -- which starts with page 1 of what they have produced.
ODF 1.1 was a very simple standard to follow. It was only one page. In fact, it's only one sentence: "Do whatever OpenOffice does." Is that your idea of a "reference implementation"?
If that was the case, sure since OO is open source and well documented code. That isn't that case though. It's much better to simply code to the standards and look at one of the several interoperable open source implementations when there is question about what to do. And, or course, when you have a working version you should test it for interoperability with the existing implementations, or at least the working implementation for your program, already in use, which you helped to fund.
So, when MS Office SP2 implements ODF 1.1 with MathML to the letter and OpenOffice cannot read it because of a bug in OpenOffice, who is to blame?
If it is a bug in OpenOffice they are to blame, assuming MS tested and tried to be compliant and interoperable. If, however, OO is compliant and MS is complaint and MS manages to create a compliant solution which does not work with all the other existing implementations, which all work with one another... yeah that's MS's fault.
Oh, right, you think that MS should have followed OpenOffice's bug, not the ODF spec.
Are you trying to imply that MS had to break the standard to work with OO and all the other implementations?
How about all of the implementation bugs between OpenOffice and other non-MS ODF suites?
There is only one of those that I know of, which is a problem with OO writing files using the 1.2 version of ODF by default and the program in question not handling it gracefully enough. MS, on the other hand is incompatible with every other implementation.
Fix your fucking spec or shut the fuck up.
If you're going to be profane at least have some guts worm. Anonymous coward indeed.
Watch what happens if openoffice makes any kind of real dent in office's market share. It'll be just like the RIAA going after downloaders...
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
By that token, then, OO's poor support of Microsoft formats is also OO's fault. Which was my original point earlier in the thread.
The only way this document could have been presented more sloppily is if it were made from old newspaper cuttings: "suPPoRt Odf oR we BReaK l3Gs". Then again it could just have been done in OpenOffice (ducks)
By that token, then, OO's poor support of Microsoft formats is also OO's fault. Which was my original point earlier in the thread.
Really, where is the fully documented spec for docx? Where is the open source reference implementation of MSWord? Where is the BSD licensed version of Word formats on Linux that they can just copy and paste?
When your format is not open and documented and you don't implement it in an open source reference it is a hell of a lot harder to be compatible and that is absolutely MSs fault and their legal liability. Your point is excessively flawed.
Governments is demanding interoperability! And cats is demanding lol!
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Plenty of info here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
and here:
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm
Um, the difference is Office 2007 formats aren't a standard.
They arent?
Some standards (the good ones) are set by an un-stated popularity contest, and only THEN codified into a specification, which was the word you meant. The problem with all of these open document formats is that they were not refined in this manner, leading to what we have today: specifications that aren't even sufficient for something trivial and obvious like encoding formula in spread-sheets.
It's like they didn't even imagine what the format was going to be used for! When I first heard about this my first thought was 'you gotta be shitting me' but god damn... they really did define a spread-sheet format that doesn't encode formula
Leave the document formats to the people in the business of storing real documents with real software for real people.
(and ISO should be ashamed of themselves for publishing a 'standard in progress')
"His name was James Damore."
Plenty of info here:
You seem to have fallen for marketing nonsense. There exists a spec, which no one including MS has implemented. Then there exists the docx files MS office creates which are not compliant with the standards you link to and which are not fully documented anywhere.
From the first link you posted, a quote about when MS will be compliant with the published version of the spec:
On March 13, 2008 Doug Mahugh, a Senior Product Manager at Microsoft specializing in Office client interoperability and the Open XML file formats confirmed that version 1.0 of the Open XML Format SDK "will definitely be 100% compliant with the final ISO/IEC 29500 spec, including the changes accepted at the BRM"
To date they have not managed to comply fully with their own format specification and no other company has a fully compatible version either, that I know of.
So where is the documentation for the docx format Word creates today? Where is the fully compliant, BSD licensed reference implementation for Linux that OO can copy and paste code from? I think your argument pretty much went down the crapper at this point.
People are seriously arguing that Microsoft should munge the standard to go along with the most common implementation? Welcome to the web, circa 1996. That's exactly how web standards got to be the mess they are. Browser manufacturers wrote browsers to be compatible with each other and to support new features, instead of following the standards. And thus the standard fell behind and became increasingly useless.
Microsoft is writing an ODF document, *not* an OpenOffice document. And, long-term, that's exactly the correct thing to do.
If you want them to follow the standard, write a decent standard for them to follow and stop whining. And, just like the web failed to do, if you want the standard to be worth the paper it's written on, the resources have to be committed to get them out in a timely fashion.
Also, PDF is a ISO standard aswell (ISO 32000-1:2008).
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
Microsoft did what they had to do to break compatibility. They must have been laughing themselves silly when they realised that other users of ODF had left the door open for them to both break compatibility AND claim compliance.
Don't kid yourself, they may have been very happy to claim that they are compliant, but compliance was not the aim. Breaking compatibility was the primary purpose.
If there is no definition in the spec, then a "reference implementation" cannot exist. The reference implementation follows on from the spec. Anything you do that isn't in the spec is called guesswork.
If you had to reverse engineer it from the OpenOffice implementation, myy guess is that Microsoft is rightly worried about code taint from it's developers reading open source code.
>> So where is the documentation for the docx
>> format Word creates today
It's in the same place where you can find documentation for files the current version of OpenOffice produces. Nowhere.
Although in the case of Office, you can at least unzip the files and take a look at the XML, since they're nothing but XML these days.
Which still doesn't change the fact that one is an open standard, and the other is merely a proprietary format. Open standards are agreed upon, and should grant interoperability by definition. When one company decides to break an open standard it is a big deal.
This sort of change has nothing to do with end users, they don't even know there is a format "war", they generally don't even know what a format IS. This exists because some interoperability is a good thing, and it keeps MSFT from leveraging their popular format to further their monopoly.
Its like if one company came and mucked up HTML (and open format)for their own benefit, dramatically hurting peoples ability to compete...
Oh wait.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
If you're going to be profane at least have some guts worm. Anonymous coward indeed.
This, from the guy that pulls the "Astroturf" card. Sit down and have another beer, Junior.
Because the format hasn't been finalised as a standard. How are you supposed to conform to a standard that isn't final? Once it's final, then you can conform, until then you can conform to what you think the standard might be.
MS doesn't look at open source code. The MS lawyers are worried that some code in FOSS might be included in their commercial products, by accident.
I've discussed this with MS Evangelists. It is probably part of the employment agreement now.
> That's the problem - the spec is too vague to be implemented properly.
The hell it is! There are reference implementations. There's BSD code they could copy-paste. The oft-referenced "problems" have already been dealt with by many other comments. If you're going to complain about ODF 1.2 documents in ODF 1.1 programs, I'm going to have to complain about Word 2003 documents that don't work right in Word 95, even if you use save as to save it to the old version.
And then I'll quote one of your own comments (including the typo) back to you:
"Ever wonder how all these other people can get it working, and you can't? Every thought it might not be the technology, it might be you? Just asking..."
Interesting, but isn't Openoffice the generally accepted reference implimentation, even if it is not 100% of the way there yet? I'm pretty sure the other apps in the MS blog list use OpenOffice.org that way too. Really, there is no real excuse.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
Very telling that you have little to add in the retorts, and in fact simply repeat yourself verbatim in closing. Listening skills low, blame playing high = low maturity. You probably won't rise to anything more than bit player in all of this anyway, so chirp away.
If there is no definition in the spec, then a "reference implementation" cannot exist. The reference implementation follows on from the spec. Anything you do that isn't in the spec is called guesswork.
Reference implementations exist so that when there is a vague part of the spec, people know what to look at for compatibility. The ODF spec says to use Excel style formulas enclosed in brackets, which pretty much every, especially MS, should know what are by now. MS didn't even get the brackets right and that is violating the spec. If they couldn't figure it out there were plenty of references to look at or they could have tried it then tested for compatibility.
If you had to reverse engineer it from the OpenOffice implementation, myy guess is that Microsoft is rightly worried about code taint from it's developers reading open source code.
When the code is open source it doesn't take a lot of reverse engineering. They don't have to worry about tainted code because there is a working BSD implementation they commissioned. You are 100% wrong.
Because the format hasn't been finalised as a standard. How are you supposed to conform to a standard that isn't final?
That's a very good question. If you read the whole thread though you should be replying to "melted" who was claiming OpenOffice should have implemented OOXML and the situation with ODF is exactly the same... although I suspect they're trolling.
Interesting, but isn't Openoffice the generally accepted reference implimentation, even if it is not 100% of the way there yet? I'm pretty sure the other apps in the MS blog list use OpenOffice.org that way too. Really, there is no real excuse.
The generally accepted reference is and should be the OASIS ODF standard itself. Digging through the source code of competing products to see which assumptions they made while implementing a standard does not constitute proper standards behavior. There's no reason to assume OpenOffice is the correct implementation of ODF, since Sun went to great lengths to get governance of the standard outside their organization. The question is whether Microsoft wants to implement the standard itself or write a minor OpenOffice compatibility layer into their software. OpenOffice is not necessarily a juggernaut product, anyway.
Their implementation passes compliance testing as far as ODF 1.1 is concerned. In fact, it's the only implementation that does for spreadsheets (aside from Kspread, apparently). At the same time, it also serves the purpose of both increasing compatibility and exposing the weakness of the standard and format. If Sun wants ODF to be the de facto office standard, they should tie up the many vague loose ends that allow Microsoft to do a perfectly compliant implementation that is incompatible. The examples outlined in the msdn blog demonstrate just how open ended and inconsistent this "standard format" is.
When have they EVER followed open standards??!
I'm still amazed that IP works on that piece of horse shit - figures since they took it from somewhere else.
fuck you and everyone who looks like you
It's in the same place where you can find documentation for files the current version of OpenOffice produces. Nowhere.
OpenOffice is fully compliant with ODF 1.1 and there are numerous opensource implementations if you have difficulty interpreting how it should be coded.
Word is not fully compliant with the OOXML spec and there is no open source reference implementation.
You think that makes no difference. I think your opinion is absurd.
Although in the case of Office, you can at least unzip the files and take a look at the XML, since they're nothing but XML these days.
Yeah, because ODF files sure aren't XML or anything. Do you even know what you're talking about?
What, you mean Netscape? Or Microsoft?
I refer you to this comment because I'm too lazy to type something myself, and they've said it far better than I could: http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1239895&cid=28033047
ALL OTHER implementations are much more compatible than that of MS.
And thats all there is to it.
Id ask them to fix their fucking office suite, but that has proven ineffective over the years.
Thats why I use OpenOffice.Org.
NO SIG
I thought they were aiming for compatibility, not plain compliance.
All other suites interoperate mostly fine. Theirs is the only one that pukes with everyone else's implementation.
NO SIG
oh just get the f**k out if you can't even release a proper standard:
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2009/05/13/tracked-changes.aspx
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2009/05/09/1-2-1.aspx
seriously, get the f**k out. openoffice is a piece of garbage, with the stability of a mind of a psychic killer, at least have the guts not to speak badly of other implementations if you can neither draft the standard nor implement it correctly.
The fully documented spec for OOXML is available through ECMA and ISO. It goes to excessive lengths to describe specific behaviors and provide sample XML.
Where is the opensource reference for ODF? OpenOffice is not ODF compliant therefore it cannot qualify. The proprietary extensions of OpenOffice and the non-compliant deviations from ODF don't become a part of ODF by virtue of being in OpenOffice. There are quirks with how OpenOffice interops with Symphony and KOffice. Who is to blame there?
I agree with the complaint about DOCX and MSOOXML. When OpenOffice implements ISO OOXML and as a result Office 2007 doesn't render the documents because of deviations from the standard, that is the fault of Office, not OpenOffice. However, that has not happened yet.
Fix the fucking standard.
The generally accepted reference is and should be the OASIS ODF standard itself.
You're being obtuse or you don't know enough about software coding to know what a "reference implementation" is. A published standard tells you how to write to the standard. A reference implementation is an open source implementation of that standard that can be used when there is doubt about how the standard is to be implemented.
Digging through the source code of competing products to see which assumptions they made while implementing a standard does not constitute proper standards behavior.
The point of standards is interoperability. MS is legally required, due to their monopoly influence, to make a valid attempt at interoperability. Hiding behind the standard doesn't make their actions any more legal or ethical.
There's no reason to assume OpenOffice is the correct implementation of ODF...
Is it, however, reasonable to assume the way OpenOffice, KOffice, Symphony, Google Docs, and Sun's ODF plug-in implement it is the most interoperable way?
Their implementation passes compliance testing as far as ODF 1.1 is concerned. In fact, it's the only implementation that does for spreadsheets (aside from Kspread, apparently).
I don't believe this is true. They both broke compatibility and screwed up parts of the implementation making it not quite conforming.
If Sun wants ODF...
Who cares what Sun wants? This is about having useful interoperability among office suites so we can have some real competition and choice going forward. No one company should be able to hold up progress. MS needs to be stopped from playing these games and hurting the industry in the process.
I thought they were aiming for compatibility, not plain compliance.
That depends on whether you want interoperability NOW and only now or continuing interoperability. By implementing the standard properly, they are opening the door to proper and easily referenced interoperability. Constantly hacking their solution to keep up with the hacks that everyone else is using to circumvent the standard will just lead to document standards being as messed up as web standards. At this point, all Sun needs to do to keep up compatibility is actually finish the ODF standard and then implement it properly themselves.
I assure you the compatibility burden is on Sun, not Microsoft. Microsoft Office is the industry leader and standard for office suites.
FUD GALORE
The part where it doesnt interoperate has little to do with the standard. Its about things that are NOT in the standard.
If they wanted to WILLFULLY interoperate, they wouldve attempted to do so, as they did with their previous product. They fucked this one because they could.
NO SIG
The point of standards is interoperability. MS is legally required, due to their monopoly influence, to make a valid attempt at interoperability. Hiding behind the standard doesn't make their actions any more legal or ethical.
Hiding behind the lack of a standard doesn't make the ODF Alliance correct.
You're being obtuse or you don't know enough about software coding to know what a "reference implementation" is. A published standard tells you how to write to the standard. A reference implementation is an open source implementation of that standard that can be used when there is doubt about how the standard is to be implemented.
OpenOffice is a reference implementation? Are you sure? It has far too much legacy cruft to fit that bill... if their reference implementation is a massive pile of unix garbage hacked up from a 90's office suite, they've got bigger problems on their hands than Microsoft interoperability. OpenOffice.org is not the reference implementation of ODF in the same way going on a forum or IRC channel does not constitute documentation.
Is it, however, reasonable to assume the way OpenOffice, KOffice, Symphony, Google Docs, and Sun's ODF plug-in implement it is the most interoperable way?
The standard is actually pretty open-ended, so the various implementations are not really consistent. Microsoft's implementation of the spreadsheet, for instance, is fairly on track with the way Symphony implemented it.
I don't believe this is true. They both broke compatibility and screwed up parts of the implementation making it not quite conforming.
I don't think the other parties really want to take on Microsoft in terms of conformance with ODF 1.1:
http://adjb.net/post/Notes-on-Document-Conformance-and-Portability-4.aspx
Who cares what Sun wants? This is about having useful interoperability among office suites so we can have some real competition and choice going forward. No one company should be able to hold up progress. MS needs to be stopped from playing these games and hurting the industry in the process.
I would argue that parties like Sun and Google are maintaining a hacked and inconsistent basis under the mask of standards. If they want to play the standards games, they should write standards that are both complete and that they are able and willing to adhere to.
Sun matters because OpenOffice is a Sun product and OASIS is basically Sun.
Before you judge on this issue, it helps to read comments by various involved parts - those raising the issue to attention, MS people who have implemented ODF, and informed commenters outside this dispute. So, here's a bunch of links to start with.
First of all, a series of blog post by OASIS' Rob Weir (who's criticizing MSOffice) and Microsoft's Doug Mahugh (who's defending it) that evolved into a kind of a public discussion on the issue. Here they are in chronological / meaningful reading order:
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/05/update-on-odf-spreadsheet.html
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2009/05/05/odf-spreadsheet-interoperability.aspx
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/05/follow-up-on-excel-2007-sp2s-odf.html
http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2009/05/09/1-2-1.aspx
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2009/05/battle-for-odf-interoperability.html
Then there's some outside commentary. I've taken the following links from comments in Doug's blog posts, and they tend to either be neutral or side with MS on this, so it may not be a representative sample. If you have any representing informed argument for the other side (e.g. by members of ODF committee, or ODF implementers - in general, people who know the ins and outs of the spec, and can accurately judge on its wording and intent - not random blogosphere FUD from either side), please mention them in replies.
http://ajg.math.concordia.ab.ca/?p=4
http://adjb.net/post/Notes-on-Document-Conformance-and-Portability-4.aspx
http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/05/odf-11-formula-support-in-office-sp2.html
Here is my argument:
Since the non-interoperable part of MS's implementation is NOT in the standard, this is NOT an issue of compliance. Both OO.O and MSO are fully compliant.
Another BSD licensed and MS funded effort, when presented with the exact same standard, CHOSE to make the non-standard formulas inter-operable with most other implementations. They succeded.
This turn, with their own internal ODF implementation, MS CHOSE not to be inter-operable: they made the conscious decision to BREAK compatibility to thwart competition in a market they claim - as monopolies do- as if it was their private property, by using the petty argument that formulas are not specified. And thats why we see all this astrotufers claiming the standard is "wrong". It IS NOT. Both suites comply with them. The problem here is that on the parts of the problem-domain of spreadsheets, Microsoft CHOSE to not be inter-operable.
And that's that chums. I hope the EU nails them to the wall.
NO SIG
In other words, ODF [is bad] and nobody really wants to use it, but enough "activists" were able to convince those in government that it was a good idea.
Nope.
ODF is new and not yet widely deployed.
Just as you can't use television ads to sell televisions to people who only have radio, you can't use documents in ODF format to pitch the advantages of ODF to people who only have readers for .pdf and .doc.
Thanks, troll. If you didn't exist we'd have to invent you. B-)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
A common claim on Slashdot that always makes me laugh. Wonder who is paying the FSF shills to post on Slashdot?
But yeah, pretty childish, no?
By that token, then, OO's poor support of Microsoft formats is also OO's fault.
Yes of course that's OO's fault. I'm thinking you are making a statement that you believe people will disagree with? Sorry but when you astroturf you have to think a little or you sound like an idiot.
touche!
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Microsoft did it: they managed to make ODF scary - it may or may not work. It was a brilliant FUD move.
"If Microsoft is going to support a standard, they will support the standard not the most popular implementation's interpretation of the standard."
And why in the world would they do that?
Standards implementations typically rely on consensus between implementers, typically rely on complying with what is for all practical purposes a reference implementation (Open Office.org). And standards are never perfect and take a long time to come anywhere close to finishing, so it is common practice for the various implementers to agree that the lead implementation will extend the standard in the direction the standard is evolving, the standards organization will work hard to commit those changes to the standard itself, and the various implementations will follow the lead of the lead implementer.
That is how standards have worked since time immemorial. That is how all the other implementers of ODF are working together. So again, what possible reason could Microsoft have for doing it differently, except to purposely break interoperability?
And don't give me that nonsense about their customers would rather see strict compliance with the spec instead of interoperability. Nobody buys that - no customers have said any such thing. To the contrary customers especially government have asked for interoperability. And last May when it announced it would support ODF, Microsoft promised "practical interoperability." So where is it?
A) Microsoft has not publicly stated this anywhere, that the reason they are not compatible with other implementations such as OO.org is because of concerns they have for legal issues if they look at OO.org's source code.
So why are you? Why are you attempting to speak for them? I want to see where Microsoft is making this argument, and the content of the argument. If they're not, then you're just talking out your kazoo.
B) Besides which, standards implementations usually rely on cooperation between implementers. Do you have any evidence Microsoft asked OO.org, "Hey, we'd really like to implement ODF the right way, the way you do, but we're concerned about the legal implications if we do - you might sue us. Could we come to some agreement here?"
If you don't have that evidence, then again, you are talking out yer piehole and raising strawman arguments nobody else is.
Microsoft already gave the reason their implementation doesn't work: They decided that conformance to the spec (at which it is alleged they also failed) was more important than interoperability. http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2008/08/05/guiding-principles-for-office-s-odf-implementation.aspx
Mahugh says nothing there about being legally prevented from conforming to the way in which OO.org does things.
What the hell is wrong with people. Microsoft does not have any real interest in being compatible with other office software, it doesn't currently help their bottom line. I can understand their employees and shareholders sticking up for them, but the average user has nothing to gain supporting them on this issue. All the other office software programs that use ODF are more compatible with each other than any of them with MS's version of ODF. Doesn't look like MS even tried.
Microsoft, in turn, should warn governments about OpenOffice's general shittiness.
more appropriate.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
oh, i wouldn't have gussed that!
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
there is one thing the ac you are replying to has said that seems to be an apt reply to your ramblings:
Fix your fucking spec or shut the fuck up.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
the following cannot be said too much:
Fix your fucking spec or shut the fuck up.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
ms's reply:
Fix your fucking spec or shut the fuck up.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
yes, because i hate microsoft and want it to die! i don't care if my own program is any good, i just want microsoft to die.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
ahh... Oracle.
Semi-automatic amateur armchair Australian philosopher; conjecture ready at any moment...
a little thing like a monopoly convicted of behaving badly comes to mind.
Office 2007 output is compliant down to a single error with the OOXML transitional spec, which is what the transitional spec was intended for.
I think the funniest part of this is watching the ODF advocates squirm - they bitched about OOXML being 6000 pages, then they bitched about functionality that was literally 'act like Word 95'. All along, their spec wasn't broad enough because it was too short, and their response to criticism about functionality is... act like OO.o.
"How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take that splinter out of your eye,' when all the while you yourself do not see the beam in your own?"
Read these:
My point, which you conveniently glossed over, was that whilst Microsoft haven't exactly gone out of their way to resolve the huge gaping holes in the ODF specification - it's still a bit much for the ODF Alliance to think they are completely blameless on releasing, essentially, an incomplete spec. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
1.2 appears to address most of these concerns. If Microsoft don't get that right, then we have them and no-one else to blame.
(ps. "astroturf" doesn't mean "raise points which are valid but that I don't agree with")
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
It has nothing to do with the spec you imbecile troll. The problem lies OUTSIDE the spec.
They CHOSE to not interoperate. That is the choice they made.
The EU will nail their asses to the wall!
NO SIG
hey why the hell are you replying the same thing to all my comments? seems like YOU are the troll here.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
hey thanks for your line concerning the odf spec. i'm adding it to my sig. hope you don't mind.
Wealth is the gift that keeps on giving.
Very telling that you have little to add in the retorts, and in fact simply repeat yourself verbatim in closing. Listening skills low, blame playing high = low maturity. You probably won't rise to anything more than bit player in all of this anyway, so chirp away.
Fix your fucking spec or shut the fuck up.
Office documents come closer to validating against the OOXML spec than OO documents come to validating against the ODF spec. In both cases, there are minor errors in the documents. The Office errors are due to tags and attributes whose names were changed late in the standardization process. For example, they changed the value for boolean attributes from "1" to "true" (or the other way--I forget which direction it went).
Right. It was StarOffice, not OpenOffice, and of course, it's not one page. But the gist is right. There were people in OASIS that tried to get things into ODF that would allow full fidelity representation of imported documents from other formats (Office formats, WordPerfect formats, etc), so that legacy documents could be fully and completely brought forward. Sun shot them down, stating that ODF was meant to contain exactly what is needed to support StarOffice-nothing more, nothing less.
Go read the terms under which Sun gave OASIS permission to use Sun's intellectual property. Sun retains an option to withdraw at any time if they don't like the direction OASIS goes, and that terminates the license to the IP for any subsequent ODF versions. This means Sun has veto power--if they don't like the way a vote goes, they can threaten to leave OASIS.
Hiding behind the lack of a standard doesn't make the ODF Alliance correct.
The ODF alliance is in compliance with the law and not hurting anyone. Microsoft is violating antitrust law and undermining the free market to the detriment of consumers. You're trying to make out the former as in the wrong somehow? That's just sad.
The ODF alliance is in compliance with the law and not hurting anyone. Microsoft is violating antitrust law and undermining the free market to the detriment of consumers. You're trying to make out the former as in the wrong somehow? That's just sad.
The ODF Alliance is a corporate political action group trying to usurp market share for an inferior product using political pressure. Even the report in TFA suggests that Microsoft didn't fail to implement the standard, it was merely whining about their lack of attention to detail towards OpenOffice's quirky and improper implementation of their own standard, calling it "real-world interoperability".
The real problem is that an industry group is trying to use litigation to force an inferior standard on governments, pressuring them to convert documents to an inferior, incomplete, and inconsistent format that is tied to an inferior product using political action alone. As long as Microsoft is offering a higher quality and more complete standard, they are in the moral right. Maybe people can start using ODF when Sun finishes it. Right now, it seems like nothing more than a paper tiger that requires OpenOffice quirks to do anything properly.
Last I checked, when restrictions were lifted against the justice department to go after anti-trust violators, they went after google instead of Microsoft this time. It's a brave new world. Microsoft's implementing an open standard better than anyone else to expose the weakness of a standard is just not legally anti-competitive behavior, I believe it will actually strengthen the standard in the long run. I would say that Sun creating a vague standard and liberally interpreting it to make sure it's tied to their product then forcing it on the government using litigation is the essence of anti-competitive. It's called a government-granted monopoly--it only wouldn't be if ODF was a complete and rock-solid open standard. But it isn't.
Because you are LYING and I find this issue IMPORTANT.
NO SIG
If you use OD format, then use Open Office, and if you want to import to Excel, save as an Excel 97 spreadsheet - Voilla formula's work. Same with all Open Office suite - you can save as MS format. So that fact MS doesn't care too much about OD format is a bit irrelevant and it's not worth their effort untill a format has been agreed.
Embrace, extend, extinguish
Malice, or simple incompetence? Given Microsoft's track record, I can believe either one.
Or perhaps they said, we have to make this available, we don't have to do it well. And use the support calls that come in as a metric for measuring how much demand there is. Let the business drive it. Since there's problems with it, unless businesses are alert and are specifically pushing towards ODF, then this allows MS to continue pushing people into their own formats.
You are absolutely right.
NO SIG
It is "in the pipeline"; it's presumably not going to change very much more. So both MS Office 2007 SP2 and ODF 1.2 could have "converged" so to speak. I mean, surely that's a reason why they are members of the OpenDocument TC of OASIS. :-)
An earlier posting by Rob Weir (february 2009): ODF 1.2 committee draft 1
Microsoft announced MS Office 2007 SP2 in april 2009; I do understand that it takes time to implement a large standard
<dream-on-mode>
Now I hope MS will announce they'll support ODF 1.2 in their upcoming Office 2007 SP3, don't buy SP2 in the meantime because it's incompatible.
</dream-on-mode>
Looking a bit closer, there's a significant burst of work in november 2007 (230 pages). Presumably enough to start working, at least. And then in june 2008 there were a lot of revisions one after the other. The last version in june 2008, pre-draft 9, was 435 pages; nothing to be sneezed at!
Finally, annotated pre-draft 11 from december 2008 has 436 pages. A quick document comparison showed that the first change is in the page describing the "large" group of functions, of which several were added. I couldn't find any changes in the "small" or "medium" groups of functions, whereas I think "medium" is important for spreadsheet implementers because an annotation comment (OpenDocument-formula-20081221.odt (ODF), on p.29 describes "medium" as
Then from december 2008 to now, most changes I looked at were improved comments for the test case scenarios.
What I'm getting at is that, had Microsoft wanted to implement ODF 1.2, they could have already made experimental MS Office code last year, gradually adapting it with the further amendments and changes in the OpenFormula spec. This wouldn't have interfered with their stated target, ODF v1.1 compliance (because ODF 1.1 doesn't specify the formulas, except for their general syntax).
And *THEN* they could say, while delivering Office 2007 SP2, that it is only guaranteed compliant with ODF v1.1.
They could make the last modifications while the ODF committee draft's changes are implemented circa end 2009, so they can sell it as "now also ODF 1.2 compliant" Office 2007 SP3 in 2010.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?