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UK Cabinet Office Adopts ODF As Exclusive Standard For Sharable Documents
Andy Updegrove writes: "The U.K. Cabinet Office accomplished today what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts set out (unsuccessfully) to achieve ten years ago: it formally required compliance with the Open Document Format (ODF) by software to be purchased in the future across all government bodies. Compliance with any of the existing versions of OOXML, the competing document format championed by Microsoft, is neither required nor relevant. The announcement was made today by The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude. Henceforth, ODF compliance will be required for documents intended to be shared or subject to collaboration. PDF/A or HTML compliance will be required for viewable government documents. The decision follows a long process that invited, and received, very extensive public input – over 500 comments in all."
The vast majority of their users aren't especially smart when it comes to technology. They're essentially office workers - they don't give a stuff about the underlying format, they only care about being able to do their job.
Yeah, I had a sig once; I got bored of it.
Clearly they're not using the spell checker.
We're talking about a Government.
I'm pretty sure a government would have the resources to develop a renderer for an open document format, whether that be ODF, HTML or PDF/A.
The specifications for those are all freely available and ISO standards.
The vast majority of their users aren't especially smart when it comes to technology. They're essentially office workers - they don't give a stuff about the underlying format, they only care about being able to do their job.
Not sure if you are saying that ODF is a good thing or a bad thing... I think the GP makes a great point. ODF as I understand it is an FOSS attempt to be like Microsoft Word, when as the GP suggests, we should transition to something human readable.
And fortunately enough for Microsoft, Office supports ODF natively
In what way is OOXML and DOC/XLS (the "de-facto" standards) not "complicated and unreadable without certain software" ? In fact isn't that exactly what the problem is in the first place?
Your basic "user" only needs to open acrobat to "view government documents" under this plan. The ODF requirement is for people "editing government documents" which is hardly an onerous requirement when you consider existing documents require licensed software from a monopoly software vendor to edit.
For certain limited definitions of "support".
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
ODF was simply that, an open document format. MS tried to 'embrace extend extinguish' as they always do.
I don't know why you would want a human readable format for WYSIWYG editing. The librarian at your local library doesn't need to be hacking Latex or worse some kind of bloated XML format when they're just supposed to be writing a letter.
Why ODF? Because its the best format. It was designed very carefully by a very large team of stakeholders (including engineers, lawyers, document companies, the Vatican Library, Medical professionals, architects, electrical engineers, etc). It was reviewed and revised by large groups to ensure it would fit their needs. Its unencumbered by patents. NONE of this happened with microsoft's OOXML (as it is, there is no software that can read that standard, including no software from microsoft). Microsoft cannot support their own standard. Oh, and ODF is human readable.
Government should only be allowed to use open standards. This proprietary vendor lock-in is a crime against society -- the very people the government is supposed to serve.
I thought the whole point of ODF is that it was readable without certain software. All you need is to unzip it and you can look at the underlying XML files, which is a hell of a alot better than doc was, and the XML in ODF is more readable/user modifiable than OOXML (in my opinion (I've opened it and modified it myself on a few occasions)).
At least how I heard it, back when Massachusetts was going to use it that was a big part of the reason (documents still readable even if the software is long gone).
> very extensive public input
> over 500 comments
LOLWUT
Disagree, at least from the points you make. The "best" format is the one that is the most useful to you, technical reasons be damned. If I use ODF but no-one else does because MS Office doesn't properly support it, I'm crippling my ability to share documents around purely for ideological reasons. I do know that Office 2013 properly supports ODF 1.2, the version used by current versions of LibreOffice so that's nice, but in general you will find it much easier in terms of compatibility if you're using MS Office documents, given the extremely large user-base.
purely for ideological reasons.
That's a great reason. People should get some principles.
MS office is dying. how many people still have a non infected windows platforn that wasn't sitting behind a firewall set to block everything external? microsoft had a huge American base. they have failed so badly they had to cut 18k jobs with minimum 6 months of not having access before they can be rehired. microsoft isn't the only game in town, and the iphone and android platforms showed that people were ready for new tech, just not from microsoft. because they knew microsoft was screwing them over.
Why do we have to use something so complicated and unreadable without certain software? Something like markdown or even LaTeX if you have smart users would be better.
That way you don't ever really have to worry about a document becoming unreadable with software changes or corruption.
Actually if the software and format changes any tags in the LaTeX document will become unreadable. If you can't parse them correctly you are in the same situation you are in with a binary format.
That is why they require the document format to be ISO certified. The format can't be bound to a software version, there has to be a standards document to follow if you have to implement a new document reader from scratch.
That is also one of the reasons why other programming languages can't really compete with C and C++. A proper standardization document is hard to beat when you want a functionality that is well defined and not unintentionally undefined. (Heck, it even explicitly states when something is truly undefined or when it is implementation specific.)
And what is the replacement? Microsoft has tripped over itself so many times in past few years (Vista and 8 are just 2 examples) that if something else was viable it should have been adopted to some significant degree but nothing has. Linux has been unbelievably easy to install and with decent hardware support for at least the last 10 years so thats no excuse.
I've actually been using ODF exclusively at the office (which uses entirely msft software) for every file I work on and email out, and nobody's noticed or complained yet. The standard install here is MessOffice 2010. Rather than try and change anyone else, I just took a look a the man in the mirror. It's gone well.
I'm pretty sure a government would have the resources to develop a renderer for an open document format,
Or they could just link to the web page: http://webodf.org/
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Fuckwit.
You're clearly misinformed. ODF was the first document format ever to become an industry standard (ISO/IEC 26300).
Microsoft then suddenly decided it also wanted to be kind of open and standardized and drafted ISO/IEC 29500
There have been lots of discussions about ISO/IEC 29500 also on slashdot, because of the lack of necessity of another ISO document standard and how MS got it approved, the lack of a reference implementation (Office 2007 wasn't OOXML compliant), the reference to software patents within the standard and the way ISO 29500 got approved.
The way MS acted when getting OOXML ISO approved is just one of the reasons why I always have "Fat Tony's" voice in my head when reading their public statements.
So in a nutshell, OOXML was MS way to be a little like FOSS.
When iWork first shipped, I asked folks in the know (at Apple) why they chose to design/engineer a completely new suite of file formats rather than adopting/utilizing ODF. I was told it was because ODF wasn't mature enough for their needs, and that it was felt that the ODF working group would be too slow for the iWork development roadmap.
So far, ODF has chugged along, consistently; while iWork has seen a divergence in format compatibility (between Mac and iOS versions) and a complete, from-scratch rewrite (in the most recent version) that torpedoed backwards compatibility.
Enough is enough. If Apple would have embraced ODF, they'd have rocketed the world's move away from Microsoft's Office document stranglehold. Instead, they have squandered both an opportunity to further stomp a odious competitor as well as an opportunity to position their desktop and mobile products as the best commercial competitor for the future where ODF clearly will reign supreme, all in one stupid "Not Invented Here" design decision.
Scott
"Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid."
Exactly. The Office file formats are still extremely ubiquitous in the business world, and if you use something like LibreOffice to modify them, the formatting of the documents is almost guaranteed to go crazy, without you possibly not even knowing it, and ultimately losing customers. I'm sorry, but it has just been incredibly practical decision to just install the fucking Microsoft Office. Of course this UK Cabinet's decision is another step towards open standards, so I guess that's good.
Not really, if everyone used Word with ODF then everyone has the same level of compatibility. Or they can save some licensing cash and replace it Open/Libre Office.
Unless they're an Excel junkie the average civil servant probably won't even notice. And the UK government shouldn't be allowed to use Excel
"XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, use more." - Anonymous Coward
The amount of money lost to MS on this is grounds for overthrow of the UK government. The USA has done it for less money to 3rd world nations in the past. The UK is likely to back down from this due to pressure... with wikileaks and snowden they have a rare opportunity to pull this off due to the political climate. I'm still skeptical and frankly surprised this government would do such a thing-- the Minister should be resigning this week! How can the PM be so ignorant on this situation? Can he really mean to create jobs and make a dent in their disastrous trade deficit?
I use ODF but no-one else does because MS Office doesn't properly support it, I'm crippling my ability to share documents around purely for ideological reasons.
Microsoft OSs are down to 14% market share.
It simply makes no sense to continue using their outdated lockin-inspired formats. The world needs to transition to document editing formats that're portable across whatever computing devices users want to buy.
ODF was designed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) consortium to be that set of formats in 2005, and was only derailed by an intense and deeply corrupt effort by Microsoft. It's incredibly sad that we've had to wait for almost a decade for governments to finally start the transition.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
ODF is a file format, not an application like MS word. ODF is used by many office applications.
What does "human readable" mean for you? I know that if I stare at a flash drive, I can't read the files. I know if I click on the (GUI representation of the) file to open it, some software program has to load in order for me to read the file. If the software loads quickly, why should I care whether it's a terminal program, a notepad, or Writer?
The vast majority of their users aren't especially smart when it comes to technology. They're essentially office workers - they don't give a stuff about the underlying format, they only care about being able to do their job.
So true. And therefore we should be thankful that some knowledgeable people who do care about such important matters are willing to step forward to do the right thing.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Good decition from UK. But one has to ask why not ten years ago. And why not in all countries. Instead MS has been allowed to nominate it's own closed format as open standard! And continue ruling and taxing the globe. And making competition impossible.
And yes, ODF is not perfect. Nothing is. And ODF will continue to evolve like any format. The key is that it is open and allows (opens) competition.
And for an even more limited definition of "natively".
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
I really hope this catches on with businesses as well. I'm writing a lot of job applications at the moment, and being financially challenged I'm doing the work from LIbre Office. If I convert my application and CV to .doc or .docx the formatting will be all wrong when a potential employer reads it. Therefor I've been converting everything to PDF before sending. I'm starting to see job ads now that actually require people to deliver in PDF, most likely for the same exact reason, but I'm not entirely sure everyone can figure out how to convert a doc/docx/odf to PDF.
There are a lot of people out there with very limited computer skills, so I think a well supported open document standard will be good for everyone in the long run.
For what it's worth, ODF is XML, which nominally human readable. So is Microsoft's OOXML, a perversion that demonstrates clearly that "human readable" doesn't always mean what it says. The main difference between ODF and OOXML is that ODF actually is a credible attempt to be open and portable whereas OOXML is designed to achieve the opposite.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
What does "human readable" mean for you?
This is normally understood to mean lines of printable characters.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Assuming there's compliance with this edict at some point in the foreseeable future (which is questionable); what's going to happen is that people will save as ODF from Word. The question is then whether you can truly use other software to work on those documents. MS has a long history of failing to properly implement standards; or even their own specifications.
So, 128 character ascii?
I do the same, though mostly as a small business. Very occasionally I find someone for whom the document doesn't work right. In those cases I simply say something like "oh; it must be a bug in MS Office; you might try LibreOffice; its available for free from https://www.libreoffice.org/" everybody I have done this for has downloaded that and been happy.
if you use something like LibreOffice to modify them, the formatting of the documents is almost guaranteed to go crazy, without you possibly not even knowing it, and ultimately losing customers.
That is why you don't save in closed formats. If you open it in LibreOffice you save it in a format that is properly documented.
My customers get a PDF. If they ask specifically for a proprietary format they get the proprietary format AND a PDF file. Not that I even use LibreOffice, I just have this feeling that Microsofts backwards compatibility is an ugly cludge that can break in corner cases between Office versions.
As long as the customer gets the PDF they can see what the document is supposed to look like.
If the software loads quickly, why should I care whether it's a terminal program, a notepad, or Writer?
If loading quickly is important, than Open/LibreOffice Writer doesnt fit the bill. Even on a very fast SSD that thing takes several seconds to load. My guess is Microsoft Word plays on the same bloated field.
"His name was James Damore."
Principles are rarely helpful. Mostly it results in stubbornness to accept change.
So that's why Microsoft is laying off 18000 people!
Isn't printable on all platforms. Not everyone uses ASCII.
Many people work in situations where they must exchange documents with other people (inside or outside the company). When a document looks vastly different in LibreOffice compared to MS Office, that is a problem. At a previous job, I had to use Word on Windows -- Word on Mac was not enough -- when dealing with files containing MathType equations.
Just tested...
* OpenOffice loads in 4 seconds
* 2nd load, 3 seconds (After closing the app)
* 3rd time opening it (without closing the app completely), 1 second
Am thinking if part of it is preloaded at boot-time, it would load a lot quicker; I'm told that this happens on Windows with MS Office for the same reason, which could explain why the work-laptop I was using earlier would load MS Office fairly quickly, yet take half a minute to boot :)
(from memory, opening MS Office 2008 on OSX took several seconds too; don't have it installed currently)
you get the same problem with people using different versions of Office, we've had countless problems with users who have the older versions of Word etc not being able to read the newer formats of DOCs, not only that but different versions of Word can format the same document differently
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Yes, we need a C++ ISO standard to make sure that all the compilers comply with C++11. Oh wait, Microsoft still can't figure out how to support C++11 fully. The MSDN blog cites "resource constraints" as the problem. How that fits in with laying off 18,000 employees, I'm not sure.
The last time I tried it, Excel ruined ODS documents with any kind of complexity... like... formulas. Almost like it was on purpose.
Future-proofing. It means that if the digital archaeologists of the year 3000 dig up the old british archives from underneath the remains of old London, they have a decent chance of figuring out how to read it. ODF uses a zip container, but within that the actual text is in a format that can be figured our from scratch even if the spec is lost.
I'm probably too old for your definition of quickly. I find that taking a flash drive out of my pocket and plugging it into a USB port takes several seconds. I also find that bringing up a file browser and locating the file I want to look at takes several seconds. If the amount of time it takes to show me the file contents is on par with the amount of time I take from when I decide I want to see a particular file until the time I actually click on its icon, I'm sufficiently happy with that.
OOXML wasn't designed as an exchange format at all ; every indication is that it's just an XML serialization of the internal data structures of Office. (The "Strict" version that nothing can write was produced after removing some of the more egregious kludges that have accumulated over time in Office).
The only thing it was designed to achieve was to provide some reasonable doubt that it might be an "open format", at a time when open formats were starting to become all the rage.
Because it gave that reasonable doubt, people were able to shy away from the difficult problem of how to migrate to a different office suite. Because Office allegedly "supports" ODF, that reasonable doubt is sadly still there.
The main reason you might want a human readable format is for collaboration ;
So many of my customers have collaborative content editing requirements as follows
* All changes to be auditable
* Changes to be peer reviewed before going into the released content
Which basically screams out to be put in a version control system ; the problem is that merging sucks for binary blob formats.
You can close the gap either by creating better merge tools that understand your blobs, or moving the document structure to line-based text that merges well ; for a document of any complexity, you're going to need the improved merge tools, but line-based text makes sense for those who can read it without the GUI tools.
As programmers we fill the role of that improved merge tool for the content that we manage ; we forget that for most people, parsing and grokking even something as simple as nicely prettified HTML is akin to reading Sanskrit blindfolded from stone tablets wearing gloves.
I agree though, I want to move most of my technical authors to Markdown so that I can have an easy platform for converting their content to multiple formats for consumption.
but within that the actual text is in a format that can be figured our from scratch even if the spec is lost.
So I'm guessing that if I compose my document using 128 character ascii, then the entire unzipped ODF file would be my document + XML, all using 128 character ascii - whereas if I compose my document using a different Unicode font (for example, if I want it to display Korean characters), then the unzipped ODF file would consist of my document in Unicode + XML in 128 character ascii. Does that sound correct to you?
you need someone like Francis Maude who is a politician who just wants to get things done and doesn't want the limelight.
while the coalition government has been treading water for the last 4 years he has been getting on, quietly dismantling the vast organisational structures that had built up over the previous 10 years.
On the face of it a small triumph, but it will pull the rug from under a company that has gone from being an innovator to using its market position to stifle innovation and protect its cash cow
There are some very smart people in the Cabinet Office digital strategy group and this is good work that is clearly in the UK's interests.
I am sure that Tesla would be pleased to have Francis Maude review the automotive dealerships
Humorous signatures are over-rated.
Yeah, this is because Office reuses so much of Windows, not just limited to basic API calls to get files and use control widgets and such, but rendering of fonts, etc.
LibreOffice has a much better chance of consistent document rendering on multiple platforms.
The Cabinet Office announcement does make a distinction between documents for collaboration and those for viewing ; PDF/A and HTML should at least have a reasonably consistent rendering (depending on how fancy you get with stylesheets in the case of HTML - IE, is of course, still a total arsebasket in terms of compatibility).
Because Office allegedly "supports" ODF, that reasonable doubt is sadly still there.
Not so much any more.
The real version of MS Office doesn't run on most of the computing platforms people want to use. Instead there's real competition, with dozens of variably capable Office tools available. On Android, you can get QuickOffice, Polaris Office, Kingsoft Office OfficeSuite and even the almost full version of Open Office. On iOS there's the Apple collection as well as Office HD and a some of the same Android apps. Even the web suites like Drive and Office Online work well enough.
Even better, when a genuinely open document format is available, automated document builders like Python's POD (http://appyframework.org/pod.html) will be able to merge machine data (like engine readouts, noise levels and thousands of other data sources) with human-readable charts and text to automatically generate presentation documents.
MS Office is an obsolete dinosaur already. Light it's pyre and send it on its way.
The efficiency improvements alone will make the investment in change worthwhile. Bring it on!
More like ODF is readable without having to buy software. Software that will read ODF is available for free - and without installation either, since you can upload files to a web renderer now.
The theory being that requiring people to purchase software from a particular vendor disenfranchises those that cannot afford it and those that choose not to do business with that vendor.
"The decision follows a long process that invited, and received, very extensive public input – over 500 comments in all"
Hell, Slashdot has 500 comments on any given topic, and 95% of them aren't fit to bubble above the filters.
ASCII is a subset of UTF-8-encoded Unicode. If you do not use anything beyond ASCII in your document, the unzipped file will only contain ASCII. If you put Korean characters into your document (and you do not have to change font to do so, if you are using a decent font), the unzipped file will contain non-ASCII characters. In both cases, the file will be a valid UTF-8-encoded Unicode XML document.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
I always submit CVs in PDF regardless of how well supported the editor's native format is. Being able to submit a tamper proof CV is great.
So, when someone says "human readable," I should correctly understand that "a valid UTF-8-encoded Unicode XML document" is something that fits that description. Yes?
He is a fuckwit that raises the point ; what if this is just a dastardly plan to get public orgs to pay for an upgrade to Office 2013? It could be regarded as the low-risk option - and lower versions do not support ODF 1.2.
Disagree, at least from the points you make. The "best" format is the one that is the most useful to you, technical reasons be damned. If I use ODF but no-one else does because MS Office doesn't properly support it, I'm crippling my ability to share documents around purely for ideological reasons.
Well since the entire cabinet is now using it, they all use it, so it will be appropriate for sharing.
Why do we have to use something so complicated and unreadable without certain software? Something like markdown or even LaTeX if you have smart users would be better.
A bit condescending there. "Smart users" might prefer their time to be spent more productively with a WYSIWYG word processor than learning some stupid markup language just because the file format is potentially a bit simpler.
Besides, I'm sure someone could produce an ODT to Markdown / Latex tool if they wished. Both sides are fairly well documented and open standards after all.
Almost?
We (the UK) are about to embark on another round of austerity, regardless of who wins the next election. I'd like to see what the public thinks about mass conversions of Word/ Excel/ PP docs - because it's not going to be quick or free, and once we reach the stage of 'well, what benefit will this give us right now?', there isn't one - in fact, it's the opposite.
If the cabinet office wanted to do this with purely internal documents, they might have a chance - but if any docs come in or go out of the office, it's MS or bust. The conversion issue won't go away, and local Councils *certainly* don't have the money to implement this sort of thing (it took Munich ten years, and supposedly didn't cost much. Have you ever heard of a council project that took that long but didn't cost anything? Me neither). Then there's third-party apps - again, most of these aren't going to export in the format needed.
TL, DR: Councils don't have the money, the Government doesn't really have the money, and the benefits don't amount to much outside of getting a warm cosy feeling because you're using an open format, meaning questions will then be asked as to why this was given priority/ money when the rest of the world is still using the app/ format you've abandoned.
Souce; I've worked UK government IT for twenty years.
Principles are rarely helpful.
Hey! You didn't declare you work for Microsoft!
ODT contains printable characters. Unzip an .odt file - all the content is XML. Of course there may also be pictures and diagrams in there too but that's why its a zip file in the first place. But perhaps you mean human only characters. Well throw the content through pandoc or any other converter.
Whoosh.
Write failed: Broken pipe
Quoting http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A...
ASCII was incorporated into the Unicode character set as the first 128 symbols, so the 7-bit ASCII characters have the same numeric codes in both sets. This allows UTF-8 to be backward compatible with 7-bit ASCII, as a UTF-8 file containing only ASCII characters is identical to an ASCII file containing the same sequence of characters. Even more importantly, forward compatibility is ensured as software that recognizes only 7-bit ASCII characters as special and does not alter bytes with the highest bit set (as is often done to support 8-bit ASCII extensions such as ISO-8859-1) will preserve UTF-8 data unchanged.
Please describe all the platforms you presently use which do not support ASCII, and please provide statistics on the market presence for such platforms.
Write failed: Broken pipe
I see nothing in that link that singles out Excel causing issues.
That is of course why software tends to use Unicode is used these days. A file can unambiguously include the chars it uses and the codepages they come from. How they are stored is where an encoding comes in. UTF-8 tends to be a popular encoding of Unicode because legacy tools tend to cope with it better and the files can be a bit smaller than UTF-16 depending on the contents (amount of markup vs text).
We are talking about ODF here. The encoding will be UTF-8.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
That doesn't make much sense as this particular change would be welcomed by people who think that principles are important. In fact, a lot of changes are brought about by people who stick to their principles (e.g. abolition of slavery).
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
Please describe all the platforms you presently use which do not support ASCII, and please provide statistics on the market presence for such platforms.
Official documents need to be a bit more permanent than what is presently used. Look at what charsets were used 30 years ago. Do you have any tools that can open and read PETSCII?
Given that UTF-8 is a quite ugly patch to get access to needed characters it is not unreasonable to assume that future platforms might want to move away from that. You can't assume that ASCII will be more readable than any other binary format.
"Human readable" formats doesn't really exist without proper documentation on the format. The only reason people even think of it as human readable is because with current platforms the tools for displaying them are really simple. You still need the tools.
Translation: Highly inefficient people don't mind more inefficiency.
That's the intention. XML in UTF-8 leaves a lot of room for being practically impossible to read for a human, but ODF XML really does look readable to me. Well, as long as I'm using something that renders the unicode characters correctly.
"Smart users" might prefer their time to be spent more productively with a WYSIWYG word processor than learning some stupid markup language
Surely "smart users" would not value WYSIWYG over markup if the markup was ultimately a more productive environment.
Few users are that smart.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
UTF-8 is not human readable.
500 comments is very extensive?
ODF is more like a zip file of XML files
You can have a single-document xml file, but its quite rare.
Not that it really matters so much, the only problem I had was finding a library to write a .ods file (basically wanted to write a csv, but in a format that Excel would actually fucking render correctly, the fucker). Writing out .xls files was just not available unless I had Office installed and called some COM wrapper to some craziness.
Which is WHY it's important that big guys are doing this.
When you are the little guy there is a lot of pressure on you to conform to the standards set by those you work with (and that may mean not just using MS office but using a specific version of MS office), when you are the big guy you SET the standards and require other people to conform to them.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
bullshit. I get a .xls from my accountant to enter my details, and its full of protected cells and functions. I use LibreOffice, and so far my accountant hasn't even noticed anything untoward with the returned .xls file I send him.
Considering Word can't even open some Word documents created with older versions of Word, I think this is pretty damn good.
How well does word with odf actually work? does saving from word as odf and opening it in libreoffice have a higher or lower chance of screwing up the document than saving as doc and opening it in libreoffice?
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Only a 14% market share? Yeah, for all total worldwide devices than run an OS maybe. For large enterprises and normal offices where this could actually matter, it's more like 97% market share.
If it won't do WordArt, it's shit.
Human readable means "write it to 7 track 1/2" tape at 556 bits per inch, sprinkle iron filings on the tape and look at the bits with a magnifying glass. Or maybe its not 1972 any more and you can use you phone. Choose one.
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
In effect, Microsoft has destroyed the reputation of ISO.
I used to look for ISO standards, now I don't even bother looking at them anymore, since it is clear that standards are not selected on technical merit.
In case you wonder, Microsoft: bribed, stacked the comities (by sending many, many employees), and threatened (in various ways) member of the comities to get this standard approved.
Only a 14% market share?
Argue with Microsoft. It was their comment.
http://www.winbeta.org/news/mi...
The likelihood is that they have Software Assurance anyway so are covered for whatever version of MS Office they choose to run on whatever version of Windows they want to support.
If the IS staff deem an upgrade required there will be a time/people cost of sorts (although remember the staff will be employed doing X anyway so it's more a scheduling priority) but not an licensing upgrade cost.
You can't assume that ASCII will be more readable than any other binary format.
Yes we can, the combination of simplicitly and ubiquity mean it is highly unlikely we will lose the ability to read it.
UTF-8 is a little more complex but the encoding method can still be described in less than a page, the harder bit is what to do with the code point sequence you get from decoding but for most widely used languages* that is a simple table lookup.
Do you have any tools that can open and read PETSCII?
Well you might end up with swapped case and block-drawing would be a mess but you could read the actual text by just treating the file as ASCII.
* The exceptions being languages like hebrew, arabic and some indian languages.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Actually, the previous point (ODF = zipped XML) is really useful for version control, since diffing versions can be done on the XML easily.
The lack of software purchase is also a very good reason.
Perhaps in your little corner of the world MS documents still reign supreme. But can your MS Word open a .doc written by your Mom in 1995, allow you to add commentary, and then save it back into the archive in its original format?
Short answer: Microsoft's breakage of its own standards to leverage its marketing position has you screwed. You might not know that yet, but you are definitely screwed.
Hop off that dinosaur, its in its death throes (beware that thrashing tail). Get on some critter that has some life left in it. Just about any of the newer office suites (other than Microsoft) will support ODF and assure that you will always have access to your archives.
Will
Latex is more full-featured than most any office worker really wants. Most office worker just want a simple WYSIWYG to make crap quickly.
Latex is more for lovingly developed pieces of work.
Why are you treating your customers as if they were your collaborators? They should never see your word processing documents, and they should never, ever, have access to your spreadsheets. Even in those situations where you have absolute confidence in the integrity and technical capability of your customer, you should not invite man-in-the-middle attacks with the inappropriate use of unsecurable formats.
Learn how to use PDF. Most current word processors and spreadsheets offer this as an export (I don't know about Microsoft).
Will
Markdown is incredibly simple by design, so an ODT => Markdown converter would lose a lot of formatting (fonts, alignment, etc.). But since the bit upside of Markdown is easy conversion to HTML, you might as well drop the middleman and go straight ODT => HTML.
Microsoft OSs are down to 14% market share.
Citation needed. I might buy that 14% of the ODF standards board runs Windows, but I bet that number is woefully understated if we are talking worldwide computer use.
So, if I use me phone, are you suggesting I should use the magnifying glass app with the camera to better see the iron filings or just use OpenDocument Reader to see the contents of the file?
ASCII is more than 30 years old, it's 51 years old, and I'd bet $10,000 that it will be readable by nearly every computer in another 51 years. UTF-8 and UTF-16 are also highly unlikely to be unreadable anytime during my lifetime since they've been in use for 21 years and are open standards with many real world implementations.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It's a simple translation table, and in the unlikely event every copy of the table is somehow destroyed anyone who knows the language can recreate it through frequency analysis.
Exactly. The Office file formats are still extremely ubiquitous in the business world, and if you use something like LibreOffice to modify them, the formatting of the documents is almost guaranteed to go crazy, without you possibly not even knowing it, and ultimately losing customers. I'm sorry, but it has just been incredibly practical decision to just install the fucking Microsoft Office. Of course this UK Cabinet's decision is another step towards open standards, so I guess that's good.
Outside of bookmarks in Writer I find OpenOffice/LibreOffice to generate more compliant documents to Microsoft's tools than Microsoft's tools do. They're also typically smaller even when saved in the Microsoft formats.
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
Microsoft OSs are down to 14% market share.
14% market share of what? Sure if you include servers and phones and tablets but people aren't doing any significant document editing on phones, nobody is doing it on servers and few are even doing it on tablets - though Office365 and Office for iPad mean Office is accessible on tablets anyway, the OS doesn't matter. The only platform worth mentioning that doesn't support Office is Linux desktop, but you can run it through Wine if you really want so even then it's not that big a deal.
It simply makes no sense to continue using their outdated lockin-inspired formats. The world needs to transition to document editing formats that're portable across whatever computing devices users want to buy.
I agree open formats are better than closed ones but you're devaluing the idea by using a falsehood as your primary argument, you can get Office on many platforms and even on the ones that don't have a native application you can use Office365, infact anybody with a free Hotmail account can view the Office files you send them and Google Docs does a pretty good job of importing them too. Portability is a non-issue, only having one vendor is a potential issue (though LibreOffice and Google Docs are pretty good with MS formats).
Can't we just bury it in a hole in the ground (even if it leaves a small hill) and use the wood for something useful?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Oh come on - .docx is just a zip file too (if you doubt it, change the file extension). If you're going to make assertions, make it clear how one differs from the other. In this case, they don't
As well: I am perfectly willing to cripple others for my ideological purposes. My Coordinator keeps sending me stuff in Outlook Notes. It's unreadable in anything other than Desktop Outlook Notes. I just tell her, "Sorry, your email is unreadable, could you resend it in a readable format?" She says: "Oh you always make it hard for me. " My reply? "And you make it impossible for me."
It is her job to communicate with me, I am using open standards, she is not, not my problem then is it?
Subversion of spatial scale luxury decoration ideas.