Open Stack: ISO Does The Unthinkable. How ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML will break the Web

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:16:23 -0000

In response to a recent question posted to a rather old OpenStack blog, i posted this summary of my views on ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML and the impact it will have on the futrue of the open web.

Comments:

A summary of my views on ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML and the impact it will have on the futrue of the open web. posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

In August of 2007 we dropped ODF as the da Vinci target conversion format, and moved to the W3C's Compound Document Format (CDF) with an ePUB wrapper.

The reason for this move is that we could not establish a reasonable degree of interoperability with OpenOffice ODF unless Sun supported the five generic eXtensions to ODF needed to hit the high fidelity conversion the da Vinci process is capable of.

Since da Vinci is a clone of the MSOffice OOXML compatibility Kit, we use the same internal conversion process where imbr (in-memory-binary-representation) is converted to another format: imbr <> OOXML or, imbr <> RTF.

While it's entirely compliant to eXtend ODF, without Sun's changes to OpenOffice ODF the application-platform-vendor independent interoperability end users expect would be meaningless.

The problem as we see it is this; it is impossible to do a high fidelity conversion between two application specific XML formats.

It is however quite possible to do a conversion between an application specific format and a generic (application-platform-vendor independent) format.

Tags: css davinci interoperability msoffice odf ooxml xaml xhtml

Posted by: garyedwards

Government - Focus for an OS Desktop

Tue, 29 May 2007 16:52:25 -0000

Comments:

Government, to include Federal, State and Local, should be the prime focus for increasing open source desktop market share by vendors such as Novell, Redhat and Ubuntu. Why, because government is required to procure all product and services through an open, transparent and competitive process. As of today, few if any government organizations have complied with this requirement when it comes to purchases of desktop operating systems or productivity tools. In fact, until just recently there have not been competitive alternatives, but now there are. posted by garyedwards
Government, to include Federal, State and Local, should be the prime focus for increasing open source desktop market share by vendors such as Novell, Redhat and Ubuntu. Why, because government is required to procure all product and services through an open, transparent and competitive process. As of today, few if any government organizations have complied with this requirement when it comes to purchases of desktop operating systems or productivity tools. In fact, until just recently there have not been competitive alternatives, but now there are. posted by garyedwards

Tags: davinci government msoffice odf oss procurement

Posted by: garyedwards

OpenDocument's feed | Diigo Group

Open Stack: ISO Does The Unthinkable. How ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML will break the Web

Government - Focus for an OS Desktop