Open Document Format Approved 399
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."
Ironic (Score:4, Funny)
*Acrobat reader required
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
Re:Ironic (Score:2, Funny)
Yes we can, dammit! [slashdot.org]
Re:Ironic (Score:2)
Re:Ironic (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ironic (Score:3)
Re:Follow up (Score:4, Informative)
the conditions stated below, to:
Prepare files whose content conforms to the Portable Document Format
Write drivers and applications that produce output represented in the Portable
Document Format
Write software that accepts input in the form of the Portable Document Format
and displays, prints, or otherwise interprets the contents
Copy Adobe's copyrighted list of data structures and operators, as well as the
example code and PostScript language function definitions in the written
specification, to the extent necessary to use the Portable Document Format for
the purposes above
If it's still unclear, I don't know what else to say.
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Informative)
PDF is an open format. Ther are several non_Adobe PDF readers, eg GSview [wisc.edu].
Re:Ironic (Score:2)
The solution [Win32]: Adobe Acrobat 7 for the browser, GSView for the system.
It may be a little inconvenient, but it does help in reducing load on the system.
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ironic (Score:3, Informative)
Why would you want a browser plugin? I click on pdf files, and xpdf opens them in a new window. I like that.
That said, if you want it opened in your browser, use konqueror (it can embed kpdf), or try plugger [hubbe.net].
Re:Ironic (Score:2)
One reason why people would want a browser plugin is because it keeps it all in one window, which is very much the reason tabs exist.
Re:Ironic (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ironic (Score:2)
nice but not exactly hardware (Score:3, Informative)
Re:nice but not exactly hardware (Score:3, Informative)
Probably doomed (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Probably doomed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Probably doomed (Score:4, Insightful)
Even then they would probably try and sabotage it - be slightly incompatible (make sure that the exported data has some "extra bits" in that only M$ can really make heads or tails of - or introduce other little incompatibilities...
Big deal...
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.
Re:Probably doomed (Score:2, Interesting)
For their usual meaning of ANSI -- that is, "our own incompatible 'standard' that's inconsistent with even our own software".
Have you messed with console-mode Win32 programming? What the call "ANSI" is bad, bad mojo that bears all marks of intentional sabotage.
Re:Probably doomed (Score:3, Insightful)
One does not need to "intentionally" sabotage even. Just treat it as "low priority" (which is justified) and assign a rookie programmer to implement it... Then keep treating bug-reports on the feature as "low priority" too.
Works in other walks of life too, BTW.
Unless there is a clear monetary insentive to it, it will not be done properly. The "command and control" methods are not very effective.
Re:Probably doomed (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not just make "newpage" and "pagedimensions" tags for HTML, and include the ability to embed anything that can be rendered (including fonts; everything else can already be embedded in Javascript variables)?
If you put those things in, then (D)HTML becomes a new document format with all the capabilities of all the other formats.
It would even make it easy to make new types: just add DTDs, write new tags and say what they do.
Right now OO has a 600 page document to explain their "open" format. Yeah, that's open. Open like CORBA and like SGML. Open, but a huge chunk of time to learn when there are other perfectly good ways to do it that don't take all of your time.
Oh, and it would kill Acromedia's chokehold on printable document formats.
That's called XSLT! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Probably doomed (Score:4, Insightful)
Congratulations, you've just re-invented XML/CSS/XSLT/XSL-FO, and are entitled to a cigar or coconut according to choice :-)
Re:Probably doomed (Score:4, Interesting)
None of the things also handle the effects (or javascript that produces that effect, etc.) that I mentioned. I'd be perfectly happy with a oHTML (office XML) xml format that was html+javascript with some new tags.
The point is that this new document format is much, much different from that. There are a lot of things in the format that don't really even need to be there, and are just redundant information adding to the complexity.
If they use something similar to html, then they've got about 100 WYSIWYG editors that can become document editors really quick.
Re:Probably doomed (Score:5, Informative)
Only 600 pages? (checks...680+, 28 for the table of contents alone plus executive overviews here and there) Still, at 680 pages, that's not bad! After all, OpenDocument covers word processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and graphics and all the elements in those formats including forms, dates, curved graphical elements, text flow -- both as raw data structures and printable output.
If you've ever worked on specifications before -- including raw specs that are not project/product specific -- you know that even to tell somone how scratch thier ass takes a good 15 pages. 15 pages if you skip defining what a hand is, what fingers are, and which specific person(s) are responsible for ass scratching and what the job titles are. Double the number of pages if it's in any way government related.
Might not be a problem for them (Score:3, Insightful)
You can get a sense for what would be a reasonable strategy by considering this: there already is a widely implemented, open file format for word processing: RTF. But it doesn't support stylesheets, among other things.
So, the way to make sure an open format doesn't catch on is to put a bunch of features in your word procesor, which have to be s
Nice! (Score:4, Insightful)
What are the criteria for approving standards by the OASIS group? Is there any guarantee on the quality of the standard itself?
Re:Nice! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Nice! (Score:3, Insightful)
Good point. Is anybody talking to the WordPerfect folks? We want the lawyers on our side (and they all use WordPerfect).
If there's no significant advantage to the WordPerfect file format, and this file format is really good, they ought to adopt it as their next verison's default format. As should AbiWord, OpenOffice, Pages, et al.
With significant momentum
Why use documents anyway? (Score:4, Interesting)
BTW: The only formatting that is really relevant are headers, bullets, and simple tables.
Plugin for Winword? Govt buyers could get it done. (Score:2)
So it should be possible to add that functionality. However - I believe that if Govt buyers specify OASIS compatibility as a requirement then MS will be obliged to provide it eventually (much better than requiring relicensing of
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)
Re:What about Bill (Score:3, Informative)
So OASIS support in KOffice is almost there. The final 1.4 release is scheduled for mid-June (see the release schedule [kde.org])
Re:What about Bill (Score:4, Interesting)
Microsoft
Re:What about Bill (Score:3, Informative)
they plan to adopt the new format(s) is a completely different issue.
Re:What about Bill (Score:4, Funny)
>That only means that they wanted to influence the process.
I think you misspelled interfere. (Or perhaps you meant subvert, sabatoge or stall?)
Re:What about Bill (Score:2, Informative)
On the website when I click on 'Members' it lists:
OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC
This page lists the OASIS members currently on this TC's membership roster. People with the role of Member, TC Chair, or Secretary are voting members of the TC. Prospective Members will become voting members after attending the first meeting of the TC or by completing a probationary period.
Person Organization Role
T
Re:What about Bill (Score:2)
OpenOffice is another matter though, and i don't see any reasons why they wouldn't want to support it. *especially* if MS decides not to
Re:What about Bill (Score:2, Funny)
>Imagine MS giving support for an open source project that they don't even own.
Imagine MS giving support.
patent trouble (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:patent trouble (Score:4, Insightful)
In any case, suing open-source projects like OpenOffice or KOffice doesn't help Microsoft at all. The lawsuit will be extended, not unlike IBM and SCO. With IBM, Novell, RedHat and others relying on projects such as these office suites to help them provide alternatives for their customers, they'd most likely join the suit to make sure that they don't lose a project critical to Linux's growing adoption.
In the best case scenario, those products are taken off the market in the US, and other countries where they sue, and win. That would leave many parts of Asia, Africa and South America, which are Microsoft's biggest targets as those places are developing quickly.
In the worst case scenario, they lose respectability for suing a legitimate project, further adding to the claims of monopolistic tendencies against them. Reputation and respectability aid trust, which is critical for software houses.
I don't believe Microsoft will sue. I hope for their own sake, they don't.
Re:patent trouble (Score:2)
The important thing is that they will probably not be able to get an injunction unless they have a clear-cut infringement case, and that's not at all likely for a set of open formats covering long-understood functionality.
Microsoft will not sue (Score:3, 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.
MS isn't afraid. (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
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.
Re:Microsoft and format compatibility (Score:3, Interesting)
What people complain about is not a statistically accurate representation of the real world, and you aren't even interpreting their complaints correctly.
Yes, OOo does not read some MS Word documents correctly. It's something almost everybody who uses OOo has encountered, and almost everybody would like that to
OT: Re:Microsoft and format compatibility (Score:5, Informative)
Completely off topic: A reasonable suspicion, but that's not what happened:
WordPerfect prided itself on converting everything, even arcane formats (for example, on WP 2000, I can save in MultiMate and Navy DIF Standard formats, whatever that is). I recall no unusual problems with Word (no conversion is perfect).
Nor was WordPerfect technically inferior. In one PC Magazine review at the time, even 16 bit WordPerfect beat 32 bit Word.
Word's advantages were,
1) They came out with a 16 bit Windows 3.1 version first.
2) They came out with a 32 bit Windows version way ahead of the competition. There were complaints that they took advantage of inside info on Win95.
3) Word was bundled with Excel -- that was the beginning of 'office suites'.
4) Microsoft, already holding the Windows monopoly, licensed Office to PC manufacturers in the following way: The manufacturer buys one Office license fee for every machine they sell, whether or not the customer buys Office. Guess what came with every new PC?
The gov't eventually made MS change the last strategy on anti-trust grounds.
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.
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.
Re:I'm not convinced this will work (Score:3, Insightful)
Remember the trick with Microsoft Wordpad? each time a
Microsoft could pull the same trick with the OpenDocument format. It could support it very well
Re:I'm not convinced this will work (Score:2)
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.
Re:Nice but (Score:4, Insightful)
As always, I end with my favourite link that I like to post in situations such as these. If you are cheered by the spectacle of a politician thoroughly demolishing Microsoft FUD, read on!
http://www.opensource.org/docs/peru_and_ms.php [opensource.org]
Re:Nice but (Score:3, Informative)
Which they, most obviously, won't.
However, I applaud this group for at least trying.
Well, "this group" has Microsoft as a sponsor organization.
Actually, they're quite a bit [techtarget.com] involved in OASIS and standardization.
MS-OASIS (Score:2)
If a govt dept put out a requirement for software that can read and write both MS and OASIS formats natively, do you think they wouldnt tender for the contract?
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.
A glimpse into the further future (Score:4, Funny)
MICROSOFT: Tough. Shell out $500 per PC per month, or lose the ability to read your documents.
CUSTOMER: Somebody help us!!!
OPENOFFICE (silence - died years ago due to lack of interest)
Re:A glimpse into the further future (Score:3, Funny)
MICROSOFT: All your base are belong to us!
CUSTOMER: No, no...I remember this, it worked good. Remember that time Netscape looked all dead but then came back to life as Firefox/Mozilla? Maybe we could do the same with this here office thingy...
MICROSOFT: All your base are belong to us!
CUSTOMER: Hey guys, check this out, we don't have to use that Microsoft stuff anymore...
MICROSOFT: All your.... (s
Re:A glimpse into the future (Score:3, Insightful)
OPENOFFICE: Oh dear.
I think the last line here was supposed to read.
OPENOFFICE: Alright then, see ya in five years, suckers. Microsoft isn't going to give you a free ride FOREVER--they can't afford to. But we can, and we'll be waiting for you.
XSLT? (Score:2)
This could make for a pretty neat web based document repository which returns documents in any format I like.
Re:XSLT? (Score:3, Funny)
<xml>
<msWord>
<author>Bill Gates</author>
<uue-doc>dfndslfuhrdsifdshfkldsfu
</msWord>
</xml>
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.
Re:Yup, and you know what? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have Open Office for that. (Score:2)
Will create a doc file just fine and I didn't have to pay monopolistic prices for it. Kind of scary that you didn't realize that before spending your money.
Re:Yup, and you know what? (Score:4, Funny)
Changing the world is not possible, don't even think about it.
Question (Score:2, Interesting)
Thanks
Re:Question (Score:3, Informative)
Having an open, well-structured and well-documented format means that all word-processors will be able to write documents that will be (hopefully) perfec
Re:Question (Score:2)
I am waiting to see if any of the non-MS closed systems will support it. It would be nice if Lotus and Word Perfect do it as well.
In addition, it might be useful to create a batch mode tool to convert fro
Re:Question (Score:2)
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.
Re:Do Not Underestimate this.... (Score:3, Funny)
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 ?
Open formats is not the holy grail (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Open formats is not the holy grail (Score:2)
Now all we need is widespread adoption (Score:3, Interesting)
The US Department of Defense. If there is any "customer" that can tell Microsoft what's what, it's the DoD. (Other branches of the government can too; they have the juice but they don't have the prunes.) Once the DoD even begins to addopt these open formats, it immediately shuts out Microsoft because Office doesn't support them.
Microsoft would have to make a very painful decision at that point.
Know what's going on in documentation (Score:4, Interesting)
One problem with this is that each software package is good for a particular type of publishing (print, PDF, online help, HTML) and not as good or useless for the others. The other problem is that the collaboration models on most of these programs are weak.
But the really big issue is that the companies making these products tend either to get bought out by the big guys or go belly-up after a few years when the new tool-de-jour hits the shelves. In the last few weeks, two tools (RoboHelp and FrameMaker) announced end-of-life. Now if you are HP and you are using one of these, you are now stuck with thousands of pages of documentation in a semi-proprietary format. This happens to you every few years, and you pop several thousand or several hundred thousand dollars in the conversion each time.
It just so happens that the tool-du-jour right now is something called AuthorIT, which isn't even a cousin of a word processor. It's a database that stores documents, and stores output properties. It actually is the one tool that does a good job of producing print and online documentation (CHM, HTML, XML, whatever) The single-sourcing capablity is why it is the tool-du-jour, and why a lot of the big companies use it. CA alone has a million pages in this format.
But AuthorIt isn't any bigger than those previous tool companies, and their format is just as proprietary, although you can have HTML and XML output, so in theory you are in pretty good shape for converting. Still, these big companies are using it for their big documentation projects.
I don't know what percentage of documentation uses all these other tools, but suffice it to say it's a lot, and it's more critical stuff than most of what is written in Word. These people don't care about the documents written in Word. They are all on the standards body so that they don't have to keep losing all their documentation styles, templates and layouts every time a new kind of online help or new kind of documentation product becomes popular.
MS will adopt this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Another irrelevant standard (Score:3, Interesting)
Tom Magliery Blast Radius Inc. Voting Member
Nathaniel Borenstein IBM Voting Member - Probation
Xiaowei Hu IBM Voting Member - Probation
Gary Edwards Individual Voting Member
David Faure Individual Voting Member
Patrick Durusau Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Voting Member
Michael Brauer Sun Microsystems* TC Chair
Lars Oppermann Sun Microsystems* Secretary
Instead, 8 seemingly random, average people are making this "standard". Who are these people? What are their qualifications?
On a similar note, my buddy and I came up with a new standard that should replace EDI for all intra-business communication. We'll have it up just as soon as my Geocities account is activated.
You can lead a horse to water... (Score:3, Informative)
"Approved" != "Adopted", and best of luck with that.
One person's prognostications (Score:3, Insightful)
1) All of the OTHER office programs now have a common format to use, and third parties have a standard 'input' for other processing - such as automatically making html, pdf, docbook, or some other format. With one well-documented standard, each tool can concentrate on doing one thing well.
2) Microsoft won't budge on this until they feel the heat from their customers - so people who care must start educating people. The more people who start asking for this format, the more pressure Microsoft will feel. The average joe isn't going to be able to put much pressure, but what if a big contract at the Department of Defense included a requirement that said, "All deliverables must be in OpenDocument format."? The companies bidding on that contract sure would care... And SAIC, Lockheed Martin, etc can put a LOT of pressure on Microsoft.
3) If Microsoft expressed any interest, it will initially be as a 'migration path away from all those inferior products', and they will read the format perfectly. They won't allow users to save in that format without the pressure I mention above, and even when they do, it will probably be buggy, and throw up so many 'Warning: You are saving your document in OpenDocument. That may cause you to lose page formatting' messages that users will have no faith in the OpenDocument format.
Don't give up the battle yet - the fun is just beginning!
Re:Hardware? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:use of pdf (Score:4, Informative)
Re:PDF? (Score:2)
No. But if it had come as a
Re:PDF? (Score:4, Informative)
There is a mis-perception that it is not an open format by people who only know microsoft office, because the most reliable method of converting MS office documents to .pdf is by printing to acrobat distiller, for which you need to buy about $300 worth of Adobe software.
Open office exports to .pdf from the file menu. This functionality cost $0 to include, because the format is open. If Microsoft had a business model that involved providing useful tools to their customers they could have included the same functionality, with the same $0 in licensing costs to them.
However since it is more important to them that they have as large a proportion of the world as possible locked into their own proprietary formats, so you find that despite charging you $600-$900 dollars simple, cheap, useful functionality is not included.
And the consequence? People think that .pdf is a proprietary format! You should realize by now that Microsoft's (illegal) business model is doing a great disservice to their customers and the world.
They are not selling a product that is good for their customers. They are selling a product that instead ensures that they will not have to sell a product that is good for their customers in the future.
Still want to buy their stuff?
Re:MS and Open Document Format... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:.Doc will go the way of .BMP and .Gif (Score:3, Insightful)
BTW, did you check the image format of the Slashdot images? The Google logo? The ebay logo/icons? The Yahoo logo/icons? For a format on the way out, GIF is still used a lot.
Re:.doc won't go away (Score:4, Insightful)
Over and over again I see the same arguments - "OO.o would be great if it did a perfect job of importing/ exporting Word documents"; "Linux would be great if it supported al the printers at Walmart and ran all my Windows software and had loads of games" and every single time I roll my eyes at the...I don't now...arrogance? of people who propound these views as if the Linux/ FOSS community were so stupid and blind that these issues never occurred to them. Honestly, if I see one more whiner ascend to the pulpit and screech at the FOSS community about how the salvation of Linux rests upon [insert blindingly obvious statement here], apparently expecting them to say..."Well, gee, that guy's absolutely right! How did we not think of this before! All hail our new glorious leader!" I'll scream :)
Anyway, rant over - sorry about that, it wasn't aimed at you personally, my friend :)
Anyway, to address your statements more civilly: I'm sure the OO.o developers are acutely aware that they need to import/ export to MS's formats in order to be successful (I'm guessing that they are harangued about it by users every minute of the day, probably with e-mails like "Why do you expect people to use your crappy software when it cannot even open my Word documents. You're hopeless!"). The problem is that it is hard as fuck to interoperate with them as they are closed, messy formats that must be reverse-engineered - a very tricky, time-consuming task. While I'm at it - the Linux community would love to support all the hardware under the sun, expect that hardware manufacturers simply will not provide drivers nor the specs necessary for the community to write their own; Linux won't run all Windows software perfectly as the apps are not written to be portable in the first place so they are forced to re-implement Microsoft's API based on scant documentation (a Herculean effort); and games won't run because games writers use the proprietary DirectX instead of OpenGL and have no interest in aiding porting to Linux.
Phew - that felt good :) For a little more on my opinion on why .doc needs to die and be replaced with a decent format, see here:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=148300&cid=124 30161 [slashdot.org]
Oh, and the whole "Embrace and Extend" is a dirty, underhanded scheme designed to stifle competition, and I hope than the OO.o developers never engage in it.
Re:How can it be future compatible? (Score:4, Interesting)
How is this possible? First of all, the file format must be flexible and extensible, not fixed. Also, generally, the various fields are explicitly tagged in some way (as opposed to, say, specifying that fields are in a fixed order, or begin and end at fixed byte offsets). Also, generally, the file format includes a version number in a well-defined spot at the beginning of the file that never changes its representation, so that a version 1 program can at least recognize (if not process) even a version 99 file.
Then, all you have to do is rig things up so that programs ignore information that they don't recognize (i.e. tags that they don't know). You can also get creative whenever you add information to add it in such a way that the results when the new informaation is ignored are reasonable.
Often, you use a major/minor scheme in the file format version number. Typically, changes to the minor version number are backwards and forwards compatible, but when you make a major change to the structure that old programs won't be able to deal with, or add significant new information that they won't be able to safely ignore, you bump the major version number, and then the old programs say, "Sorry, I can't read this file, it requires a newer version of me." (But at least the older program doesn't interpret the newer file as garbage, or crash while trying to read it. That's crass.)
Needless to say, XML (among other metaformats) is amenable to just about everything I've touched on here.
Future compatibility sounds impossible at first, especially if you've been subliminally taught by Microsoft that every upgrade to a file format "obviously" requires an upgrade to all the programs that deal with it. And it's easy to come up with "strawman" arguments why future compatibility is "impossible" -- in some worst-case scenario. But it can be made to work, most of the time, and it gives you a glorious kind of freedom and flexibility that distinguishes excellent from mundane software [eskimo.com].
Re:MSFT a sponsor (Score:4, Insightful)
Old saying: "Keep you're friends close, and you're enemies closer". (Sorry, origin unknown.) The best way MSFT has to "poison the well" of any new document standard that might encroach upon their monopolistic business plan is from the inside. How better to nudge the standards one way or another in a manner that guarantees ither non-adoption or adopting "the MSFT way"? (Remember how MSFT dealt with OpenGL, Java, and Kerberos?)
MSFT has "embraced" XML as a standard, and then wrapped it in an encrypted binary encapsulation.
The "extended" standard is then protected by DMCA and IP, with "open" licensing encumbered with NDA and SDK/source distribution limitations. "Their" XML format may be "opened" by other programs, but not "saved" by those other programs. This helps to preserve their monopoly status, as well as providing any/all proof needed (by the EU) that MSFT will not play fair, and must be punished.