Vendor Neutral File Formats? 83
timmyv asks: "I have recently been tasked with developing a corporate wide policy that will standardize all employee created documents on vendor neutral file formats. OASIS is good in theory, but I haven't been able to locate enough concrete examples of policies or implementation schemes that work at a corporate level. Does anyone work at a company where documents can only be saved as RTF, HTML, etc. or have any experience with this type of problem?"
Re:OpenOffice (Score:2, Interesting)
Wrong question for the task. (Score:3, Interesting)
Sorry, but looking at that statement, it seems to me that you are asking the wrong questions. Rather than getting concerned about formats and standards organizations, you should realize that to replace certain formats you will need to improve on open source projects without funding for the development of them. If they say "no" to this, then congratulations, you don't actually have to do this research. Nothing's quite as useless as an unfunded mandate.
Sadly, I'm not sure if this post is meant to be funny.
PDF (Score:3, Interesting)
but with PDF Printers (files are printed to pdf's) for Linux [sourceforge.net] and Windows [sourceforge.net] (I asume Mac has it built in), it's a good option for creating documents that'll be displayed everywhere in the same manner.
PDF and the Things That Turn Into It (Score:3, Interesting)
The point is that it doesn't matter which method I used to create the document; I can convert any of them into either of the other formats without losing information, and any of the three can be turned into HTML or PDF for display purposes.
You've probably got several different types of documents to mess with. Technical papers with plots, accounting spreadsheets, secretary generated memos, and presentations with pretty pictures so that management can understand what's going on. LaTeX alone could handle all of these situations. Create document types and environments to match the needs of each type of document. XML, being completely generic, could also handle any of the situations, but it's easier to type LaTeX markup than it is XML. There is at least one caveat: you have to be careful what type of images you feed TeX.
Heck, you could use Perl bindings to MS-Excel to snag data out of spreadsheets and export it into a format that some other chart making tool uses. You could use Excel itself to export as CSV files, which you could then use awk to convert into some other format.
Basically, it doesn't matter what tool each person uses, as long as what they export off their own workstation is in a standard format.
postscript/PDF and XML? (Score:4, Interesting)
XML is a good start, because it's easy for a new app (the fictional YCircuit) to add support for the format, but you are still stuck unable to print it if you don't have the skills to write a conversion script and no one else has written it for you.
Why not combine the two? XML embedded in a standard PDF file would allow any application with support for the creator's XML tagset to import the file, and at the very least those without any similar application could view and print the file.
Re:PDF and the Things That Turn Into It (Score:2, Interesting)
OASIS Open Document vendor independent (Score:2, Interesting)
Like HTML, which surprised people in the 1990's, the OASIS OpenOffice.org file format is indeed vendor independent, though, it is now called Open Document [oasis-open.org]. Anyone can use it or develop tools for it without restriction. Even Microsoft is part of the team at OASIS, at least on paper [zdnet.com.au]. And, even if MS doesn't get out of the way, interesting things will happen with Open Doument.
So far OASIS Open Document being used by at least the following:
Currently, there are many governments moving up to StarOffice or OpenOffice.org for the sake of these formats. Singapore comes to mind first, but there are many, many others that don't necessarily make the mainstream press like Sarpsborg. Likewise, there are many small, medium and large businesses moving along. Some with an axe to grind [com.com] (with good reason ) speak up. However, most are silent until the move is being implemented to keep the goon squad from Redmond from getting in the way.
The current choice:
Re:What is your point? (Score:3, Interesting)
This may result in dropping MS Office entirely -- or it may just result in changing the default "save as" settings for every install of Word, or the creation of an "archive and share" custom function that takes DOCs or WPSs or whatever and turns them into the new neutral format.