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French Government IT Directorate Supports ODF, Rejects OOXML

Posted by timothy on from the but-open-office-xml-sounds-so-nice dept.

jrepin writes: The final draft version of the RGI (general interoperability framework), still awaiting final validation, maintains ODF as the recommended format for office documents within French administrations. This new version of the RGI provides substantiated criticism of the OOXML Microsoft format. April thanks the DISIC (French Inter-ministerial IT directorate) for not giving in to pressure and acting in the long-term interest of all French citizens and their administrations. As Wikpedia notes, OOXML (Office Open XML) is not to be confused with OpenOffice.org XML. (Also on the open-source office-document format front, OpenSource.com has taken a look at five open alternatives to Google Docs.)

53 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Sacre bleu! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    A sudden outbreak of common sense. The question remains, what would it take for the US to follow suit? Is it even possible to break Microsoft's stranglehold all these years after the illegal monopoly ruling?

    1. Re:Sacre bleu! by Merk42 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Is it even possible to break Microsoft's stranglehold all these years after the illegal monopoly ruling?

      The Monopoly ruling was about Windows, not Office. It also more specifically had to do with bundling Internet Explorer and punishing OEMs who bundled Netscape.

    2. Re:Sacre bleu! by mlts · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The ironic thing is that moving to the ODF format would require very little in way of workflow changes. Word already supports .ODT, Excel supports .ODS, not sure about Access/Base, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.

      Microsoft formats have more document tools available, but I'm sure they will appear for ODF if it starts gaining steam as a nationwide standard.

    3. Re:Sacre bleu! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Different interpretation: Microsoft pulled out all the stops in corrupting the ISO process and they won. Greasing palms was Microsoft's modus operandi years after the ruling, probably still is. It's tough fighting for non-proprietary standards when there's an 800 lb gorilla doling out cash like it's candy.

      To answer the AC's question, no, I don't think it's possible to break the stranglehold completely.

    4. Re:Sacre bleu! by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 4, Informative

      Having been to some ISO meetings recently, I can state without fear of being wrong, that ISO leaves itself wide open to corruption. There is a process, but it is nothing like a normal standards process with the usual mitigation to prevent domination by a single body and a convergent consensus process to get to an agreeable document in a reasonable time.

      Participants don't even get access to the documents they are working on. They have to buy themselves copies in uneditable PDFs. The result is that people keep adding crap into specs that already exists in other specs, but no one knows to reference it. So these things become inconsistent over time.

      You will find function specifications handled in one group and test & validation specifications for the same thing in a different group. So the function specification gets no consideration of testability requirements and the test & validation group don't get to specify that the thing be testable, only how it may be tested after it's been implemented to the spec that has no testability requirements in it.

      ISO is not a competent organisation to write specs. Certainly not technical computer software and hardware specifications. Maybe they're OK at bridge loading specs, or non-stick coatings. I don't know.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    5. Re:Sacre bleu! by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      they don't have to be experts, they have people inside the industry to agree on specifications then they draft them according to that agreement. That some (most?) of the ISO specifications are such abortions of common sense is not their fault, but the fault of corporate interests who can't agree for the sake of advancing operability for all rather than choking innovation for the sake of a quick profit.

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    6. Re:Sacre bleu! by ihtoit · · Score: 1

      I used to use MSO2k3, which did not support ODF out of the box - needed the ODF Translator Add-In. Still wouldn't support the OASIS database. Spreadsheet support was spotty. Word would read .ODT but couldn't save to it. It would try and default to .DOCX. I do know that for the past several years (at least since Office 2007) MSO has had native support for ISO/IEC 26300 v1.1 which is the full OASIS .ODF standard. I don't know if native support for .ODF 1.2 is fully implemented yet, even though it's only been a fully ratified international standard for all of a month.

      --
      Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
    7. Re:Sacre bleu! by TechyImmigrant · · Score: 1

      In the stuff I work on (crypto specs) almost everyone involved works for a government. There are some. Myself, some consultants but they are a small minority. But the governments choose the national position, not the individuals.

      --
      I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
    8. Re:Sacre bleu! by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      I used to use MSO2k3, which did not support ODF out of the box - needed the ODF Translator Add-In. Still wouldn't support the OASIS database. Spreadsheet support was spotty. Word would read .ODT but couldn't save to it. It would try and default to .DOCX. I do know that for the past several years (at least since Office 2007) MSO has had native support for ISO/IEC 26300 v1.1 which is the full OASIS .ODF standard. I don't know if native support for .ODF 1.2 is fully implemented yet, even though it's only been a fully ratified international standard for all of a month.

      Even what support they do have is buggy in interoperability. For instance with ODS they move the formulas (stored by others) into an MS Word namespace and then save the values in the cell space. So it'll read it, and write it, but it won't be interoperable with anything else.

      The claim was that ODS spec didn't have the Formula specification yet so it was valid to put it only in the MS Word namespace extension area where no one else would read it. At best, that's a brutally strict reading; it also ignored the whole effort around the ODF Formula specification that was going on, and completely ignored the purpose of ODF as an interoperable document format, and ignored what the community at large - and the many other ODF supporting vendors - were doing. At worse, it was a very specific decision to pretend to have support while making interoperability with others near impossible by using hard lines in the specification that no one else was taking.

      In the end, I don't think I'd ever trust a version of MS Office to really support ODF properly.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
  2. OOXML is a joke ... by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Calling OOXML a "standard" was always a bad joke.

    Way too much crap of "must work like this proprietary project", and too many uses of other proprietary things.

    How the hell ISO allowed it to ever be identified as a standard still perplexes me.

    Which means it's good when people see OOXML for what it is -- a proprietary format, which is inadequately documented, and has things which limit other people from using it.

    Even Microsoft doesn't adhere to any standard interpretation of OOXML, because there isn't one.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:OOXML is a joke ... by MightyMartian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It was identified as a "standard" because Redmond gamed the system through its "business partners".

      Has Microsoft even fully implemented it yet?

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    2. Re:OOXML is a joke ... by denis-The-menace · · Score: 5, Informative

      How did it "become" an ISO standard?

      **History lesson: How MS got Office Open XML approved**
      MS paid the ISO membership fees for a bunch of new ISO members for that one critical ISO vote.
      The new members were so happy, they voted to approve Open XML.

      This way, the secretive and patent laden file format could be used in government bids where ISO file formats where required.

      Soon after this outrageous manoeuvre,
      ISO lost it's reputation and became known as I Sold Out.

      --
      Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
    3. Re:OOXML is a joke ... by lgw · · Score: 1

      Way too much crap of "must work like this proprietary project", and too many uses of other proprietary things.

      There's nothing wrong with taking one company's proprietary approach and making it, as-is, an ISO standard. That happens a lot (the SCSI standard, for example, for many years), and it's the only way to take something already successful and make it open. But if you can't implement the standard from reading the doc, that's epic fail on the part of the committee. If new vendors can't interoperate just by reading the standard, that's not a standard.

      The problem isn't "must work like this proprietary project" - that's very common for standards. The problem is that MS did a crap job of documenting how to do that

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    4. Re:OOXML is a joke ... by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      The problem is that MS did a crap job of documenting how to do that

      In all fairness to Microsoft, they couldn't do that because much of the document format is binary dumps of memory, often containing pointers to Windows functions, etc. So it's really only valid on Windows. This is why there are so many binary blob extensions to the OOXML format that cover a vast majority of the MS Office functionality.

      Not sure how they got the functionality to work for Mac, but then, MS Office for Mac (IIRC) is known for having incompatibilities with MS Office for Windows too, so it's not like they can make their own software truly compatible across platforms they support themselves. MS Office for Mac would probably have better compatibility with MS Office for Linux than it ever will with MS Office for Windows for the same reasons; you just don't binary dump application memory to file in those platforms to save your state like Microsoft does on Windows.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
    5. Re:OOXML is a joke ... by lgw · · Score: 1

      MS has the staffing to do this right, even if it means wholesale re-writing of large chunks of Office - something they used to be capable of, once upon a time. The code base is pretty horrible, from what I hear, but that's a problem that you can fix with a few programmer-centuries of effort, and it's not like Office has had any actual new features for a while.

      --
      Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
    6. Re:OOXML is a joke ... by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

      MS has the staffing to do this right, even if it means wholesale re-writing of large chunks of Office - something they used to be capable of, once upon a time. The code base is pretty horrible, from what I hear, but that's a problem that you can fix with a few programmer-centuries of effort, and it's not like Office has had any actual new features for a while.

      They may have the staffing, but do they have the will? Not likely as it's this very mechanism that keeps so many on MS Office or using Office 365. If they did it right, then many would stop using those products, and that would result in a major hit to one of their main sources of income.

      So they may have the ability, but the desire is not there, and won't be there until they believe they actually have to compete against another product in that segment, which won't happen until they believe their is a major threat to income in that segment. This is why they made OOXML and decimated the integrity of ISO to get is passed; while at the same time aggressively pursuing keeping ODF from being accepted as a standard for various governments - it was a threat that needed to be addressed.

      This is also why OOXML has not seen a single update since its initial ratification - the threat was perceived to be resolved so no need to continue with that path. As a result, there is no version of MS Office (or Office 365) that produces an OOXML/ISO complaint document.

      --
      Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
  3. Re:French government is for cows. by chipschap · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Mais, chose surprennante, ils ont pris le choix juste. Quele miracle!

  4. Re:French government is for cows. by ArcadeMan · · Score: 2

    Ça aurait été vachement mauvais de choisir Microsoft.

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  5. Re:French government is for cows. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Ici on fucking parlez le fucking English.

  6. Re:Edgy move by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · · Score: 1

    Can you translate that? I don't speak French.

    --
    (-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
  7. Confusion by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    As Wikpedia notes, OOXML (Office Open XML) is not to be confused with OpenOffice.org XML.

    ...although that was probably Microsoft's intent.

    1. Re:Confusion by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is why I refer to it as MOO-XML, keeps it in mind that it belongs to Microsoft.

    2. Re:Confusion by short · · Score: 1

      It only shows how poor Slashdot became (when they explain what is OOXML).

  8. Re:French government is for cows. by Dr_Barnowl · · Score: 2

    MOO-XML

  9. Re:French government is for cows. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Ici, putain d'enculé, nous parlons le putain d'enculé d'anglais.

  10. Nice to know by bluesmartini · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'm working in a public research institute in France, and all ODF files that are mailed are blocked. Our mail provider is microsoft 365. The ports are blocked in order to force OWA protocols. A real nightmare for Linux users :-/

    1. Re:Nice to know by makapuf · · Score: 1

      Wow, pretty shameful. Can you specify where you're working at ? I've only worked at private companies (big & small ones) in France where using linux for office work was, well less than practical but accepted if you can sort it out (and servers on MS needed to be thoroughly defended if you needed to). From the people I knew in public research it was linux except in office works.

    2. Re:Nice to know by bluesmartini · · Score: 1

      One of the many CNRS institutes.

    3. Re:Nice to know by bluesmartini · · Score: 1

      Nice idea, but no :/

  11. Re:Edgy move by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    First post females dogs, your excrement were second rate anyway.

  12. Re:French government is for cows. by chipschap · · Score: 1

    Ici on parle anglais--- dans une très mauvaise façon.

  13. Re:Does OOXML even support embedded documents? by chipschap · · Score: 2

    This works perfectly for me (dragging an image into a document) --- Linux Mint 17, LibreOffice 4.4.4.3

  14. Require ODF? by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

    Next they will be requiring us to write in French. When will it end?

  15. Re:Does OOXML even support embedded documents? by spitzak · · Score: 2

    I think you meant ODF, not OOXML. But thanks for proving that the name Microsoft chose for their format is purposely confusing!

  16. Re:XML conceived by incapable programmers by cheesybagel · · Score: 1

    The basically turned a bunch of C struct declarations into an XM spec. At least that's what it looks like when I read the spec.

  17. Re:French government is for cows. by RabidReindeer · · Score: 1

    Maltese Falcon?

  18. The Directory is back? by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 1

    And this time, they have nukes.

  19. Intentional by markdavis · · Score: 1

    >"As Wikpedia notes, OOXML (Office Open XML) is not to be confused with OpenOffice.org XML."

    And don't think Microsoft didn't make that ridiculous name for the *exact* purpose of confusing consumers between the two.

  20. Meanwhile, still no decent HTML word processing by rduke15 · · Score: 1

    It's nice that a government pushes for open standards, and if it gets widely used, maybe it will somehow help development.

    But in the meantime, there is still no decent writing tool for our current needs.

    When I need to write something, it usually doesn't need to be printed on A4 (or Letter) paper. It is to be viewed on some digital display. And it does't need to be pixel-precise. Just well structured to be understandable. So the natural format would be HTML with CSS, which has become a universal format that can be displayed on anything, and can even be searched as plain text with grep and the like when needed.

    But there is no word processing program that produces sane HTML/CSS. The real word processing programs which have all the features and tools to help for writing produce totally insane HTML. The HTML tools are designed for programmers or "web designers" (whatever that really is these days), not for plain writing of content. In the end, I often just send an HTML email done in Thunderbird, or I use Amaya, and mostly a plain text editor with a browser window to re-read it. The alternative is to write in MS Word or Libre/OpenOffice, and produce a f*ing PDF.

    I have been longing for a modern "Ami Pro for HTML/CSS" for the last 15 years...

    1. Re:Meanwhile, still no decent HTML word processing by innocent_white_lamb · · Score: 1

      Use lyx, and export from that to html.

      You'll be glad you did.

      --
      If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
  21. When MA supported OOXML by snadrus · · Score: 2

    I knew the guy who worked on the Microsoft legal team who came up with the idea to use accessibility as a reason that ODF should not be a standard in Massachusetts. Of-course he's since-then been furloughed by Microsoft. So much for selling-out freedom for a little personal security.

    ODF doesn't preclude an accessibility-capable editor, and it's a real format (not 90% too big and full of ambiguity like OOXML), and not changing every release.

    --
    Science & open-source build trust from peer review. Learn systems you can trust.
  22. And? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's france...no one gives a shit

  23. Re:XML conceived by incapable programmers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    OOXML? C struct declarations?

    You must be thinking of the ridiculous minutiae that the ODF supporters all harp endlessly about. Meanwhile, something as complex as a spreadsheet is pretty simple to define in OOXML.

    +Workbook
    +-Worksheet
    +--Table
    +---Column
    +---Row
    +----Cell
    +-----CellData

    That's the main node hierarchy. There are about 35 commonly used elements in the format. There are, of course, hundreds of obscure elements that nobody anywhere, ever gives a damn about (and aren't implemented even in MS Office). Which you've heard about endlessly on slashdot. Of course.

    Now, take that perfectly easy-to-use SpreadsheetML document, name it "workbook.xml", and put it in a folder named "xl". Now zip that folder into an archive. Name the zip archive [whatever].xlsx. Done. (For Word documents, the equivalent uses the somewhat clunkier WordprocessingML schema, puts it into "document.xml" in the "word" folder, all rolled into a zip archive named with the .docx extension.)

    OOXML isn't fricking rocket science, nor is it even close to approaching the obtuseness of Microsoft's C struct declarations from Win32.

  24. Re:French government is for cows. by ArcadeMan · · Score: 1

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

    --
    Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
  25. Re:French government is for cows. by hughbar · · Score: 1

    But extremely cowly owl to choose ODF.

    --
    On y va, qui mal y pense!
  26. Re:French government is for cows. by hughbar · · Score: 1

    That's 'ici on fucking parle', please write it out a few hundred times on the walls of Paris. I'm not even going to start on hamsters, breath etc. etc. I have too much dignity.

    --
    On y va, qui mal y pense!
  27. Re:French government is for cows. by hughbar · · Score: 1

    That's really 'fuck ouais' giving you 'fuck yeah' in Metropolitan French, anyway.

    --
    On y va, qui mal y pense!
  28. Re:French government is for cows. by ihtoit · · Score: 1

    Billy Birmingham quote for the win!

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  29. Re:XML conceived by incapable programmers by Blaskowicz · · Score: 1

    The RGI pdf does acknolewdge this regarding spreadsheets, it says :

    "Pour des besoins d’échanges d’informations sous forme de tableaux, l’utilisation d’OOXML est
    tolérée"

    Which I'll translate as "For needs of exchanging information under the form of spreadsheets, the use of OOXML is tolerated".
    Though I feel like it's a bit ambiguous : "tableau" means a two-dimensional array of data here, similar to English "table". So I guess most spreadsheets are okay, if they're not complex VBA programs disguised as documents.

  30. Re:Does OOXML even support embedded documents? by ihtoit · · Score: 1

    uh... bollocks?

    Really, you're blathering schyte. OO/o has had the facility to drag/drop embedded content for YEARS.

    --
    Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
  31. Drag and drop works fine by sjbe · · Score: 1

    One difficulty I run into constantly with OpenOffice and Libre Office is that you can't just drag an image or another file and have it embedded in a document

    I do that all the time. I have standardized our (small) company on LibreOffice and we use it for our manufacturing work instructions. We put pictures into these all the time and typically do it with drag and drop. Not sure what you are doing differently that would cause it to malfunction but the functionality is there and does work.

    It is a huge shortcoming IMHO, as it is used all the time by people I work with that use MS Word. Is that just a shortcoming of the particular application I am using on the particular OS or is that shortcoming inherent in the XML format?

    Hasn't got anything to do with the file format.

  32. Re:Does OOXML even support embedded documents? by TemporalBeing · · Score: 1

    I think you meant ODF, not OOXML. But thanks for proving that the name Microsoft chose for their format is purposely confusing!

    ODF has superior support for it by being able to save content (like images) natively (e.g as a JPG/PNG/GIF/whatever) inside the zip file that is an ODF file; stores it in the XML manifest, and the other files can reference it in their XML data as well.

    OOXML might do that, or it might do what the old binary formats did and just dump a binary copy of it into the format for use as a binary blob that no one else knows that it is.

    No, if the GP is having an issue, it's likely a fault in the software itself, one that has likely been fixed a long time ago.

    --
    Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)
  33. ODF v1.2 published as ISO/IEC standard by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    ISO/IEC publishes latest version of OpenDocument Format as International Standard 26300:2015
    http://www.opendocsociety.org/news/26300_2015-published/

    OpenDocument pages from OASIS and ISO/IEC:
    https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office
    http://www.iso.org/iso/home/store/catalogue_ics/catalogue_detail_ics.htm?csnumber=66363

    Documents available for free on the following webpages from OASIS and ISO/IEC:
    https://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=office#technical
    http://standards.iso.org/ittf/PubliclyAvailableStandards/
    The OpenDocument v1.2 documents from both organisations (OASIS and ISO/IEC) should be identical