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Open Document Format Approved
Posted by
timothy
on Wed May 04, 2005 04:32 AM
from the file-formats-rule-the-world dept.
from the file-formats-rule-the-world dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The OASIS Group announces that the third Committee Draft [PDF] of the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 Specification has been approved
as an OASIS Standard. The submission of the approved standard can be found at here.
The OpenDocument format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats including the popular DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office. Organizations and individuals that store their data in an open format avoid being locked in to a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their current vendor goes out of business or changes their software or licensing terms to something less favorable."
The OpenDocument format is intended to provide an open alternative to proprietary document formats including the popular DOC, XLS, and PPT formats used by Microsoft Office. Organizations and individuals that store their data in an open format avoid being locked in to a single software vendor, leaving them free to switch software if their current vendor goes out of business or changes their software or licensing terms to something less favorable."
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What about Bill (Score:5, Interesting)
The question still remains:
- Will Open Office, AbiWord, et al adopt this?
- Will Microsoft adopt this?
- Will adoption mean Default, Available Option, or partial support (import only)
It's a step in the right direction, no doubt, but how will this be addressed in practice?Re:What about Bill (Score:5, Informative)
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patent trouble (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not convinced this will work (Score:5, Insightful)
For this system to work, every office app needs to adopt this file format. That way, companies can theoretically switch between vendors. Why would Microsoft, who already have the lion's share of the office market include this format? That would surely be shooting themselves in the feet.
If there were, say, three competing office suites each with 33% of the market share, then you could understand them wanting to include support for this format - companies would demand that the app supported them or switch to an alternative. However, when one office suite controls anything in the region of up to 96% of the market share, it'll take a lot more than a common open file format to persuade the average business to move away from a program that is pretty much the standard, whether we like it or not.
Integration (Score:5, Insightful)
Since this format is Open, there are no limitations to integrating it into other products such as CMS system, reports (which is more common than you'd expect) and all sorts of other tools which a business uses.
If this integration reaches a certain critical mass where it becomes too much of an advantage for businesses to ignore, MS will have no choice but to adopt it.
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Amazing (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, everyone is aware of the stranglehold MS has on the market, but this new standard is exactly meant to fight this stranglehold. And I don't agree that MS has to come on board to make this a success.
1. This gives all alternatives to MS Office an advantage over MS Office, which is of course a good thing.
2. Now that it is a standard, what about governments requiring that the software they use be standard compatible?
3. Even if MS themselves don't support it, how about third party verndors, or open source hackers developing a plugin for MS Office to support this format?
To sum it up, I think it is a little more complex than you seem to think and the fight has only just started, so don't give up yet.
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Microsoft and format compatibility (Score:5, Insightful)
I suspect that one of the (admittedly several) reasons that Word managed to knock out Wordperfect so many years ago was that Wordperfect didn't make a huge effort to be compatible with the competition. WordPerfect Corporation took its users for granted, and it was very slow off the blocks in a lot of ways.
Microsoft went to a lot of effort to make Word as compatible as possible with Wordperfect files, just as OpenOffice and several others are doing now, but Wordperfect Corporation didn't go to as much effort in returning the favour for Microsoft Word. My understanding is that it was more like 95% compatibility for a long time. The end result was that Word could cleanly deal with two formats, but Wordperfect could only reliably deal with its own.
The consequence? Once Word documents had reached a critical mass due to certain "other" reasons, people tended to go for the application that would allow them to easily deal with both types of documents rather than only Wordperfect files. This, of course, turned out to be Microsoft Word, and adoption of it was accelerated.
OpenDocument may not be quite the same situation, because with the OpenDocument format being... well... open, it wouldn't necessarily be too difficult for Microsoft to add support if everyone suddenly decided that they wanted it. This would be a victory in itself for other office applications, though, because it would immediately give Word-using businesses and governments the opportunity of distributing files that more people than just Word users can reliably access.
If there's a critical mass of non-Word users (which could even be a combination of Openoffice, Koffice, and whatever else), it's enough reason for many organisations to seriously consider what their standard document formats should be.
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Re:Microsoft and format compatibility (Score:5, Interesting)
I suspect that it was relatively easy to read/write WP documents, but it's much harder to read/write Word documents.
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Nice but (Score:5, Insightful)
Which they, most obviously, won't.
However, I applaud this group for at least trying. However the realistic cynic in me says that we're not going to see many gains. Hell, the average user in a company doesn't know of and has never been exposed to anything else but Word, Powerpoint and Excel.
If that's the sort of minimal marketshare the competition occupies, it's going to be a tough battle.
This might have some uses (Score:5, Insightful)
This of course depends on whether the standard gains some credibility. Perhaps IBM could have a stab at Microsoft by declaring their wholehearded support for the standard.
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A glimpse into the future (Score:5, Insightful)
OPENOFFICE: Okay, we've included it. Now you can read and write to this new open format!
MICROSOFT: We've just added support for the new format too. You can read all open format Word Processor documents in Word. We didn't include a function to write to an open document - our users don't want that kind of complication.
OPENOFFICE: Let's sit back and wait for this open file format to kick start the OpenOffice adoption!
CONSUMER: Microsoft just offered us Office free for 5 years when they found out we were considering an open source alternative to our operating system. Word can even read all these open format files we have created in OpenOffice - let the migration begin!
OPENOFFICE: Oh dear.
Will this make a difference? (Score:5, Insightful)
Everybody (/. readers not included) uses MS Office. Why? Because it is a 'standard'. OK, its a lousy standard. In fact, its more of a moving target than a standard, but the trick is that nobody knows this.
Sure they know that sometimes when they put their file on a floppy disk and put that in the post to send to their collegue half way across the office that sometimes it looks a bit different to how it looked on their computer, but then thats how computers are!?!
People don't know what word processor is unless its Word. They are taught it in school. They are taught in college and they are taught it in night classes. Its what employers want to see on CVs. People freek when they see PDFs. People freak when they see RTFs! Why? Because on windows they don't have a blue 'W' on them that lets them know its a word processing docuement.
The .doc is here for the long haul. It has survived every attempt by microsoft to improve it. It has survived some glaring security holes and it will continue to do this because consumers are not offered an alternative that they understand and that remains word compatible.
Yup, and you know what? (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, yeah, I'm sure there's probably some tiny niche somewhere this fills. But the rest of us are going to have to ignore this new thingy and just continue shipping around
There was a period some years ago, when I first started looking for work, that I didn't have a copy of Microsoft Word, so I would send out my resume as an HTML file, or a PDF, or if it seemed appropriate both. Over this period, most of the time when I sent my resume out, the response-- even when the sent file was just an HTML file, that you double click and it opens in MSIE-- was "I can't figure out how to open your resume, do you have a
Recruitment agents and Word documents (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm in the process of looking for work now, and I've found that recruitment agents in particular tend to prefer Word documents over something like PDF or HTML.
This isn't because they can't open the latter -- it's because they like to be able to easily edit them. When a recruitment agent hands your resume to a potential employer, they'll usually want to remove identifying information from your resume. This, of course, prevents the employer from approching you directly, in which case the recruitment agent might not get their commission.
Granted that this isn't quite the same as not being able to open a resume at all, but recruitment agents in particular do often have an ulterior motive for wanting a Word document rather than a PDF, for instance.
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Do Not Underestimate this.... (Score:5, Informative)
Most people are approaching this from the wrong PoV.
Once there is a standard in place, then implementation occurs. And it's definitely likely to appear - first in Open Office, then maybe spreading - I can see Linux using it as the default document standard.
Microsoft will eventually have to support it - if it reaches 10% of the market, then you are going to start getting complaints from customers. Even if it only implements a read-only function, that's good enough.
I face a major productivity sapper, when I send off a .sxw to someone who can't open it. I have to open, export to .doc, check that it displays ok, and then resend. If I can happily compose in whatever editor I want, and press send without having to bother about whether a client will be able to read or not - so much the better.
As an aside, the Indian government is slowly adopting Open Office - mainly because these can be easily translated into the local language. Useful, especially in rural areas and the smaller towns. The government itself released a Tamil version of Open Office, Firefox and a bunch of other stuff. Check out their efforts here [ernet.in].
Cheers, R.
Fasttrack it though ISO now ! (Score:5, Interesting)
though a fasttrack). The ISO stamp carries far
more weight for governements agencies and this
could cange a lot of things. See for example
Tim Bray's log on the subject
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/09/24
Daniel
BTW: wasn't the September 2004 LSB spec supposed to be fasttracked though the ISO process too ?
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Informative)
PDF is an open format, with many non-acrobat readers for it. And one can't expect it to be in the format which the document specifies... it just got approved after all.
It would be ironic if it were in
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Re:Ironic (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Ironic (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Ironic (Score:5, Informative)
PDF is an open format. Ther are several non_Adobe PDF readers, eg GSview [wisc.edu].
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Re:Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Nice! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Nice! (Score:5, Informative)
I agree...though only two will for sure; Koffice and OpenOffice.org.
Abiword has an export/import support, though 'does not have a single native format'. Gnumeric doesn't currently support it, and I found no reference in the mailing list since 2003 about OASIS.
Let's hope that this turns around since the only alternative is to use Word and Excel as the main formats and convert to/from the others using that.
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Re:Probably doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Probably doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect them to embrace it in their usual way. They will provide an input filter so their software is compatible with it. (it can open it).
Expect a few roadblocks on exporting to it.
Clippy, "I see you are trying to export a document. You will loose your macro's and formatting if you do. Do you wish to continue?"
If you select yes, expect everything from font selection, to headers and footers, to paragraphs, photo layout, etc., will need re-done in the other simplistic software. In short, it'll import, but editing and saving in a non-MS format will have problems. Expect MS to treat it like ANSI text.
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