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Microsoft Circles the Wagons To Defeat ODF In the UK
Andy Updegrove writes "Three weeks ago, we heard that Francis Maude, a senior UK government minister, was predicting the conversion to open source office suites by UK government agencies. Lost in the translation in many stories was the fact that this was based not on an adopted policy, but on a proposal still open for public comment — and subject to change. It should be no surprise that Microsoft is trying to get the UK to add OOXML, its own format standard, to the UK policy. Why? According to a messaging sent to its UK partners, because it believes that a failure to include OOXML 'will cause problems for citizens and businesses who use office suites which don't support ODF, including many people who do not use a recent version of Microsoft Office or, for example, Pages on iOS and even Google Docs.' Of course, that's because Microsoft pushed OOXML as an alternative to ODF a decade ago. If you don't want the same objection to be valid a decade from now, consider making your views known at the Cabinet Office Standards Hub. The deadline is February 26."
failure to include OOXML 'will cause problems for citizens and businesses who use office suites which don't support ODF, including many people who do not use a recent version of Microsoft Office'
IIRC, OOXML isn't in any version of MS Office that doesn't have ODF support.
If you don't want the same objection to be valid a decade from now, consider making your views known at the Cabinet Office Standards Hub. The deadline is February 26.
The documents are on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign outside the door saying "Beware of the Leopard."
Make sure you bring a torch.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
I call bullshit. OpenOffice or LibreOffice can be configured to store files in .doc and .xls and .ppt formats - problem solved! It annoys me there are still people and govts. buying the rubbish arguments spouted by Microsoft and their ilk...
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
2004 doesn't feel like that long ago. But hearing it phrased like that makes me feel old. -_-
Physics is like sex. Sure, it may give some practical results, but that's not why we do it
OpenOffice or LibreOffice can be configured to store files in .doc and .xls and .ppt formats - problem solved!
While true, that doesn't mean either of those products are permitted in every office. A lot of IT departments are notoriously inflexible on this sort of matter. If your organization standardizes on something, odds are they aren't going to want you using some other unapproved product. If you were to point out that this inflexibility is probably dumb, I am inclined to agree with you. Nevertheless it does occur and it is a real problem. Microsoft isn't strictly wrong here though they are being a bit disingenuous regarding some of the nuances of the situation.
I have standardized my company on LibreOffice but its ability to read and write Microsoft Office files is imperfect at best. It's particularly bad at the more recent .docx and .xlsx files. It reads and writes them well enough to be useful most of the time but don't expect perfection.
Microsoft: "Have pity on me, I'm an orphan. (I killed my parents.)"
All software utilized by the government ought to be open source as a natural consequence of the source of the funds used to support it. Everyone should benefit from the government's use of technology, not just Microsoft.
OOXML MUST DIE!
I've have my share of fun decoding that crap. It is not a good format for anyone but Microsoft.
... that they will find the right palms to grease in a sclerotocracy, considering they succeeded in essentially purchasing ISO back in the day. If you want a definition of an afer-me-the-flood attitude, here you have it.
yes, we have no bananas
I don't know if it is the format or the software, but MS Word let's me treat headers/footers as "documents within the document". They can have their own separate sections, like iframes, rather than being part of or contained by the current section/chapter. I haven't figured out how to do that in the free office suites. If I insert a section into the the header, I have to insert a paragraph as well, it's ridiculous that I'm the only person frustrated by that. (Or maybe I"m the only person trying to do desktop publishing in OpenOffice writer...)
That maxim is being varied by Microsoft yesterday, today and tomorrow.
It's the maxim of powerful institutions, whether or not government or
private enterprise behemoths. On second thought, is there a difference?
On third thought: with this bit of knowledge you can decisively know when
you're being fucked.
And on epilogie: THINK CRITICAL & DARE TO REJECT!
People want to stay with MS Office because the compatibility of other software with the complex OOXML format is not all that good. That locks people into MS Office. The ODF format is less complex and easier to implement, so presumably Microsoft can control how well Office reads and writes ODF files.
If ODF was the standard, then the question would be reversed from "how compatible is the alternative software with OOXML" to "how compatible is MS Office with ODF".
Microsoft understandably does not want to have to answer the second question.
So, Microsoft is then admitting that their products cannot save into free standard formats, then. Me, I'm all for stepping back a decade and a half: Make the document standard RTF only. That should support any old or new word processor (and any new word processor that won't do RTF should not deserve the name...) And it would let the UK government kiss off having to use Microsoft products, too. I'm sure there is a reason why that's impractical, and maybe even a good one which doesn't involve Microsoft poisoning the IT world. But what would it be?
Office 2007 only loads and saves a form of the transitional OOXML format that is incompatible with the standard.
.docx files was that they were implementing loading of the standard. The LibreOffice team continues to work on loading both the OOXML standard and 2007/2010 variances from the standard. Last I checked, which was a while back, LibreOffice only outputted standard OOXML files, which Office 2010/2013 should be able to load. I found using the old .doc format more reliable when switching between Microsoft Office and LibreOffice though.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O...
Office 2010 can load standard OOXML files, it is unable to save them. It saves in a transitional format that is closer to the OOXML standard than 2007. The Office team released an explanation to the beta testers that they would not have time to be fully OOXML compliant for the release of Office 2010 and there were not plans to fix it after release.
Office 2013 is the first version of office to fully support loading and saving of standard OOXML files.
This is part of the problem that the OpenOffice team had trying to load
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
The UK gov only supporting ODF would quickly fix that.
A cynic might suggest that the UK Government doesn't care about file formats any more than MS does, and the whole whole "we're seriously considering alternatives" thing is just a ploy to get a better deal on Office...
A lot of effort was put into inflating ISO members to the point people wouldn't fit into meeting rooms.
Aproving a standard with nearly 6 thousand pages (against ODF's less-than-9-hundred one) was very hard and ISO had to be almost handcuffed and blinded so that process could come to the desired goal -- a Frankenstein figure of a standard made exactly to claim one day (i.e. now) the absurd that more standards are better. I'm sorry M$, but it didn't work. We still understand that having one single standard is essential for things to work.
2 PDFs? Why?
2 txt's? What for?
2 jpg's? I don't think so.
Everybody rest assured M$ will be the last company to support ODF (and by support I mean the way Libre/Openoffice does it).
Interoperability? BG is gonna throw a fit in front of that new Indian guy.
Oil companies will start worrying about CO2 way before M$ wants any kind of talk about interoperability, all that well after Hell has frozen.
But, OOXML is (for better or worse) a ECMA and ISO standard, just like ODF. Each has it's own set of tradeoffs, advantages and disadvantages.
So, not why not a list of accepted common formats? ODF, OOXML, PDF is a fine list. Why "one format to rule them all?" Let people use the tools that work best for them, and base the decisions on a real cost-benefit analysis. Or just say we don't want to pay for Microsoft Office and deal with the fallout from that.
Don't wrap it up by picking a favorite format and making it a mandate by law. It doesn't work out well. There's people making a ton of money making software to parse X12 messages for US health care institutions because the HIPPA law demanded that specific format. And, guess what? Technology moved on and it's a total mess. Lots of great things in the HIPPA law, but that was not one of them. You can regulate without making specific technology decisions.
sclero: A prefix added to the start of a word. Indicates that "hard" modifies the word. Created to expand meanings. Can be used with many words to form new words. http://myword.info/definition....
So it would be a bureaucracy, that thickened into a congealocracy, then hardened into a schlerocracy. i.e.: Functional as originally built, but inflexible now. Like my liver.
1 Dachshund + 1 Dachshunds = A Paradox.
will cause problems for citizens and businesses who use office suites which don't support ODF
It's pretty simple to get one... For businesses, wouldn't MS want people to update Office to a version that supports ODF? Means more money for MS when businesses do that.
Twinstiq, game news
OOXML? What is that ? Show me a version working according to the published standard. Microsoft has never made a version that follows their own specs. Oh, and lets try and get rid of those proprietary containers (with undocumented encryption) surrounding that xml. Mickeysoft bought the standards body for tens of millions of dollars, and rammed OOXML through the standards body. The documents describing OOXML run 5000 pages. It was created by mickeysoft alone --different from ODF, which was collaboratively created by Adobe, IBM, Boeing, the US Navy, the Vatican Library, the US Medical Library, and the American Law Library. ODF was reviewed by users, vetted, analyzed, revised based on user feedback, vetted, re-analyzed, re-tested and re-revised until everyone thought it was ideal for their needs. OOXML was dreamed up by microsoft in 3 weeks. Some of the standard simply states "based on " where is some current version of microsoft software (but that was a few years ago, so now obsolete). Like other pieces of microsoft software, there is no backward *and* forward compatibility with OOXML. It was a key requirement for ODF by the lawyers, doctors and Vatican: they deal with documents over thousands of years, and "incompatible" is unacceptable. Certainly not knowing if you had certain medications as a kid (needed by your heart surgeon) because of 'incompatible: file unreadable' is not a solution, likewise "bill of sale" for your house because no one can tell if you paid it off because of 'file unreadable' isn't good either. Again, mickeysoft pulled every dirty trick to get OOXML declared a 'standard' by paying 3rd world countries who have never given a care about standards to vote for it in return for cash.
UK citizens should expect certain things from their government, when it comes to the use of electronic documents:-
1. That the government must not force a citizen to use a certain product or technology, but should use only truly open standards.
2. Whilst it may be acceptable to argue that a "small" cost to the citizen to engage with their government is acceptable, it must be minimal. Submission of paper records requires a pen, an envelope and a postage stamp. Choices for electronic documents must not confer unreasonably greater costs upon citizens.
3. The government must ensure that electronically stored files can continue to be accessed for *at least as long as paper records*. Given that the UK has paper records dating back hundreds of years, it's therefore implicit that electronic file formats must survive that long. The only way to do so is to ensure that electronic file formats are *TRULY* open.
If you think about web browsers, for example, there are tests like ACID3 which do a pretty good job of assessing the ability to render to a known standard. The standard is open for all to see, and the results can be verified easily.
There is no good reason why the world's standard-setting bodies [i.e. those which ratified OOXML] cannot mandate that, as part of the approval process, any proposed standard has to be demonstrably interoperable before approval is granted, and/or that approval is not permanent and can be withdrawn if it is later shown that the standard as published actually has flaws.
UK citizens, as part of this dialogue with the government that exists to serve them, should require a transparent interoperability test. The test should require that documents be exchanged between any two proposed compliant/acceptable solutions, in a way that includes editing of the file by both parties, exchange of the file, and a test of the ultimate result. The test should include embedded objects, multimedia, multiple languages, embedded graphics, complex formatting, indices and tables of contents, page and section headings, etc, etc, etc.
There may be instances where one product or technology fails to read or process a file properly. At that point it is likely that a dispute will arise as to which product is unable to comply with the standard. For this reason, the test must also make it clear which part of the standard is being tested, so that, if necessary, a more forensic analysis of the resultant files can be performed, alongside the written specification of the standard.
This requirement should hopefully make it possible to identify, without ambiguity, if there are portions of a standard that are not written with sufficient clarity for multiple providers to implement it. For example, the issues raised about a standard which says, "Just implement this MS Office BLOB Format x123" will not be easily implemented by a competitor product and will fail the test. A check of the standard will reveal that it is the *standard* that is deficient, not the product.
AKA the Ministry of Information.
deny demime = xlsx:docx:pptx
log_message = Message contains OOXML Attachment.
message = We Do Not Accept OOXML (docx,xlsx,pptx) Attachments See http://noooxml.wikidot.com/
deny demime = dat
log_message = Proprietary Attachment format
message = Non-Standard Attachment Practice (winmail.dat). Please Fix Your Email System.
Office 2013 defaults to OOXML transitional, but has a setting to enable OOXML strict. So your information is a bit out of date.
Office 2013 defaults to OOXML transitional, but has a setting to enable OOXML strict. So your information is a bit out of date.
Excellent break down, thank you for the clarification! ^_^
"But I doubt that every implementation of ODF is identical"
But not every HTML implementation is identical, but there IS a compliance suite for it and they render almost identically.
Not every C++ implementation is identical. Not every FORTRAN90 implementation is identical. Not every English language is identical.
But there's a difference between "can be relied upon to do the job required" and what MSOOXML does re: open standards.
OOXML may be an ECMA standard, but it doesn't mean that it's an open one, nor does it mean that MS Office supports it.
There is no reason, however, for MSOffice not to support ODF.
And since its really is an open standard there's just no excuse not supporting it. But really when I send a document to someone, I don't want them to screw with it anyhow. So its pdf all the way, by definition its an image of a document. Different ball game.