The Anti-ODF Whisper Campaign

eldavojohn writes "Groklaw is examining the possibility of an anti-ODF whisper campaign and the effects it has had on the ODF and OOXML Wikipedia articles. In the ODF article, Alex Brown bends the truth to make it seem like no one is supporting ODF, and that it is a flawed and incomplete standard. From the conclusion, 'So what is one to do? You obviously can't trust Wikipedia whatsoever in this area. This is unfortunate, since I am a big fan of Wikipedia. But since the day when Microsoft decided they needed to pay people to "improve" the ODF and OOXML articles, they have been a cesspool of FUD, spin and outright lies, seemingly manufactured for Microsoft's re-use in their whisper campaign. My advice would be to seek out official information on the standards, from the relevant organizations, like OASIS, the chairs of the relevant committees, etc. Ask the questions in public places and seek a public response. That is the ultimate weakness of FUD and lies. They cannot stand the light of public exposure. Sunlight is the best antiseptic.'"

Comments

Let's start with the truth

[elrous0]

It might be useful to acknowledge what software DOES actually support ODF--including pretty much all of the more popular office and word processing suites [from Wikipedia]:

• Adobe Buzzword
• AbiWord (Users of Windows installations must first download and install Import/Export Plugins)
• Google Docs
• IBM Lotus Symphony
• KOffice
• Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, Office 2007 (with plugin)
• Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2)
• NeoOffice
• OpenOffice
• Sun Microsystems StarOffice
• SoftMaker Office
• Corel WordPerfect Office X4
• Zoho Office Suite
• TextEdit (for the Mac)

That doesn't sound like "no one" to me.

Re:Let's start with the truth

[johnsonav]

Kind of sad how few Word processors there are these days.
Even on your list at least four of them are based on the same code and two of them are Office.

I don't know that it's necessarily a bad thing. Word processors have a pretty big network effect, especially in business. So long as the same document format is rendered differently on different word processors (no matter how small that difference), there will be an incentive to standardize on a handful.

Re:Let's start with the truth

[Fred_A]

On the other hand, there also is lots of support for MOO XML :
- Microsoft
- cows

And there are *lots* of cows.

Re:Let's start with the truth

[Fred_A]

Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2)

Isn't that one "read only" for some files ? Such as ODS (aka. spreadsheets) and possibly others (But ODS is the only one where I've heard of real problems).

MS has the source code for their implementation of whatever standard they're following at the moment (MOOXML possibly, or whatever), they have the specs for ODF (which, granted are incomplete for spreadsheets for *very good reasons*, look it up), *and* they have the source code. But being *MS* they somehow manage to generate something that's illegible.

Hmmm.

Disclaimer : I don't use MS stuff (or rather haven't for the last 15 yrs, I just use their OS to run games every now and then), I do switch small businesses *away* from Microsoft (successfully too, thanks to *ubuntu most of the time). It doesn't mean I have to know the intricacies of their software. I wish I could care but I don't have the time anymore. I just read the news.

Re:Let's start with the truth

[WaywardGeek]

I compared the ODF article to the OOXML article. The most striking difference is the "Criticism" sections of the ODF article is twice as long, and points out really minor stuff that hardly deserves inclusion in such a summary. On the other hand, the OOXML article fails to mention ANY of the major criticism that has gone across Slashdot in recent years, including Microsoft's paying off countries to support them on the standards committee, or how Microsoft purposely refuses to support the ODF standard in any useful way (I still import/export Word/Excel/PowerPoint, in Open Office - far less broken). There is also no mention that ODF is short, sweet, and nearly complete, while OOXML is Webster Dictionary sized, yet highly incomplete. The low complexity of an ODF implementation relative to OOXML is missing.

In short, we here on slashdot would write very different articles on the two formats. The gist would probably be:

• ODF - Reasonable format, with room for improvement
• OOXML - Evil ploy by Microsoft to continue world-wide domination

Not that I'm against world domination by US corporations :-)

Re:Let's start with the truth

[Insanity Defense]

On the other hand, there also is lots of support for MOO XML : - Microsoft

Unfortunately this gives the impression that Microsoft supports Office Open XML but they don't. They plan to on the next version of MS-Office. They do support DOCX which is an ancestor of OOXML but they don't support OOXML itself. Neither does anyone else.

Re:Let's start with the truth

[Insanity Defense]

We wouldn't accept such an incomplete standard from Microsoft. In fact, the rallying cry against OOXML was that it was "too complete" because it was X pages long.

It wasn't that it was too long that people complained. They complained because it enshrined errors that Microsoft had made in their earlier formats (wrong leap years for example). It also ignored existing standards (like how leap years are figured). Further it had things in the form of "Do like Word 95" rather than an actual definition of how.

ISO standards should respect and adhere to prior standards where they overlap rather than recreate it in an incompatible way. The leap year example shows how OOXML ignored existing standards.

Re:Let's start with the truth

[Insanity Defense]

I thought it best that I provide evidence:

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/165077/microsoftled_forum_yields_tools_for_ooxml_interoperability.html

An update this year adds support for ECMA-376, an earlier version of OOXML standard, to Office 2007, but Microsoft won't support the ISO29500 specification until it releases its forthcoming Office 2010 technology. Office 2007 is the software that set off the controversy over document formats when Microsoft developed OOXML as its own XML-based file format for the suite.

Re:Let's start with the truth

[Hijacked Public]

Actually there is a lot, a whole lot.

Anyone who wants good quality page layouts has to wrestle these programs to the ground and force them to do it. Try integrating drawings in your text with Word or OO, it is awful. Word 2003 plants a giant drawing canvas in the middle of the page. Laying out text with graphs and getting anything sensible looking is worse. Ask a typeface geek about typefaces. Ask Edward Tufte if default page layouts are anything approaching decent.

I know the fallback response is that most people don't care, or don't need proper page layout features, but that is just a chicken and egg argument. People have made due so long they no longer recognize the absurdities. Galileo published books in the 1600s that integrated text and pictures better than most modern word processing programs can.

They don't need to become full blown Pagenmaker-esque graphics hybrids, but there is whole lot of room to improve.

Re:Let's start with the truth

[Magic5Ball]

Why is it remarkable to you that a list of criticisms about the objective technical merits of a proposed standard does not include items about the political actions of parties to the standardization process?

Did ReiserFS gain or lose functionality for the sole reason that the author committed a crime? Did any of Alan Turing's theories gain or lose logical validity due to his sexual orientation becoming revealed? Did the arguments of the civil rights movement become wrong when they engaged in some quid pro quo actions to gain exposure?

Re:Is ODF cross-application compatible?

[hedwards]

I wouldn't use MS' ODF, last time I wanted to export ODF from MS Office, I used the plug in provided by Sun microsystems. I haven't used it lately, but it's up to version 3.1. Last version I used was 1.1.

Sun ODF Plugin

Re:How do you define a 'whisper campaign'?

[Palestrina]

A whisper campaign is when you tell outright lies in private that you would never dare to say in public, because they are so outrageously false that you would be immediately challenged on it. Saying that Microsoft products are buggy, etc., is not a whisper campaign, because we can and do say this publicly without fear of contradiction.

Re:What "whisper campaign"?

[peppepz]

Here.

Rob Weir rigged his tests

[harlows_monkeys]

Weir's tests of MS's ODF implementation made a big point of the fact that if you saved a spreadsheet in OO, and read it with Office, it was not fully functional (you get the cell values, but not the formulas, so it becomes a static snapshot of the data).

Yet Lotus Symphony has almost exactly the same problem. Weir got around that by using a beta of a future version of Symphony that fixes the problem.

Re:But ODF is a flawed and incomplete standard.

[Todd Knarr]

Which conveniently omits that ODF was submitted under PAS - the process for reviewing and approving something that's already a standard and is already in use. ODF officially started the standardization process in OASIS in December of 2002, starting from the StarOffice format.

As for OASIS's track record, I refer you to http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/ that lists the standards they've originated. These include DocBook and a large number of SOAP-related standards. That's hardly "no track record at all". And their heavy concentration in XML-based standards makes them a good place for another XML-based standard.