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Office To Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at Last)
Andy Updegrove writes "Between 2005 and 2008, an unparalleled standards war was waged between Microsoft, on the one hand, and IBM, Google, Oracle and additional companies on the other. At the heart of the battle were two document formats, one called ODF, developed by OASIS, a standards development consortium, and Open XML, a specification developed by Microsoft. Both were submitted to, and adopted by, global standards groups ISO/IEC. But then Microsoft never fully adopted its own standard. Instead, it implemented what it called 'Transitional Open XML,' which was better adapted for use in connection with documents created using older versions of Office. Yesterday, Microsoft announced in a blog entry that it will finally make it possible for Office users to open, edit and save documents in the format that ISO/IEC approved."
Several of the complaints registered by members of the ISO approval committee (which were ignored by the paid-off chair), involved sections of the specification that caused it to be physically impossible to actually implement.
But the "standard" still is a travesty.
It is called "establishing the history of the story".
Rather a lot.
Warning:
Features you have chosen in this document
are not compatible with OpenXML,
for best results please save in Microsoft format,
you may lose work if you continue.
[save in Word Format ][cancel][continue]
Meanwhile ODF already has a huge seven year foothold, and all of this time the format and its applications have been in production use, and have become more and more robust.
Yay, another format change.
Bought for you by Microsoft.
**History lesson: How MS got Office Open XML approved**
MS paid the ISO membership fees for a bunch of new ISO members for that one critical ISO vote.
The new members were so happy, they voted to approve Open XML.
This way, the secretive and patent laden file format could be used in government bids where ISO file formats where required.
Soon after this outrageous manoeuvre,
ISO lost it's reputation and became known as I Sold Out.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
It'll be fully compatible. It'll just be one big block like this:
<![CDATA[...]]>
Yeah, this is why both Google Docs and Open/LiberOffice utilize and support ODF. Sure, it's just hand-waving.
Please.
sig: sauer
Google Documents (Drive) happily accepts .doc and .ppt and converts them to a Google Doc format, but not ODF. So to create a presentation in Libre Office I need to "Save as Office 2003 ppt", followed by import into Google Docs, for the obvious reason that no computer in a typical conference room can open an ODF presenation.
In a related move, Microsoft has removed Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote, Outlook, Access, and Publisher from its Office suite, and is replacing them with the more popular Notepad, Calc, and Paint software.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Read my post below.
MS got an ISO standard by buying it about 2 years after ODF was the approved.
But the approval for Microsoft Office Open (aka "MOO") was too lateand came with a a few changes so they shipped Office 2010 it as is with MOO-original flavour.
Now they want to give us MOO-ISO flavour.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
Just because they are implementing the functionality, does not mean they have to make it work well.
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IBM, Oracle, and Google all have a vested interest in an interoperable format. IBM and Oracle are professional services companies. Interoperable formats means it is easier for them to implement custom services and provides more surfaces for them to provide integration services. Google wants to know everything so it can advertise everything, and a better format is easier to get information from.
Microsoft is a vendor-lock-in company. OpenXML is designed to lock you in to their platform. They are they ONLY company that benefits.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Remember though, in Soviet Russia, standard chooses you.
Silence is a state of mime.
You'd better tell all the members of 3GPP. Most of them are companies that make equipment used in the mobile phone industry.
Allowing a single multinational corporation to draft the standard all by themselves, however - yeah, I'd agree with you there.
Words are cheap. Should these words translate into verifiable fact then I will care. Otherwise, considering the history of this particular bad actor I must regard this announcement as just so much wide eyed spin aimed at slowing the exodus of potential customers to free, open and trustworthy alternatives.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Ummm ... most standards I've ever seen have come out of industry groups all working to arrive at a workable solution -- IEEE 802 group being a fine example of this. Do you think a bunch of guys in academia come up with a reference standard that people actually adopt?
Now, in this case, this should never have really been called a "standard" in any way shape or form, since Microsoft had never actually implemented it, and the spec basically had loads of "should behave the same as this old format we never documented" in it. So nobody but Microsoft could ever really adhere to it, making it a complete joke. But Microsoft isn't really interested in interoperability, and haven't really ever been.
Telephones, cell phones, networks ... most of the things we think of as standards were hashed out by a bunch of multi-nationals.
The joke with standards has always been that if you don't like one, create (or use) another one, there's plenty.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
MS got an ISO standard by buying it about 2 years after ODF was the approved.
Destroying ISO as a credible organization in the process.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
How exactly would you display a PDF in "presenter view"? (Where the presenter can see the slides, slide thumbnails, and slide notes but the audience sees only the slides.)
What country/large organization is refusing to use their products without this stamp on it?
Switching the conversation to be something offtopic: check.
Switching the conversation to be something that makes competing software look bad: check.
Not specifying concrete time frames: check.
Comparing an obviously old version of software instead of the new fork (LibreOffice): check.
Asking about trustworthiness of open source software: check.
I'm sorry, but your post looks like a complete troll. If not, please check out the latest version (3.4, if memory serves me correctly) for Mac, Windows, or Linux, and give us all an update as to its stability for you. There was quite a lot of work done on LibreOffice that OpenOffice didn't include in their codebase.
Funny, in my experience, MS-Office is the crashy one.
Circumcision is child abuse.
any major multinational corporation in drafting a standard is preposterous. none of the largest technology companies in the world mentioned in the summary have a vested interest in ensuring interoperability between competing products at any level
Of course they do. They often have a strong interest in interoperability everywhere but where their core profits come from. So for example the entire success of the PC platform is based on the Intel / Microsoft / Western Digital Standard for x86 which has allowed hardware interoperability. It was a standard which parts manufacturers like Intel and Western Digital benefit from, and software producers like Microsoft benefited from that was however devastating to the box producers like IBM, Osborne, DEC...
Similarly Microsoft has a tremendous interest in coding standards and API standards for software to run against Windows and for programs to interoperate with one another. That's why they've spent a fortune laying the infrastructure for things like drag and drop and OLE to work as well as they do.
Microsoft is a vendor-lock-in company.
The claim above was much broader. Far more accurate would be: "Microsoft is a OS vendor-lock-in company" because Microsoft is incredibly open in the areas of: application software, hardware, parts, accessories, web services....
MS used standardization organizations to keep it's monopoly by stoppig real open standar ODF to spread and develop.
MS is stopping the real open standard ODF - by implementing support for ODF (now 1.2) in MS Office?
Office To Become Fully Open XML Compliant (allegedly)
There, fixed that for you.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Three Squirrels
How strangely appropriate for this context.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
LibreOffice can handle 1,048,576 rows, and has been able to do so since version 3.3
Destroying ISO as a credible organization in the process.
I think you mean: Demonstrating that the ISO process had already lost its integrity.
Well, /yeah/.
Just Hold down shift and F5 while scrolling through the ribbon, select the change format from the hidden ribbon, click formats, then compatibility, then change. Uncheck 6 boxes, then click on 4 others. Do this for every document you have to save because it wont save the preferences and you to can have compatible documents!!!!!
I trust Microsoft as far as I could comfortably spit a dead rat
If you're going to tell that story at least tell the whole thing. When the OpenDocument Format included OpenFormula with version 1.2, it became the very first format to have a standard for spreadsheet formulas. Prior to that, there were no standard or other formats with a standard way of defining formulas. ODF was the first.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
NTLM is usually where the problems start.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
As a counter example, MPEG 4 and MPEG Audio Layer III *do* have reference implementations.
MPEG 4's implementation was what was subsequently taken as a basis to work on by the "open project mayo" team, leading later to the creation of opendivx. Which in turn spwaned the closed-source commercial DivX, and the concurrent opensource Xvid. There isn't much from the original left it these two nowadays (that's why they end up with different licenses).
In the same way LAME started as a collection of patches against the reference code of MPEG Audio Layer III. And for a long time could only exist in this way due to licensing limitation (lots of the technology behind MP3 is patented). But progressively grew in size. Including replacing massive portion of it (LAME nowadays uses its own psycho-acoustic model engine, instead of Frauenhoffer's one. And even shares some of it with toolame/twolame within what it is possible to backport into MP2). To the point that today LAME is a library of entirely new code.
Also, back to the parent's point:
- HTML5, HTML4, XHTML, CSS, ODF: even if they don't have a *refrence* implementation, they have several implementations which try as much as possible to be standard compliant (there might be some bugs hidden somewhere):
HTML5 has most of its part supported by modern rendering engine (Gecko, webkit, presto) although, as HTML5 is under development and is developed by the industry it self, at moment some part are already implemented as "proof of concepts" in the engine of the company pushing the part, while not yet picked up by the other companies who are concentrating their effort on other HTML5 sub-parts.
HTML4,CSS, etc. are virtually everywhere and are very well implemented (at least on non-IE browser. I can't speak for IE: it doesn't run on my OS and I've completely dropped using it last time because it sucked too much).
Same for ODF: it's currently at least in two different indepentend opensource code base. Both OpenOffice/LibreOffice *AND* KOffice/Calligra. Each family has a completely different ODF implementation.
on the other hand:
- OOXML is currently supported on exactly ZERO office suit.
Microsoft got it approved as a standard. But doesn't provide any fully compliant suit.
The next-to-last office suite didn't support it, but the MS Office-specific XML precursor on which OOXML is based.
The last office suite only support a transitional form.
There is no official code currently trying to be OOXML compliant coming from the makers of OOXML it self.
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