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."

Comments

Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[_Shad0w_]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[viperidaenz]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

And fortunately enough for Microsoft, Office supports ODF natively

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[MightyMartian]

For certain limited definitions of "support".

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[boondaburrah]

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).

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why ODF? Because its the best format

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

purely for ideological reasons.

That's a great reason. People should get some principles.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Noah Haders]

At work I use the Closed Document Format, as in, I'm not going to open your doc because it is probably shit and I'm not gonna waste my time. DENIED!

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.)

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[boondaburrah]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[ozmanjusri]

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/

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[moderators_are_w*nke]

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

Re:Why ODF?

[ozmanjusri]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

ODF is a file format, not an application like MS word. ODF is used by many office applications.

Re:Why ODF?

[John.Banister]

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?

Re:Why ODF?

[Tough Love]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Tough Love]

And for an even more limited definition of "natively".

Re:Why ODF?

[Tough Love]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Tough Love]

What does "human readable" mean for you?

This is normally understood to mean lines of printable characters.

Re:Why ODF?

[John.Banister]

So, 128 character ascii?

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Rockoon]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Lotana]

Principles are rarely helpful. Mostly it results in stubbornness to accept change.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't printable on all platforms. Not everyone uses ASCII.

Re:Why ODF?

[Kalium70]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[GNious]

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)

Re:Why ODF?

[Barsteward]

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

Re:Why ODF?

[Dr_Barnowl]

The last time I tried it, Excel ruined ODS documents with any kind of complexity... like... formulas. Almost like it was on purpose.

Re:Why ODF?

[SuricouRaven]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[John.Banister]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Dr_Barnowl]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Dr_Barnowl]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[John.Banister]

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?

Re:Why ODF?

[Sad Loser]

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

Re:Why ODF?

[Dr_Barnowl]

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).

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

Re:Why ODF?

[Dr_Barnowl]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[amorsen]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[John.Banister]

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?

Re:Why ODF?

[jareth-0205]

Why ODF? Because its the best format

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[DrXym]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Almost?

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Principles are rarely helpful.

Hey! You didn't declare you work for Microsoft!

Re:Why ODF?

[DrXym]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[philip.paradis]

Whoosh.

Re:Why ODF?

[philip.paradis]

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.

Re: Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see nothing in that link that singles out Excel causing issues.

Re:Why ODF?

[DrXym]

Saying a file contains Korean is a meaningless statement say unless the doc unambiguously tells you the encoding. Otherwise you're just guessing. If the XML file says it is encoded as US-ASCII but contains shift bits or extended chars then your XML parser would be fully within its rights to throw your non-compliant file out on its ass. If you're lucky it would allow the chars through but it would still be up to your app to heuristically figure out what they meant. So no you can't just shove some Korean in there without dropping a clue of some kind (which isn't the font either).

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).

Re:Why ODF?

[amorsen]

We are talking about ODF here. The encoding will be UTF-8.

Re:Why ODF?

[hawkinspeter]

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).

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Translation: Highly inefficient people don't mind more inefficiency.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[serviscope_minor]

"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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

UTF-8 is not human readable.

Re:Why ODF?

[gbjbaanb]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[petermgreen]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[gbjbaanb]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[petermgreen]

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?

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Why ODF?

[Anne Thwacks]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Only a 14% market share?

Argue with Microsoft. It was their comment.
http://www.winbeta.org/news/mi...

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ideology is for children and others still going through puberty who do not have the physical capacity yet to use rationality.

Re:Why ODF?

[petermgreen]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Will.Woodhull]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Will.Woodhull]

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).

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re: Why ODF?

[John.Banister]

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?

Re:Why ODF?

[afidel]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[SuricouRaven]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[TemporalBeing]

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.

Re:Why ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Re:Why ODF?

[RockDoctor]

MS Office is an obsolete dinosaur already. Light it's pyre and send it on its way.

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?

Re:Why ODF?

[nobodie]

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?

Sharable?

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearly they're not using the spell checker.

Re:Sharable?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shar

When is the US going to get on board?

[UnknownSoldier]

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.

Re:When is the US going to get on board?

[Anonymous Coward]

The government is supposed to serve society? It's funny, but reality looks like it's the other way around.

Re:When is the US going to get on board?

[Anonymous Coward]

Be patient, the USA always does the right thing - after exhausting all other possibilities.

Re:When is the US going to get on board?

[Lotana]

This proprietary vendor lock-in is a crime against society

Could you please explain how propriety vendor lock in is a crime?

At the end of the day, you need to get stuff done. If the propriety vendor got a monopoly on the easiest/fastest/most convenient ways of doing things, then it would be wasteful to spend time/money on ways to resist it. This is a case for Microsoft Office before the triumph of various other office packages that came along. When majority of your correspondents use Office, why would you spend the extra time making your documents in something else? You will waste their time as well trying to read it. Worse, you are creating barriers to the communication.

Now you may have a point about information loss: Proprietary formats go obsolete and the old documents may be un-openable. However, I will argue that if you are ready to pay, there will always be someone that will take the job to reverse-engineer any format and write a converter to a more modern version.

Re:When is the US going to get on board?

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you are ready to pay". There you go. I *already* paid: Any document which is produced by a government official was paid for *by me*, in the form of my tax money. I would expect to be able to read these documents without additional charge. If a *company* decides to go for vendor lock-in, that's their business - they should be able to do the "easiest/fastest/most convenient" calculation themselves. If it turns out they can't read their old design documents anymore, they have the right to pay a team of engineers a lot of money to reverse-engineer their old stuff. They will factor in these costs in their next product, and I have the choice to buy it, or shop elsewhere. However, this is not the case for the government. I cannot simply "shop elsewhere", so I expect the government not to cut corners and factor in what's easiest/cheapest/most convenient for their citizens.

Re:When is the US going to get on board?

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming up next: Governament is only allowed to use open source 3d printed guns in its armed forces.

Re:When is the US going to get on board?

[UnknownSoldier]

We're talking about documents (and their formats), not physical objects. We can work on _that_ "problem" once we take care of the basics.

MS Office will still reign supreme

[Anonymous Coward]

Office 2013 has support for ODF version 1.2 I believe, which makes it work on par with LibreOffice's support for ODF without it complaining like Office 2010 does with ODF documents (Office 2010 only supports 1.0).

In other words, the UK Cabinet will be able to justify sticking with Microsoft Office for the discernible future and has no real motivation to move to LibreOffice. After all it's not as if all those existing .doc and .xls files will stop having a need to be read now does it? I say this in case some people jump to conclusions and believe it's now an opening for LibreOffice to replace MS Office wholesale in the Cabinet.

Heck, I just loaded up LibreOffice 4.3.0 RC3 today to see how its compatibility with MS Office is these days. It did well for some documents, but fucked up a publisher doc that my wife created because LibreOffice doesn't properly support WordArt. Again another edge case that means LibreOffice (and Linux) will never succeed.

Re:MS Office will still reign supreme

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuckwit.

Re:MS Office will still reign supreme

[Dr_Barnowl]

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.

Re:MS Office will still reign supreme

[bigfinger76]

If it won't do WordArt, it's shit.

Re:MS Office will still reign supreme

[JImbob0i0]

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.

"very extensive public input"

[Anonymous Coward]

> very extensive public input

> over 500 comments

LOLWUT

Re:"very extensive public input"

[Chatterton]

When the european commission does a public consultation, it get aound 300 comments (even when the policy could have worldwide implications). Most of them are from companies trying to keep some kinf of status quo, then from NGO saying it doesn't do enough and very few people answer under their own name (eg: DG CLIMA consultations. In this case, 500 comments is a very good return rate...

Latest News

[YasirMahmood]

Zubi Funzone is the top best Pakistani Talkshows site must watch on http://zubi-fun-zone.blogspot....

Where is Apple?

[ScooterComputer]

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.

Re:Where is Apple?

[Tough Love]

It's not too late for Apple to see the light and switch iWork to ODF. Except that Tim Cook is kind of dim witted.

Re: Where is Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

While all that is true, Pages is much better for layout than MS word or LibreOffice's Word processor. Sometimes people like good tools

Re: Where is Apple?

[gmhowell]

While all that is true, Pages is much better for layout than MS word or LibreOffice's Word processor. Sometimes people like good tools

Looking for tools? Slashdot is the right place.

Re:Where is Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

They pulled something similar for ALAC, instead of using FLAC. Apple wants all the lock-in they can manage.

Re: Where is Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL. You got that right.

Re:Where is Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should start realizing Apple is worse than MS.

If the UK was 3rd world, this is grounds for coup

[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?

Why so late

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why so late

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not 10 years ago? Blair was prime minister and when he was bought he stayed bought.

About time something is happening

[Thraxy]

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.

Re:About time something is happening

[kitty80]

I'm with you there.

Where I live (in the Netherlands), there is even a university that requires job applications to be submitted in either .doc or .docx. So, my nicely formatted .pdf (pdfLaTeX) goes into ImageMagick where it is converted to a sersies of .png. That is imported into LibroOffice and stored as .doc/x. Swallow that. Now, the files I submit are "only" 7.5 times bigger then necessary. Text cannot be selected anymore (by them), but that's their problem. And it didn't hurt: I was selected for interviews!

Re:About time something is happening

[Anonymous Coward]

When I told my mother how to produce a PDF from (at the time) OpenOffice.org she said that it was "like falling off a log". (i.e. very easy.)

This is compared to e.g. using PDFCreator for converting Word docs to PDF.

Re:About time something is happening

[jaseuk]

What do you mean?

Word =

File -> Save & Send -> Send as PDF

It couldn't be much easier.

Jason

Re:About time something is happening

[rastos1]

If I convert my application and CV to .doc or .docx the formatting will be all wrong ...

Did you actually try that? On windows you can use free .doc viewer to verify how will word render your document. I believe that the mess will be comparable to mess created just by using a different version of MS office. I.e. not significant.

Re:About time something is happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure you want to work there, if they can't even accept PDFs?

Re:About time something is happening

[Gothmolly]

If your job requires you to send a resume electronically, you should have the skills to create a PDF; they kind of go hand in hand. It's actually a clever sort device on the part of HR. (Not that I'm accusing HR of ever being clever).

Re:About time something is happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you're a moron. Since Office 2010 (and even a plugin for Office 2007), you can just choose Save As...PDF document.

Re:About time something is happening

[AthanasiusKircher]

I believe that the mess will be comparable to mess created just by using a different version of MS office. I.e. not significant.

It really depends. If your resume/cv is a basic, barely formatted text document, sure. Nothing bad will happen. But I've been going back and forth between Word and OpenOffice/LibreOffice for over a decade now at various times, and any document with complex formatting and precise spacing (as is often true with resumes/cvs) is bound to be a disaster when viewed in Word. All the formatting will basically convert "correctly," but the spacing and rendering are often way off, making the document look like you didn't pay enough attention to detail (exactly the OPPOSITE of what you want in a job application).

Sure, you're right that you'll get some effects like this going between different versions of Word (particularly Mac vs. PC), but those are usually a LOT less noticeable and may only be a couple blips here and there. You can mitigate the effects through trial and error and avoiding certain kinds of direct formatting, but it takes a lot of time and effort to sort this out... and the problems may change with different Word versions.

Re:About time something is happening

[AthanasiusKircher]

(By the way -- just to be clear, I'm NOT trying to argue in favor of Word or doc/x. I personally prefer LaTeX and pdf... but I've experienced lots of conversion woes.)

Re:About time something is happening

[Anonymous Coward]

and being financially challenged I'm doing the work from LIbre Office

Oh FFS. If companies want applications/CVs in .doc/.docx format, give them what they want by using MS Office. You don't have the luxery to play games when unemployed. I understand that money is a factor, but you have two options that allow you to keep using MS Office to ensure compatibility:

1. Use the web versions of Office. They're free, and although they might not have quite the same number of features, for a web app it's far better than Google's offerings.

2. PIRATE THE FUCKING THING. Once you get the job you can justify buying it for real as it helped you get the job in the first place. You do what you must.

LibreOffice is directly responsible for me losing a job because I realised later that I should have checked the .doc output it made on a proper version of MS Office (it looked kinda bad exported, but not within LO).

Re:About time something is happening

[bigfinger76]

Doesn't sound like she was sending anything.

Re:About time something is happening

[bigfinger76]

Hey Thraxy, this dude is right. You're a moron. See, smart dudes like AC up there know that your financial situation, although clearly stated, is not contextually significant. In other words, go buy another MS Office version and stop whining.

Re:About time something is happening

[bigfinger76]

You get yourself fired for screwing up, and it's somehow LibreOffice's fault?

Re:About time something is happening

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean?

Word =

File -> Save & Send -> Send as PDF

It couldn't be much easier.

Jason

I teach philosophy at a college. I require my students to submit papers as PDFs. And every single time I teach on-line (4-6 courses a year) I get a handful of students, per course, who have no clue as to how to produce a PDF. Just because something is obvious to you, does not mean everyone else knows how to do it.

Re:About time something is happening

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno how it works in NL but i'm at a UK university and there is a pretty big disconnect between the academics and the beuracrats. Yeah the beuracrats can be a PITA at times but most of the time the two sides just avoid each other.

Re:About time something is happening

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, in Writer it is:

Click the 'to pdf' icon (next to the print icon)

Which is quite a bit easier.

Re:About time something is happening

[CronoCloud]

All the formatting will basically convert "correctly," but the spacing and rendering are often way off, making the document look like you didn't pay enough attention to detail (exactly the OPPOSITE of what you want in a job application).

Sometimes that is a typeface issue. The fix is to make sure both machines have the exact same ones available.

Re:About time something is happening

[vux984]

and being financially challenged I'm doing the work from LIbre Office.

Ok, so your "financially challenged". I can accept that.

And lets suppose you need your resume in DOCX format as part of the application process. What do you do?

We're trying to do it on the cheap so...

a) Do you really not have a single friend, family member, or neighbor who has office who would be willing to allow you to load your ODF resume, clean it up, and save it as docx? Really? Not a single one?

b) Employment offices - around here there are all manner of taxpayer funded, and volunteer organizations to help people get jobs -- they provide resume assistance, job boards, etc... surely someone there can take your file and help you get a clean DOCX version.

c) Grace period. ok, you have no friends and there are no support mechanisms out there for you to lean on. There are plenty of versions that will run for 30 days grace period before they insist on activating. Several don't even require a key to be input during install. Download a VLA ISO via a torrent site and install it, get your DOCX and remove it. Don't even need cracks.

d) ok, you have no friends, no employment support groups, and you feel even taking advantage of the free grace period is too close to piracy for your strong sense of ethics. $7 bucks a month gets you office 365 personal edition. That's pretty cheap for a legal and DIY option. Skip a meal and haul a bag of aluminum cans to the recycler and you've got MS Office for few weeks, more than enough time to get a resume in order.

Not to be disrespectful to your or your current position, but I'm skeptical you really can't get a reasonable docx version of your resume that easily.

So you don't have $120 to drop on Office Home and Student right now, despite it being an "investment" in getting a job... but really ... you don't know anybody who has a copy who will help you out? Nevermind the other options I listed.

As for PDF... sheesh that's even easier. Assuming your word processor doesn't have the capability built in, or your operating system via the pritner subsystem. (OSX can save to PDF natively, as can Linux if you set it up. And there are several free PDF printer drivers for windows as well.)

But even if all that is too complicated or esoteric there are plenty of online document convertor websites that will take your document and give you a download link to a pdf version. Just google "word to pdf"... even a newbie can manage that or will at the very least know someone who can help them with that.

Re:About time something is happening

[Thraxy]

Yes, I did actually try it. Messes my CV up quite badly, especially the version with the sometimes required picture.

Re:About time something is happening

[Thraxy]

+ MS 4eva

Re:About time something is happening

[Thraxy]

It's not so much that the user is a moron, and as I've stated I do convert to PDF with LibreOffice, which you would know if you read the entire text. However, I've seen jobs as low as cleaning assistant require PDF. Now you obviously are of some sort of superior intellect, being able to use MS Office and all to its full extent. That does not mean that 58 year old Betty, that's been laid off from the paper factory and has 7 years to go until retirement, knows how to perform this action.

But you, kind sir, are a marvel of a modern human. Who would have imagined that there's a plugin for that.

Re:About time something is happening

[Thraxy]

See, the thing is, you're reading that I actually need .docx, which I haven't actually said anywhere. I do fine with PDF. I don't quite know who you're arguing with to be honest. What I was stating is that using a freely available open document format would be better overall, since I happen to know for a fact that unemployment offices here are running LibreOffice. I also happen to know that businesses usually are running MS Office, because of concerns they have about software support (or because that's just what their XP machines came with in 2001). Furthermore, I know that a lot of older people, who were let go in the height of the financial crisis, have little to no experience with computers and do not know how to use "Print to PDF".

But mate, cheers for the MS Office sales pitch.

Re:About time something is happening

[vux984]

See, the thing is, you're reading that I actually need .docx, which I haven't actually said anywhere

No I caught that, but decided to making the point that docx (actually the harder HR requirement to meet) is still a very low practical barrier.

But mate, cheers for the MS Office sales pitch.

By providing 3 ways to avoid buying it altogether? and one final way that costs less than a premium coffee?? Yeah... Microsoft is paying me well to shill for them, LAMO. :p

Is Word ODF real ODF?

[pr100]

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.

Re:Is Word ODF real ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just checked - Microsoft Office 2013 may handle "strict" OOXML and ODF 1.1 - but it's a one way transfer because 2007/2010 don't then read the versions 2013 puts out

Libreoffice FTW, then :).

Re:Is Word ODF real ODF?

[Anonymous Coward]

Office 2007 as of SP2 can read strict OOXML files and read/write ODF 1.1. Office 2010 could read both at time of release.

Re:Is Word ODF real ODF?

[pr100]

I suppose that doesn't quite answer the question of whether any of those pieces of software actually produce documents that comply with the standard, which is what the actual requirement is.

But in any case the practical difficulty will be that people will say they have complied with the requirement by saving as ODF from Word, whether or not that actually enables interoperability with non-Word software.

So that's why...

[Anonymous Coward]

So that's why Microsoft is laying off 18000 people!

Compliance With Standards

[Kalium70]

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.

Re:Compliance With Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

The constrained resource is "desire"

Extensive public input?

[WinstonWolfIT]

"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.

About time something is happening

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[Tomsk70]

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.

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess that's why an increasing number of PCs across British universities, provided by the universities, are now using W7 and Ubuntu (rather than W7 only)...

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[hawkinspeter]

As a UK tax payer, I welcome the move. Finally, someone in government is looking further ahead than just the next election.

I would imagine that someone at GCHQ could easily convert the documents for a tiny fraction of the budget that they've got. In fact, they've probably already got conversions of everyone's private/secret documents already.

Plenty of money for spying on UK subjects, but no money for protecting their interests in not being tied to a predatory US company.

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[Bert64]

Short term it may cost more, long term it should save a lot... As someone who fully expects to still be paying taxes in 10 years time, i welcome long term savings.

As for interoperability, they are the government... You either want their business (eg suppliers), or you have no choice (eg taxpayers)... If they require that you submit documents in ODF then that's what you do, or they will find other suppliers who will.

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[Tomsk70]

Short term it may cost more, long term it should save a lot

Short term it'll cost a great deal - money we don't have that could be spent on more immediate benefits. If it's put to the public as '100 nurses, or a file format for an office suite nobody uses?', you can imagine how that'll play out (and even if it's spun, people will still see the bottom line). Long term...it will also cost a lot, as the rest of the world is not going to stop using MS Office just because you have. Munich didn't exactly start a snowball, despite spending ten years doing it. Macros, scripts and the like that can't migrate/ convert = more cost. It's not something that can be changed on a whim, and if there was actually any real tangible benefit, private corps would have been paying me to do it by now.

>As someone who fully expects to still be paying taxes in 10 years time, i welcome long term savings.

For *you*, yes - but right now, I'd argue that most won't be so keen when there's no immediate return or benefit, as well as the long term costs when the rest of the world carries on using MS Office. I'm also unsure of what the long term savings would be - all your incoming staff will have to be cross-trained. All 3rd-party apps have to be re-written or re-purchased. Support has to be purchased. Even if we ignore those costs, the 'savings' on the license fee for MS Office via a open source app are almost nothing - a combined CAL or license for MS stuff is still a big, big saving on the subsequent costs for going with multiple third-parties (as long as we're talking on-site - Office365 & hosted desktops still work out to be three times the cost of buying machines/ owning the software yourself for businesses of any real size).

>As for interoperability, they are the government... You either want their business (eg suppliers), or you have no choice (eg taxpayers)

Can you give an example of this happening with a UK council or government-run body previously? It's generally the other way round, I'm afraid - they adapt to what the standard is ('standard' being what everyone uses rather than what someone has arbitrarily decided). I've worked for hospitals, the police, councils and the goverment - if you want to go for a different format, the cost of conversion is on *you*. It's not that big a stretch to imagine it reaching the point where someone sues the government for forcing them to spend £££ for making an arbitrary decision to change formats.

Also, looking at the article - 500 comments were taken into consideration? That's not even a linux fan-club in terms of numbers.

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[Tomsk70]

>As a UK tax payer, I welcome the move

You are in the minority, I'm afraid. Any outlay of this size really needs to provide tangible benefits from the outset, of which there aren't any.

>I would imagine that someone at GCHQ could easily convert the documents for a tiny fraction of the budget that they've got.

Nobody can easily convert documents. There are macros, scripts and so on that just don't convert.

>Plenty of money for spying on UK subjects, but no money for protecting their interests in not being tied to a predatory US company.

Apple are more predatory. Be sure to point that out to the schools buying iPads.

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[hawkinspeter]

The obvious tangible benefits are that the documents will no longer be locked into some stupid proprietary format that can never be converted due to ridiculous macros and scripts (quite why a static document needs to have macros and scripts is beyond me).

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[hawkinspeter]

Also, I don't get why/how Apple are more predatory (I'm not a fan of them, by the way) and I fail to see why a school buying iPads will lock up the content that, as a tax-payer, I have paid for.

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[Tomsk70]

>The obvious tangible benefits are that the documents will no longer be locked into some stupid proprietary format

That's not a tangible benefit when the overwhelming majority (arguably all) of the country is already using it and has done for the past thirty years.

>that can never be converted due to ridiculous macros and scripts (quite why a static document needs to have macros and scripts is beyond me).

I think we'll leave it there.

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[hawkinspeter]

Your argument about not wanting to change something due to the length of time that it's been unchanged is laughable. I don't get why you are so opposed to such a sensible, intelligent change. I bet you could have used the self-same arguments for keeping government documents on micro-fiches (or similar old-time technology).

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[Shimbo]

Your argument about not wanting to change something due to the length of time that it's been unchanged is laughable.

As well as being entirely untrue, of course, given the number of incompatible format changes Office has gone through over over the years.

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[hawkinspeter]

Yes, that as well, but I didn't want to get bogged down by details as logically his argument is specious.

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[hawkinspeter]

And, if it's put to the public as '100 spying incidents on members of opposition parties or a document format that is completely free and belongs to the people', then I imagine you'll get a different response.

I'm curious, you seem to have a strong pro-microsoft agenda here. Why is that? (or are you just getting a bit old and are afraid of new-fangled technology)?

Re:This a wheeze to get Office 2013/ 365 cheaper

[messymerry]

The Microlimp Office users can download LibreOffice for free...

umm...

[Anonymous Coward]

500 comments is very extensive?

apples and oranges?

[Anonymous Coward]

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