Slashdot Mirror
ODF 1.2 Is Approved
An anonymous reader writes with news that the Open Document Format 1.2 specification has finally been approved.
"The most important improvement to ODF 1.2 is the newly built spreadsheet support. The old format was buggy and had a lot of legacy problems. Therefore the new spreadsheet module was written from scratch. 'A complete clean room implementation of the spreadsheet formula was built,' said [Michiel Leenaars, director of the Internet Society Netherlands]. ... Another important improvement in ODF 1.2 is the support for Resource Description Framework (RDF) metadata, a W3C standard model for data interchange on the Web. ... Instead of only being able to link to a URL, RDF allows users to link text in documents to other things like a V-Card or a calendar item. Companies can use this technology to structure their workflow."
Text files use .odt, spreadsheet files use .ods, presentations use .odp.
(Or am I feeding a troll?)
Government's idea of a balanced budget: take money from the right pocket to balance...oh who am I kidding?
It would have been great to see them do some work towards importing excel macros into openoffice. Obviously there are ample good reasons not to do it; but plenty of reasons in favor of it as well. And really, anything that encourages MSOffice -> openoffice migration should get some attention, IMHO.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
You replied to a FP AC. Do you need a diagram? The only thing missing was a goatse tinyurl.
Humor from a Genetically Molested Mind
(Or am I feeding a troll?)
In many cases, yes. However this time the AC led off with a first post that could well have come from general ignorance. Many people still fear openoffice, and show that level of complete lack of understanding. There are many people around here who still think that openoffice is a java-dependent product of Sun Microsystems that is determined to takeover your entire desktop and consume absurd amounts of resources in order to do the simplest of imaginable tasks.
So this time, the jury is out. The AC may well have been trolling, though in this case it is equally probable they just simply were ignorant.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Will my old .odf files be updated, then? I often worry about not being able to properly open my old writings and such. I'd hate to have to manually re-save everything.
Several things happened in 2002. Can you be more precise?
Some apps are WYSIWYG. Some others are WYSIWTF.
There are many people around here who still think that openoffice is a java-dependent product of Sun Microsystems that is determined to takeover your entire desktop and consume absurd amounts of resources in order to do the simplest of imaginable tasks.
That's because they are right. Well, it's Oracle now, but still:
# yum install openoffice.org-calc
[...]
Resolving Dependencies
[...]
Installing:
[...]
java-1.6.0-openjdk x86_64 1:1.6.0.0-54.1.9.9.fc14 updates 26 M
[...]
Installed size: 418 M
Is this ok [y/N]: N
418 MB just for the calc? Seems bloated to me. And seems like it requires java too.
The question is the wrong way around. Will Excell run it is the proper question.
The answer is of course: not properly.
not really, the common denominator here is excel, I seriously cant expect to send a odf file and have some random person open it in excel (or word for documents etc) I use open office, I spread it around my workplace like candy, but at end end of it all the files get defaulted to save in MS format cause that is what everyone else uses, and I cant really soapbox to a customer who is using something that works fine in their minds
> And 99.9% of the population uses .doc, .xls, .ppt
> *yawn*
> Next?
Hi, I'm IE, I used to be dominant, the boss, the one who gave the cards... but then came that pesky fox and its toy-like Chromatic friend. Well, I guess I'm gonna retire soon.
> (except for the rebels that put append an 'x' to the extensions).
We have a normal report at work (let's call it Report A), and the same one with an Excel data export feature, aptly named Report A-XLS. Very well, people ask me what is XLS. This is the result of that braindamaged policy of defaulting to "hide known file extensions" or whatever it's called.
Do you care? Let me tell you, your 99% users will double-click on an odf file with a text-like icon, Writer will open, they'll edit the file, print and save it -- and they'll never know they didn't use Word. M$ has taken extensive measures to ensure its users can't recognize its products.
The size depends on what you (and/or) your package manager choose to install. To quote the FAQ "For certain features of the software - but not most - Java is required. Java is notably required for Base." http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/system-requirements/
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
My main question here would be why the hell are you still using OpenOffice.org anyway? I've been on LibreOffice for ages now, and (in Debian at least, as far as I can tell) LibreOffice Calc does not require any sort of Java runtime.
This would make sense given that one of the aims of LibreOffice is to "reduce Java dependency".
Anybody that cares about the documents functioning properly in the future or when exchanged with random other people doesn't use the MS Office formats. MS does go to lengths to maintain backwards compatibility, but ultimately it's still risky to use different versions to work on a file.
If you send it as an RTF they shouldn't have any trouble opening it. Chances are that they won't even notice that it isn't a DOC.
Ultimately, anybody that demands that they be sent a DOC deserves to receive a word macro virus infected document.
the common denominator here is excel
Is it really? Excel's problem with their existing ODF support was that it strictly adhered to the specification, rather than supporting the extensions that were used by OpenOffice. The common denominator is actually the useless specs of the previous standard that did not completely include everything that was required (mainly the fomulas).
It is similar to the useless standard of OOXML which is not representative of what MS-Office actually uses. If OpenOffice provided a complete implementation of the strict version of OOXML, they would not be compatible with Microsoft's product. Would you consider the common denominator to be Office or OpenOffice there?
They were semi right. They could have in the same way that everybody else doesn't seem to be having that trouble, they just chose not to to use a compatible namespace. The folks over at MS could easily have picked up the phone or sent an email to the other projects and informally agree upon some sort of namespace that would be compatible. Or, they could always just issue an RFC and do something about it ad hoc until the next revision came out.
What I've read about the issue sounds more like attorneys justifying something in a post hoc fashion than a legitimate problem with the spec. They could have done something about it, but ultimately opted not to. The lack of a specific standard namespace should have been a huge neon sign saying that they were about to implement something that wouldn't interoperate.
1. The parent post is from hairyfeet, a paid Microsoft astroturfer. Last time he submitted his resume to anyone was when he was hired to whore for karma and post Microsoft propaganda here.
2. HR departments accept PDF just fine, and there is no such thing as "resume scanning software". Recruiters insist on Word, so they can remove your contact information and send a copy to every company they know. This is the only thing I have ever seen recruiters doing.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Communicating badly and then acting smug when you're misunderstood is not cleverness.
its simple, what does most of the people use, excel, normals have never heard of any of this, they just want excel files, what happens when you send a open blah blah file to them?
you could build the best office file format ever, it does not help if no one uses it
So, is this actually going to ruin compatibility?
Just when office finally has started supporting ODF, it's time to make it even harder?
The "If it's not done the "True Open Source way", I'm going to infect your computer with malware" attitude that keeps Open Source office software in its own little ghetto.
Resorting to vandalism doesn't get anyone to adopt the software. Writing excellent software gets people using software.
Because there was no alternative. Its really that simple,
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Yea, I noticed headhunters wanted .doc format. I once complied and the headhunter modified my resume before he send it on to my next employer. I didn't know he would change it, so I got a bit in a bind during the interview as there were lies on it. Strangely my resume was impressive enough and I got hired.
The second time another headhunter wanted a .doc file as well, and I asked him about it and he told me straight out he wanted to embellish it a bit. I told him no, and gave him the .pdf. That interview went a lot smoother.
It now seems that word documents now come with settings, so when you open it, word comes up in strange modes. If you just want to read a document, a .doc file is not the way to go.
Send them a download link to a free ODF 1.2 compliant office application?
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
> Companies can use this technology to structure their workflow.
Yesh indeed.
How much space does an install of excel take? OO may be bloated in its own right, but not when you compare it to the competition...
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
So both formats have flaws, but there are some key differences...
The guys behind ODF are actively trying to fix their flaws (hence this story)
The guys behind OpenOffice aim for compatibility instead of blindly implementing a spec that is flawed and noone else follows
MS could easily have implemented the same extensions to ODF, and they had already done so in the earlier ODF plugin they sponsored, which was BSD licensed so they could have simply reused the code. Instead, they chose to go out of their way to write a new implementation which they knew would be incompatible with everyone else.
They only implemented ODF at all to try and pull the wool over people's eyes, it was the bare minimum to try and fool those who were demanding open standards, while still trying to maintain their lock-in.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
You must have a big lap. http://www.digibarn.com/collections/systems/zenith-big/index.html
I built one of these as the Heathkit version, back in 1984. Wiring every single circuit board. Just like God intended it.
Even brought this "portable" on a business trip in the overhead compartment once. And only once.
Nice try. You clearly didn't serve on any of the standards committees. ODF1 wasn't a complete mess, perhaps you could enlighten us to where it was a mess? Unlike the OOXML I read, and I did read a lot of it, ODF was not broken.
The "If it's not done the "True Microsoft way", I'm going to infect your computer with malware" attitude that keeps Microsoft office software in its own little ghetto.
Resorting to vandalism doesn't get anyone to adopt the software. Writing excellent software gets people using software.
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
This is a good solution but until there are significant inroads made into getting corporate IT specifiers to adopt ODF compliant software, users won't be able to use it on most corporate machines. The solution must be to actively market the standard to the corporates who currently can't see past proprietary formats and counter MS's dominance. This is easier said than done as MS aggressively pushes their product and spreads disinformation. Corporate buyers also tend to distrust anything which is free to install as they can't imagine it will be any good. I know this from experience of a trial in my workplace where I and a colleague have for the past 4 years, used only Openoffice for all our word processor and spreadsheet work while all our other colleagues have used MS Office. Despite only having problems opening two .doc formatted spreadsheets in that time, most of our colleagues including the MD have decided to stick with MS office - the main objection being that MS Office must be better because it is expensive! Another argument I have heard is that there is a high cost to retrain staff due to minor differences in the interface even though MS Office now sports the "ribbon" interface which to be frank couldn't look more different to the previous menu based interface. The real problem is that there a lot of people with a vested monetary interest in keeping MS Office dominant and support staff don't want to learn to support something different.
"You can lead a horse to water but a pencil must be lead!" - Stan Laurel
The parent post is from Alex Belits, a jobless Linux astroturfer. Last time he submitted his resume to anyone was when he tried to be Linus Torvalds bootlicker and was turned down for drool.
See how nicely that fits there loony tunes? Oh and I'm not working for anyone but myself, I am your worst nightmare...I'm a retailer. you see we have tried your product and found your bullshit and lies to be just that so maybe you'd like me to enlighten some of the masses, hmm?,
Isn't it sad, how like a frightened child afraid to look under the bed, you cower at the truth? if your driver model isn't shit then why does Dell have to run their own repos even though we are talking a teeny tiny subset of hardware? Oh right because Linux shits itself and dies if you use the default repos! Man that is some excellent product you got there! Bleeding yet douchey? want some more? nice thing about having the truth on your side, you can keep throwing punches all day! How about how a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks or how ASUS has given up on your bullshit or how about Walmart running away from linux as fast as it can? You got the crazy koolaid drunk enough to say they ALL are paid shills because they won't do your forum dance or CLI horseshit? Meanwhile your "hero" Torvalds the great says Plans? We don't need no steenkin plans!. Why don't you tell them that at work next week, see how quick you get a pink slip? More? How about you actually have the balls to celebrate getting a whole 1% market share while you are actually lower than JavaME and there is a whole website dedicated To your bullshit and excuses.
Meanwhile i'll go back to enjoying my nice new Asus EEE Windows 7 HP netbook, which I got myself as a little prezzie with some of the profits I made from NOT carrying an inferior product. If you don't like being last? Try putting out a product worth actually stocking. You know what you remind me of? A religious nutball. When someone points out a hole in your dogma you go "La la la, it can't be true! U must be a M$ Ninja!" while we all laugh at your batshit insanity. But hey friend here is a nice video of your hero RMS showing why he is the great one so that should cheer you up.
Nice try, Ballmer.
RDF implementation? V-cards? Who cares about this?
My main question here would be why the hell are you still using OpenOffice.org anyway?
Um, because this thread talks about Openoffice, so I went to a box that actually provided OO.o instead of LO in order to avoid confusion?
Clever trolling, but no.
How is this trolling, exactly? Is it the old "disagree with fanbois, must be troll"? It's my honest opinion, based on evidence of what an end-user actually sees.
To quote the FAQ "For certain features of the software - but not most - Java is required. Java is notably required for Base." http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/system-requirements/
Does it really matter just what pulls it in, as long as the end user tries to install Calc and java gets pulled in? That is, from the end user's perspective, a dependency on java. No ifs and buts about it.
Playing the "blame the distro" game isn't helpful either. If the app devs make it too difficult for the world's biggest OSS contributor to provide OO.o without java, the blame should not be placed with the distro. Nor the end user.
Actually, the 'question' was facetious, and apparently it went over like a lead balloon
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
I have two wishes.
Polynomial regression on ods
Write code to convert mathematical formulas from word to odt and back again.
When these two wishes have been fulfilled. Libreoffice will be ready for use in high schools.
How much space does an install of excel take?
Good question!
Disabling everything but Excel x86_64 from a Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2010 DVD states 1.39 GB. I suspect that some of that is because of non-selectables always installed with the Professional Plus version, but that it's still horribly bloated.
OO may be bloated in its own right, but not when you compare it to the competition..
But what is the competition for OO.o calc? The several-hundred-dollar and closed Excel?
Or free and open spreadsheets like gnumeric, which weighs in at around 14 MB, and IME[*] has better compatibility with Excel than OO.o has?
[*] At least up to but not including the changes mentioned in the submission. I have both installed, and frequently have to open Excel-created sheets that my boss or other colleagues send me, and sometimes make corrections and send them back. gnumeric is less problematic, especially when people have been "fancy" and used smaller fonts or different colors. YMMV, but for me and the work I do every day, gnumeric is the competition, and has so far won.
Bloat is bloat, whether it comes from Microsoft or Sun/Oracle/OSS-coders. Whether it has less bloat than the competition doesn't reduce the bloat.
"Our soup only has half as much urine in it as the competition" is not a winning argument.
Those "rebels" unfortunately make up about 20-40% of MSOffice users now.
You clearly didn't serve on any of the standards committees
Damn straight. If I had, neither spec would have had my vote for counting as a standard. ODF 1.0 was fine as a first draft. As a standard, it was an embarrassment and most of the problems were met with 'we'll fix this in a later version'.
wasn't a complete mess, perhaps you could enlighten us to where it was a mess?
It's been a couple of years, but as I recall the table format was horrible, the spreadsheet description was basically missing. The spec itself was far too short to do what it claimed. I looked at implementing some bits, but basically the only thing to do when you got to some ambiguity was to see what OpenOffice.org did and make something compatible with it - an experience that the AbiWord developers shared. I doubt anyone who did not have a copy of OO.o could have implemented even a moderately compatible ODF parser or generator. With a decent spec, you would need nothing other than the specification. Contrast it with the W3C specifications, where each element is documented in detail.
Unlike the OOXML I read, and I did read a lot of it, ODF was not broken
Then why was even OO.o, which was supposedly the reference implementation, able to fully implement the spec? The entire point of something like ODF is interoperability between applications. A requirement for passing it as a specification should have been two, complete, independent, compatible implementations. It was passed with no complete implementations.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The guys behind ODF are actively trying to fix their flaws (hence this story)
And Office 2010 has better support for their standardised file format than 2007. Everybody tries to improve.
The guys behind OpenOffice aim for compatibility instead of blindly implementing a spec that is flawed and noone else follows
And if they are not aiming for the standard, who are the guys behind OpenOffice attempting to be compatible with? They are the trendsetters with the ODF format. Other office packages are expected to be compatible with it.
> If you send it as an RTF they shouldn't have any trouble opening it.
This is not Office, this is a document scanning system - and it may very well have issues with RTF. That being said, I found RTF to be generally less well supported on pretty much all office suites - it usually supports less features and causes more problems. DOC was actually pretty well supported outside of Microsoft, too, but with DOCX we are pretty much back to square 1 (although it should be easier to read in theory).
So stop buying Ms office and get a real office package
That's sort of hard if your business depends on commercial off-the-shelf applications that run in Access+VBA, such as Stone Edge Order Manager.
I can't answer for him, but I can for me:
1) Because the name "LibreOffice" sucks. It really, really, really sucks.
2) I have a vested interest in keeping my users happy, and right now, that doesn't mean throwing away 10+ years worth of the name "OpenOffice".
3) Because on my systems, OpenOffice loads much faster (for equivalent version)
4) A greater rather than lesser Java dependency doesn't bother me all that much.
5) It is what I am used to setting up and customizing (at the system level).
I am likely to switch, eventually and reluctantly. Would be a LOT easier if they had a rebranding option.
"The old format was buggy and had a lot of legacy problems. Therefore the new spreadsheet module was written from scratch."
O rly? And whose fault was it that the old format was buggy? Was it perchance the the same organisation which is releasing the new format? So why exactly should we believe that the new one is "better"?
I'm tired of format churn. 90% of it doesn't need to happen. Just get it right and stick with it, and if you try to tell me that you can't tell whether or not you've ever "got it right" because there's, like, no right or wrong, dude, and I should just lighten up and sorta go with the flow of the vibe of the zeitgeist of the moment and buy this month's iPad -- well, then you've just invalidated your claim to have got it right this time.
Surely data formats aren't rocket surgery. Just build it so it's a bit extensible, doesn't hardcode any silly assumptions, doesn't embed a Turing-complete binary format which can root your OS, and you'll be pretty much there.
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
Yes the ODF1 spreadsheet specification was complete crap. Huge portions, like the entire formula language definition, and all the function definitions were completely left out, and what was there was vague and inconsistent. As a result, while word processor documents largely transfer well between OpenOffice, KWord, MS Word, and others, but spreadsheets don't transfer at all. You loose not only formating and plots but even calculations. ODF1 is a completely worthless standard for spreadsheets.
It was fine. It allowed nested tables but also conventional row/cell spans. Infact it was a good example how they weren't following OO.o's format because it didn't truly understand spans at the time (instead, it mimicked them with nesting). Despite OO.o's flaws they put spans into the spec because it made sense.
It wasn't missing -- it clearly wasn't there and they didn't claim to have formula interoperability. ODF 1.0 did make some rules around formulas, and said to put cell references in [square brackets] but Microsoft failed to even follow that.
OASIS and ISO standards don't have "reference" implementations. ODF has changed a lot based on KOffice requirements. IETF have the requirement of two implemenations but most standards organisations, including the W3C, don't.
Did HTML4 have a video tag? No, they decided to release it without one (despite discussing it vigorously on their lists) because it was better to have what they agreed upon released as a standard, and not to push for perfection. As the saying goes: "perfect is the enemy of 'good enough'", and many standards are released as agreement is reached without being complete. E.g. HTML5 is an emerging standard that is incomplete, and fixing the problems later is an appropriate way of releasing standards providing that's made clear (which it was).
You "doubt" ... "moderately compatible"? What scientific terms. You're just making stuff up and you're ignorant about the format and the standards process.
Nice try, nutjob hippie faggot.
I'm okay with this.
For the dell mini the problem was the graphics card which had no history with linux and was released with closed drivers. Currently there are two open drivers available. A stub driver that provides a basic frame buffer, and a driver that supports some 2D acceleration.The same graphics tech is coming back around with cedar trail and intel has committed to developing a open driver for both it and the GMA 500. ( I also believe it was the Xorg side driver that broke and not the kernel side) Absolutely nothing anybody in the open source community could have done about it anyways. Anybody knowledgeable on the topic will tell you that closed source drivers are liable to bite you in the ass in open source operating systems. Dell shot themselves in the foot by not vetting the hardware more closely.
Will it run in Excel?
Will it run in emacs?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Open Office is coded in c++. Java isn't required. I don't use java with it.
It's an ISO standard document format, so there will probably be a plugin for it at the least otherwise government wouldn't be able to use excel.
Does it really matter just what pulls it in, as long as the end user tries to install Calc and java gets pulled in?
Yes, it matters. You aren't installing vanilla OpenOffice; you are installing a custom version crafted by Fedora Core. Windows users don't need Java. Debian users don't need Java. Users of Oracle's generic Linux build don't need Java.
Playing the "blame the distro" game isn't helpful either. If the app devs make it too difficult for the world's biggest OSS contributor to provide OO.o without java, the blame should not be placed with the distro. Nor the end user.
It's a tradeoff between installing Java or crippling OOo's more enterprise-friendly features until the end-administrator installs it manually. As an enterprise-oriented distro, it makes sense for Red Hat to include Java as a dependency.
Excel is the primary competitor yes, Gnumeric is great and is designed for accuracy while openoffice is designed for excel compatibility, the trouble with that is people will assume excel is correct and gnumeric is wrong because its lesser known.
OO is certainly bloated, but its not looking to win converts from gnumeric, its looking to win converts from excel which is even more bloated... Baby steps... If enough people migrate to OO, then it will become necessary to use open file formats, at which point it will be much easier to use gnumeric or any other spreadsheet too. The most important thing is to open up the market, then real competition can occur and bring improvements for everyone.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
OO are the trendsetters yes, but they chose a formula language which is based on that used by excel, as other vendors were already somewhat familiar with it...
They also fully documented their extensions, so third parties could pick up on them, and they worked with OASIS to ensure that future versions of ODF address this issue.
MS on the other hand are not trying to work with the community, they chose to create their own format and force it through ISO rather than working with the existing format, when they grudgingly implemented ODF they added different incompatible extensions to everyone else in bad faith, and although their OOXML format got through ISO they have not actually implemented the final version that got approved.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
And to add to that, ODF has been updated with improvements (hence this story) while OOXML seems to have stagnated.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
You must have noted that OpenOffice doesn't figure in the list. I believe that the old buggy implementation was in Open Office. I think i'll change to gNumeric. OK
Well, actually, ODF has simply been brought to the point that it should have been when it was first released. Yes, RDF support is a nice improvement, but ODF 1.0 was severly lacking in many areas. This is what ODF should have been.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
While true, a partial open format is better than nothing (which was the status quo before) and a good first step... And the development process is open, people are free to join and contribute/suggest improvements.
OOXML is also severely lacking, but does not have an open development process and is not being improved.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
OOXML and ODF have differnt purposes. OOXML codifies the existing microsoft office formats in an XML container. This is largely for legacy purposes as there's basically a 1:1 mapping of existing documents to OOXML.
ODF is an attempt to create an ideal document format.
To put it simply, converting .doc to .docx requires reformatting. Converting .doc to ODF requires translation, and no translation is ever 1:1
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here