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OOXML vs ODF: where next for interoperability? | Reg Developer

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:37:45 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

'A diversion from the real end game – the taking of the internet'

Gary Edwards of the Open Document Foundation has a fascinating post on the important of Microsoft Office compatibility to the success of the ISO-approved Open Document formats.

It is in places a rare voice of sanity:

People continue to insist that if only Microsoft would implement ODF natively in MSOffice, we could all hop on down the yellow brick road, hand in hand, singing kumbaya to beat the band. Sadly, life doesn’t work that way. Wish it did.
Sure, Microsoft could implement ODF - but only with the addition of application specific extensions to the current ODF specification … Sun has already made it clear at the OASIS ODF TC that they are not going to compromise (or degrade) the new and innovative features and implementation model of OpenOffice just to be compatible with the existing 550 million MSOffice desktops.

Tags: foundation iso microsoft odf ooxml w3c

Posted by: garyedwards

Sun and Microsoft confirm data center lovechild | The Register

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:37:44 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Microsoft has been less offensive to McNealy and Sun ever since it forked over about $2bn to settle disputes, agreed to an interoperability pact and helped chuck Windows on Sun servers. Now the companies plan to expand their mutual admiration society via an Interoperability Center.

Sun will send a bunch of servers and storage boxes up to the Redmond-based center. Engineers from both companies will work on testing Microsoft's server software with the gear. We're told that such work could lead to breakthroughs in 64-bit database technology and amazing e-mail servers.

Tags: microsoft server-farms sun viridian

Posted by: garyedwards

What Cloud Means to Marketing Forecast - Nick Carr The Big Switch

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:37:42 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The gorilla in this nascent market is Google. It has been spending billions of dollars to build huge data centers, or "server farms," around the world, enabling it to run all sorts of consumer software and store enormous quantities of personal data. Combine that processing muscle with the company's dominance of web searching and advertising, and you have a juggernaut capable of redefining the software business on the media model.

Tags: cloud-computing google grid-computing microsoft server-farms

Posted by: garyedwards

Notes on Breaking the Web to Ride the Fifth Wave

Sat, 22 Mar 2008 00:36:11 -0000

Comments:

Somehow i got involved in this discussion and ended up posting a number of comments explaining the how and why behind Microsoft's push for ISO approval of MS-OOXML. I have been working on a paper titled, "Breaking the Web to Ride the Great Wave". Breaking the Web is what will happen once ISO approves MS-OOXML. The MIcrosoft Stack of Web Servers (Exchange, SharePoint, MS-SQL Server) are integrated into the MSOffice-Outlook desktop. The MS desktop dominates much of the document workflows and business processes of the commercial world. ISO approval of the MSOffice specific MS-OOXML will legitamize MSOffice as an editor of standardized web ready docuemnts. But how MS-OOXML docuemnts become "Web REady" is tricky. In the December 2007 MSOffice SDK beta, we see how this is done. The SDK provides a conversion component for the quick high fidelity conversion of MS-OOXML documents to XAML. XAML is a proprietary part of the WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) layer of the .NET framework, and is easily paried with Silverlight. Sometimes XAML is referred to as "fixed/flow". XAML is an MS proprietary replacement for the W3C's (X)HTML. Billions of MSOffice docuemnts will make their way to the Web using this SDK converter. The path for transitioning the monopolist hold on desktop business processes to the monopolist stack of web servers is set with this converter. ISO approval of MS-OOXML will enable Microsoft to dodge brining their desktop editor into compliance with advancing W3C standards such as (X)HTML, CSS 3, XForms, SVG and RDF. Instead of these open standards, transitioning business processes will be locked into MS only dependencies; XAML, Silverlight, WinForms, and Smart Tags. The breaking of the web results in a consumer/business cloud dependent on MS proprietary technologies that are out of the reach of Firefox, Apache, Java, and Adobe technologies. Google won't be able to penetrate the business stack, and will be kept very busy trying to defend the consumer side of the Microsoft web world if Microsoft aquires Yahoo! The "Wave" part of my title comes from a 1998 Economist Magazine study called, "The Fourth Wave". The study tracked the four great waves of computing; mainframe, pc, network (client/server), and consumer (web 1.0). What i am suggesting is that we are now entering "The Fifth Wave" of computing, otherwise known as "cloud computing". This is where large data centers provide hosted services and applications to both business and consumer uses. The success of the Microsoft Cloud very much depends on establishing MSOffice as the dominant cloud "editor". ISO approval of MS-OOXML will make that a reality. From there, the transition to a proprietary XAML is easy. One last note. IE-8 does not support the (X)HTML mime type, XForms, SVG or RDF. It does support bits of HTML-5 and CSS 2.1. But not CSS 3.0. And there you have it! The comments in this discussion pretty much track my thinking on this issue with the exception of a pointer to John Resig's blog where the issues of IE-8 were first discussed. ~ge~ posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

garyedwards's Discussions

Breaking the Web

Talkback: Google: OOXML 'insufficient and unnecessary'

Tags: ie-8 iso microsoft msoffice odf ooxml sdk xaml

Posted by: garyedwards

The future of XML

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Of course, the most important conversion isn't from OpenDoc to OOXML or vice versa: it's a down conversion from either OpenDoc or OOXML to XHTML. The HTML exporters in OpenOffice and Microsoft Office are uniformly atrocious. Look for third-party developers to pick up the slack. Most important, look for individual corporate developers and webmasters to begin publishing custom templates for their sites. This will enable regular folks to write in Microsoft Word as they're accustomed to doing and then upload their musings straight into the local content-management system. Editing and reviewing tools can be built right in. Because machines generate all the markup (the humans see the GUI interface they're used to), well-formedness will be a freebie. The majority of the Web won't be well-formed by the end of 2008, but a larger percentage will be than today.

Tags: odf ooxml xhtml xml

Posted by: garyedwards

OOXML/ODF: Just One Battlefield in a Much Bigger War | Linux Today

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

If the OOXML format in its current form cannot get made into a true ISO standard, it could lock Microsoft out of any future plays in what could be the biggest IT revolution to date.

Here are the pieces of the puzzle that fit together for me:

"Amazon SimpleDB is a web service for running queries on structured data in real time."

"Structured data." And what's a good way to contain such data? In well-built structured data file format of course. Like, for instance, the Open Document Format (ODF). And who has a vested interest in ODF? IBM certainly does. And so does Sun. And these two companies, along with Google, Microsoft, and I'm sure many others, realize that if cloud computing does indeed take off, then it will be the file format that makes the whole thing work.

Which is why Microsoft feels it must get their format standardized. Even with tactics that ironically have started to attract the attention of the EU again. How else can they get a piece of the cloud pie?

Partly right. The MS plan is actually much bigger than Brian Profitt suggests. The MSOffice 2007 SDK is fille dwith new API's, the most interesting of which are the ones connecting MSOffice to XAML and the Windows Presentation Foundation layer. The killer component though is the OOXML <> fixed/flow translator component with related API's.

fixed/flow is a new web format that is 100% proprietary. It's at the heart of the Microsoft cloud, enabling developers to easily transition between OOXML and IE browsers able to serve fixed/flow pages to devices, desktops and just about any kind re purposing publication - content management system imaginable.

If ISO approves OOXML, then they've standardized MSOffice as a legitamate Web editor - enterprise publication, content management, archive management front end. Instead of producing W3C compliant (X)HTML - CSS web pages though, the MSOffice Web editor will produce the proprietary fixed/flow format via the OOXML translation component we can now see in the SDK.

What we don't see in the MSOffice SDK is the use of W3C technologies such as (X)HTML, CSS, SVG, XForms, SMiL, XSL, XSL-FO. Instead of Mozilla XUL or Adobe Flex, we find XAML and Silverlight.

IMHO, Microsoft is making their run for the Web. Key to this run is ISO approval of OOXML. Once that happens, there will be no need for MS product compliance with W3C standards. The break will be complete. The We forever split into the Windows Web, and the Firefox - Apache Tomcat Web. And never the twain shall meet.
posted by garyedwards

Tags: cloud-computing grid-computing odf ooxml openxml

Posted by: garyedwards

A Savage Journey … ODF at the OOXML BRM « A Frantic Opposition

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

A Savage Journey …

‘Erupting from my vivid nightmares into the retro 80s faded luxury of a five-star hotel in Geneva, the pictures of the first victim reappeared on the wall. The head of the Brazilian delegation-it’s only a matter of time now.

My mind thrashes to disentangle the thrown spaghetti threads of blurred reasoning; who’s next, is it just the heads of delegation they are after, any NB member, P-members only?

The fog lifts and it’s worse. Who is behind this, them or us? We outnumber them, but maybe their plan is more devious. Must find Bonky Bob, he’ll know what to do.’

Enough levity for now. The BRM has held few surprises, other than the rather galling situation where I was forced to publicly toe the INCITS line by the temporary head of delegation, a Microsoft employee, against my better judgement.

Tags: brm ecma geneva iso odf ooxml opendocument openxml standards

Posted by: garyedwards

Antitrust: Commission imposes € 899 million penalty on Microsoft for non-compliance with March 2004 DecisionOOXM

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Antitrust: Commission imposes € 899 million penalty on Microsoft for non-compliance with March 2004 Decision

Tags: anti-trust eu microsoft ooxml openxml

Posted by: garyedwards

Antitrust: The EU Case Against Microsoft | Investingation, Court Proceedings, Decisions, Enforcment, Case Docuemnts

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The web-pages referred to below provide information about the European Commission’s March 2004 Microsoft Decision, the Court of First Instance proceedings relating to that Decision, and its ongoing implementation.

Tags: anti-trust eu microsoft msoffice ooxml openxml

Posted by: garyedwards

Denmark: OOXML vote won't affect public sector. ODF is too costly! | InfoWorld

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Lebech said Denmark considers OOXML an open standard, regardless whether it is approved by the ISO. "It would be impossible for us to use only ISO standards if we want to fulfill the goal of creating interoperability in the government sector," he said.

The Danish Parliament also mandated that public agencies consider the cost of using open formats. One of the main reasons OOXML was included is because Denmark is heavily dependent on document management systems that are integrated with Microsoft's Office products, Lebech said.

Denmark also found that requiring agencies to only use ODF would have been too expensive, mostly because of the cost of converting documents into ODF, Lebech said.

"We wouldn't have been able to only support ODF," Lebech said. "It wouldn't have been cost neutral."

Tags: brm denmark geneva iso msoffice odf ooxml opendocment openxml

Posted by: garyedwards

ODF useless for Microsoft needs - Google: OOXML 'insufficient and unnecessary' - Talkback at ZDNet UK

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

ODF's limited spec can't support all MS Office features unless Microsoft goes on a major entending trip.

Tags: embrace-extend google harmonization odf ooxml opendocument unification

Posted by: garyedwards

ODF and OOXML are standards in name only - Google: OOXML 'insufficient and unnecessary' - Talkback at ZDNet UK

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Both ODF and OOXML flunk that test badly. Their interoperable implementation neither has nor can be demonstrated. Both are designed for the waging of feature wars, not for interoperability. Both attempt to legitimize market-leading companies embracing and extending their own formats. They are standards in name only. What we are watching is a contest to decide which big vendor formats will be allowed to undeservedly claim the title of "international standard."

Tags: brm google interop iso marbux odf ooxml opendocument openxml zdnet-uk

Posted by: garyedwards

Google: OOXML 'insufficient and unnecessary' - marbux - ge comments | ZDNet UK

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Google's technical analysis of the OOXML specification — which notoriously runs to 6,000 pages of code, compared with ODF's 860 pages — has led the company to believe that "OOXML would be an insufficient and unnecessary standard, designed purely around the needs of Microsoft Office", Bhorat claimed.

ODF and OOXML are standards in... Marbux

Tags: google interop odf ooxml opendocument zd-uk

Posted by: garyedwards

Open Malaysia: Geneva, Day Five

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

We eventually found out that if any changes affected current implementations it would certainly be rejected. This seriously compromised any elegant solutions, and it forced us to be mindful of the "existing corpus of documents" in the wild. I personally don't believe that that should be our problem, but there was a large and vocal voting bloc which would oppose any changes to the spec which would 'break' Ecma 376.

This was why appeasing Ecma had to happen. Even though they rushed their Ecma International Standard, and Microsoft took the risk in shipping Microsoft Office 2007 last year, we now have to bear the burden of having to support its limitations. This also means that future maintenance changes would get harder and harder.

Tags: brm geneva iso odf ooxml opendocument openxml

Posted by: garyedwards

Microsoft's OOXML limps through ISO meeting - ZDNet UK

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:30 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Gary Edwards, former president of the Open Document Foundation, an industry group that promoted ODF but then rejected both approaches and closed itself down in November 2007, said: "Ecma and Oasis are vendor consortia where the rules governing standards specification work favour vendor innovation over the open and transparent interoperability consumers, governments and FLOSS efforts demand... Shutting that door on Ecma OOXML is proving very difficult exactly because the primary and fundamental rule of ISO interoperability requirements has been breached."

Tags: brm ecma geneva iso oasis odf ooxml

Posted by: garyedwards

Wizard of ODF: Proposal to amend TC charter, re interoperability with non-conformant ap

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:29 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

7. it must provide all feasible functionality required to suppport full fidelity conversions from and to existing office document binary file formats.

Tags: harmonization interop interoperability oasis odf ooxml opendocument

Posted by: garyedwards

Wizard of ODF: Interoperability barriers and the List Proposal Vote Deadline on Wednesday

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:29 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

this TC does not have the final word on what goes into the ODF 1.2 spec. There is still the OASIS vote, the JTC-1 vote, and the ISO final ballot, with a few other stops along the way. There is also the market's response to what this TC does. Given that no one on this TC has objected to my considerable efforts to raise public concerns with Microsoft's ISO submission and some on this TC have lambasted Microsoft for creating interoperability barriers, why should this TC's members consider themselves exempt from warnings that they have just fallen into precisely the kind of behavior we routinely criticize when it's Microsoft that creates the interoperability barriers. Especially when it's the end users who will pay the price of the non-interoperability?

Tags: harmonization interop interoperability odf ooxml opendocment openxml

Posted by: garyedwards

Harmonizing ODF and OOXML using NameSpaces | Tim Bray's Thought Experiment

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:29 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

First, what if Microsoft really is doing the right thing? Second, how can we avoid having two incompatible file formats? [Update: There’s been a lot of reaction to this piece, and I addressed some of those points here.]

On the technology side, the two formats are really more alike than they are different. But, there are differences: O12X’s design center, Microsoft has said repeatedly, is capturing the exact semantics of the billions of existing Microsoft Office documents. ODF’s design center is general-purpose reusability, and leveraging existing standards like SVG and MathML and so on.

OOXML, or to put it more accurately "O12X" as Tim suggests, is designed to capture the exact semantics of MSOffice 12. In fact, OOXML is an XML encoding of the MSOffice 12 in-memory-binary-representation dump. When it comes to representing older versions of MSOffice documents, OOXML must use legacy compatibility settings" to capture the semantics. And it's not an exacting science to say the least.

The thing is, OpenOffice ODF uses the same technique resulting in application specific ODF documents with over 150 un docuemnted, unspecified "compatibility settings". After years of requests from the OASIS ODF Technical Committee to document these application specific settings, Sun has yet to provide any kind of response. And this kills ODF interoperability. Especially concerning KOffice.

There is also the issue of OASIS ODF high-jacked namespaces. When ODF applications reference a namespace, the actual URL is high-jacked with http://oasis-open.org/???? replacing the proper namespace of http://W3C.org/????

This high-jacking impacts the oDF reuse of important W3C technologies such as XForms, SVG, MathML, and SMiL.

So where's the problem you ask? Well, when a developer imports or tries to process an OpenOffice ODF document, they rely on say the W3C XForms specification for their understanding. OpenOffice however seriously constrains the implementation of XForms, SVG, MathML, RDFa and RDF/XML. This should be reflected in the new namespace. However, if you follow the high-jacked URL, you'll find that there is nothing there. There is no specification describing how OpenOffice implements XForms in ODF! This breaks developer libraries, breaks ODF interoperability between ODF applications, and, offends the W3C to no end.

So i think it might be fair to say that at this point, neither ODF or OOXML have come close to fulfilling their design objectives.
posted by garyedwards

The capabilities of ODF and O12X are essentially identical for all this basic stuff. So why in the flaming hell does the world need two incompatible formats to express it? The answer, obviously, is, “it doesn’t”.

Exactly!! Except for one thing that Tim misses: the presentation layers of both ODF and OOXML are application specific. It is also the application specific nature of OpenOffice ODF presnetation layer that prevents interoperability with KOffice ODF!

There is near zero interop between OpenOffice and KOffice, and KOffice has been a contributing member of the OASIS ODF TC for FIVE YEARS!

It's the presentation layer Tim. ODF and OOXML are application specific formats because their presentation layers are woefully applicaiton specific and entirely reflective of each applications layout engine and feature set implementation model.

I often imagine what ODF would be like if back in 2001, Sun had chosen to implement CSS as the OpenOffice presentation layer instead of the quirky but innovative, and 100% application specific automatic-styles presentation layer we now see in ODF.

Unlike ODF's "automatic-styles", CSS is a totally application independent presentation model prized exactly for it's universal interoperability!
posted by garyedwards

The ideal outcome would be a common shared office-XML dialect for the basics—and it should be ODF (or a subset), since that’s been designed and debugged—then another extended vocabulary to support Microsoft features , whether they’re cool new whizzy features or mouldy old legacy features (XML Namespaces are designed to support exactly this kind of thing). That way, if you stayed with the basic stuff you’d never need to worry about software lock-in; the difference between portable and proprietary would be crystal-clear. And, for the basic stuff that everybody uses, there’d be only one set of tags.

This outcome is technically feasible. Who could possibly be against it?

Bingo! ODF and OOXML should strip off the application specific complexities and seek a neutral generic XML representation of basic document structures common to ALL documents. Then, use the XML NameSpace mechanism to extend (with proper descriptions) the generic to include the volumes of application specific features that now fill each format.

One thing i disagree with Tim about. And that's that the interop of ODF and OOXML is hopelessly broken. The OpenDocument Foundation tried for over a year to close the compatibility gap between ODF and MSOffice binary - xml documents. The OASIS ODF TC would have none of it. IBM and Sun are set on a harsh course of highly disruptive and costly rip-out-and-replace of MSOffice based on government mandates for ODF. There is no offer of compromise to be had.

On the Microsoft side, even if they did want to compromise (a big IF), there is that problem of over 550 million MSOffice workgroup-workflow desktops to contend with. The thing is, the only way to harmonize, merge, convert or translate between two application specific formats is to actually harmonize the applications themselves. While the generic subset is a worthy goal, the process would be fraught with real world concerns that the existing application workflows are not disrupted.

My proposal? Demand that ODF and OOXML application vendors provide format options for PDF, and the W3C's family of formats: (X)HTML5, (X)HTML - CSS, and CDF (XHTML-CSS-XForms-SVG-SMil-MathML). That will do it.

We might never see the quality of interoperability we had hoped for in a desktop application to application scenario. But we can and should fully expect high quality interop at the higher level of the Web. You can convert an application specific format to a generic like CDF. By setting up conversion channels to the same CDF profile within MSOffice, OpenOffice, KOffice, Symphony, and Google Docs, we can achieve the universal interoperability we had hoped to see but will never get from ODF and OOXML.

Works for me!
posted by garyedwards

Tags: bray florian-reuter namespaces odf ooxml opendocument openxml

Posted by: garyedwards

Compound Document Formats Group Charter

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:52:29 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

be widely implementable in browsers and authoring tools

Tags: cdf da-vinci foundation opendocument w3c

Posted by: garyedwards

A Fresh Cup » About

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 20:13:21 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Then I got fed up with Microsoft. It took about fifteen years, but I finally reached the point where, no matter how good some of their software was, or how well-meaning some of the rank and file employees were, I could no longer stomach the corporate policies. You can read more about that in my posts What’s Going On Here?, The Rest of the Story, and The Examined Software Life.

Certainly, reasonable people can disagree on these things, but for me, working with Microsoft tools and technologies is no longer an option. So I quit.

Same here. For me the 1996 JavaONE Conference was a great reunion of former Windows - Microsoft Developer Network members i had not seen since the old OS2-Windows Conference days. It was clear to me then that much of the Internet wave surge back then was charged by developers and investors dissaffected with Microsoft and the Windows monopoly.

What people at that first JavaONE Confernece were looking for was a means to convert the Interent into a full fledged computational platform; augmenting the ubiquitous communications, access and exchange grid with web ready applications. They sought an alternative to Windows platform development.

One of the more prominent memes back then was provided by the rather small but vocal FOSS developers community attending the conference. They had this strong belief that much of the value of the Internet was captured in this phrase, "Owned by none, used by all".

For anyone familiar with the abusive monopolist's tactics, the meme was quite resonant. So much so that the openness of Java became a serious issue dooging Sun for years. I've always thought Sun paid an iincredible price for the reprehensible business practices of Microsoft. In early times, Java would have rode the same wave of application developer take up that Windows enjoyed in the early 90's. The monopolist however had changed the rules forever. And that's actually a good thing.

Thanks for writing about your journey Mike. I'm looking forward to your blogervations.
posted by garyedwards

Tags: no_tag

Posted by: garyedwards