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OOXML: The next step - Interop at the International Standards legal level | Marbux - Weir - Ian [odf-discuss]

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:17:00 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Both ODF and OOXML are only one WTO Dispute Resolution Process complaint away from losing their international standard, national technical regulation, and government procurement specification status. They do not meet the minimum requirements of international law. Both are unnecessary obstacles to international trade; neither specify a uniform and substitutable product. That does not sound like a sound business plan to me. So I return to my question posed in an earlier post: Will ODF v. 1.2 under your leadership attempt to "clearly and unambiguously specify that conformance requirements essential to achieve the interoperability" and will the standards-based interoperability between *different* IT systems be "demonstrable," as required by JTC 1 Directives? That is not a complicated question and it requires no deep dive into international law to answer. International law requires what the quoted JTC 1 Directives require in this regard, but for purposes of the point under discussion we need go no further than the Directives' plain language. One either adheres to the rules or one forfeits the moral high ground to complain when others ignore the rules. Where does Rob Weir stand on complying with the rules?

Tags: interop iso odf ooxml wto

Posted by: garyedwards

OOXML and ODF: The next step | [odf-discuss] Marbux Responds!

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 17:22:53 -0000

Comments:

Outstanding analysis and research by the legendary marbux posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The issue we were discussing -- and what I believe the ODEF conference was very much concerned with -- was whether ODF plus vendor-specific extensions will be classified as conformant ODF. The market requirement is for "Exchange Formats" and document-level interoperability. I could repose my question as whether ODF v. 1.2 will "clearly and unambiguously specify interoperability requirements essential to achieve the interoperability," as required by JTC 1 Directives. As you noted in an earlier post in this thread, you can't do interoperability if you use vendor extensions. > I see a standard as providing a shared vocabulary for buyers and sellers > to express their requirements. You are in error. This is a matter controlled by law rather than by personal opinion. Standards are all about the substitutability of goods, weights, and measures. A standard specifies all characteristics of a product, weight, or measure in mandatory terms so there is uniformity. Standards are the antithesis of product differentiation. Their very purpose is to eliminate product differentiation.

Tags: interop interoperability iso marbux odf ooxml opendocument-fellowship

Posted by: garyedwards

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

Fri, 07 Mar 2008 23:51:09 -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

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

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:51:22 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

ODF and OOXML are standards in... Marbux

Tags: google interop odf ooxml opendocument zd-uk

Posted by: garyedwards

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

Fri, 29 Feb 2008 08:27:41 -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

The Case for Harmonization (that IBM will vote against anyway) « A Frantic Opposition

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 04:30:26 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

The Case for Harmonization (that IBM will vote against anyway)

In my recent post, I discussed the case for harmonization, mainly due to trying to portray a more kindly, conciliatory face in the “standards krieg” that I was enjoying so much. I have been forced to take a different tack, in light of being hung out to dry by my more business-focused IBM comrades and the work that the enemy has done in sprucing up the spec. However, as my closest friends know, for me, there are no half-victories, so you can rest assured that I will not settle for this weak “harmonization” compromise. I set out my (and IBM’s) stall some time ago on this, and as those on the Open Document Foundation know, any attempt at harmonization shall be met with swift and final retribution. They were ejected from the odf-coven just days after their impudence. I have baited my trap, inviting this “harmonization” in my lair (the OASIS ODF TC) where I can bog them down in a morass of incompetence, bickering and politicking, so no new standard is ever ratified. I have already been practicing for this, as you can see, by the ODF 1.1 and 1.2 specs.

Tags: foundation harmonization interop oasis odf ooxml opendocument openxml

Posted by: garyedwards

The ODF Alliance puckers up and gets smacked with the great CSS question - Where is it? | O'Reilly XML Blog

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 06:55:06 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Harmonisation

It is interesting that the ODF Alliance quotes Tim Bray that the world doesn’t need another way to express basic typesetting features. If it is so important, why didn’t ODF just adopt W3C CSS or ISO DSSSL conventions? Why did they adopt the odd automatic styles mechanism which no other standard uses? Now I think the ODF formating conventions are fine, and automatic styles are a good idea. But there is more than one way to make an omlette, and a good solution space is good for users.

My perspective is that harmonisation (which will take multiple forms: modularity, pluralism, base sets, extensions, mappings, round-trippability, feature-matching, convergence of component vocabularies, etc, not just the simplistic common use of a common syntax) will be best achieved by continued user pressure, both on MS and the ODF side, within a forum where neither side can stymie the legitimate needs of other.

Tags: harmonization hypocrisy interop iso odf odf-alliance ooxml opendocument openxml

Posted by: garyedwards

Putting Andy Updegrove to Bed (without his supper) | Universal Interoperability Council

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 03:53:47 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

In late 2007, an article by OASIS attorney Andy Updegrove claimed that W3C Compound Document Formats: [i] are non-editable formats; [ii] are not designed for conversions to other formats; and [iii] are therefore unsuitable as office formats. Updegrove could not have been more wrong.

But unfortunately, the erroneous Updegrove article was widely publicized by the usual occupants of the IBM cheering section⁽¹⁾ in the stadium where the latest big vendor game for the Incompatible File Format Cup is being played, IFFC Games Stadium.

Tags: cdf ibm interop oasis odf ooxml opendocument openxml

Posted by: garyedwards

Harmonization and Interop: The dizzying dance of ODF, OOXML, and CDF

Wed, 06 Feb 2008 03:49:40 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

With the ISO BRM fast approaching, the harmonization of ODF and OOXML is all the rage. The legendary marbux takes on this discussion arguing that ODF and OOXML both lack the interoperability framework needed to meet ISO directives describing interop requirements. He argues that interop between MSOffice and OpenOffice can be achieved using CDF.

Tags: cdf ibm interop oasis odf ooxml opendocument openxml uic w3c

Posted by: garyedwards

IT set to 'take their heads out of the sand' and embrace Web 2.0

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 08:33:15 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

IT managers and CIOs in large companies who have actively resisted embracing Web 2.0 technologies like wikis, RSS, blogs and social networks will likely begin adding them to their priority lists in 2008, according to a report released Friday by Forrester Research Inc.

Tags: interop interoperability open soa standards xml

Posted by: garyedwards

Interoperability Enhancement Proposal: Suggested ODF1.2 items

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:52:44 -0000

Comments:

This is the fifth of the six major iX - interoperability enhancement proposals submitted to the OASIS ODF TC - SC between July 2006 and February of 2007.

This particular iX proposal lead to the "List Enhancement Proposal" donnybrook that consumed the OASIS ODF TC for the next six months, ending with the OpenDocument Foundation being booted out of OASIS in May of 2007.

The six iX proposals were all different approaches to the same basic problem: ODF was not desinged to be interoperable with MSOffice documents, applications or bound processes. The proposals come out of the OpenDocument' Foundation's efforts to save ODF in Massachusetts.

ODF iX repressents a subset of ODF designed to grealty improve compatibility with MS binary and XML formats. With the ODF iX subset, the da Vinci plug-in would be able to convert the billions of MSOffice binary and xml documents with a very high level of fidelity, and do so within the bounds of "round trip" business processes.

The most basic iX approach was to add five generic elements to the existing ODF specification. The five generic elements would cover lists, tables, fields, sections, and page dynamics (breaks).

It is a well known fact that these five areas of incompatibility between OpenOffice ODF and MSOffice binaries represent 95% of all conversion fidelity problems. MSOffice has one way of implementing lists, and, OpenOffice has another. These application specific implementation models are irreconcilably different.

It's also true that the applicaiton specific implementation models are directly reflected in each file format. So applications implementing ODF must also implement the OpenOffice model for lists, fields, tables, sections and page dynamics-page positioning if they are to have any meaningful measure of exchange fidelity.

Perhaps the best of the iX approaches was that based on the innovative use of metadata to describe presentation-layout attributes. There were two submissions by OpenDocument Foundation members relating to this method. The first came in August of 2006 and was accepted as part of the OASIS ODF Metadata SC "Requirements" document. The second was submitted in February of 2007, also a s part of the Metadata CS work.

By April of 2007, when votes on both the "List Enahncement Proposal" vote and the "Metadata 1.2" were taken, the Foundation's proposals were eitther dropped or defeated.

In May of 2007, OASiS moved to enforce a rule change eliminating the ability of 501(c)3 non profit corporations to sponsor OASIS participants. This evisceration of our membership effectively ended the Foundation's role with OASIS ODF.

It also ended any hope of an ODF subset geared towrds interoperability with MSOffice and high fidelity conversion of billions of MS binary and xml documents.

posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Subject: Suggested ODF1.2 items

From: "Florian Reuter" <freuter@novell.com>
To: <office@lists.oasis-open.org>
Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 17:03:24 +0100

Tags: foundation interop ix odf odfix opendocument subset

Posted by: garyedwards

War rages on over Microsoft's OOXML plans: Insight - Software - ZDNet Australia

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 17:26:15 -0000

Comments:

"aimed at achieving an optimum degree of order .... and .... aimed at the promotion of optimum community benefits:. Uh, excuse me Mr. Robinson, tha tsecond part of your statement, the one concerning optimum community benefits - that would also disqualify ODF!! ODF was not designed to be compatible with the 550 million MSOffice desktops and their billions of binary docuemnts. Menaing, these 550 million users will suffer considerable loss of information if they try to convert their existing documents to ODF. It is also next to impossible for MSOffice applications to implement ODF as a fiel format due to this incompatbility. ODF was designed for OpenOffice, and directly reflects the way OpenOffice implements specific document structures. The problem areas involve large differences between how OpenOffice implments these structures and how MSOffice implements these same structures. The structures in question are lists, fields, tables, sections and page dynamics. It seems to me that "optimum community benefits" would include the conversion and exchange of docuemnts with some 550 million users!!!! And ODF was clearly not designed for that purpose! posted by garyedwards
I don't agree with this statement from Microsoft's Oliver Bell. As someone who served on the OASIS ODF Technical Committee from it's inception in November of 2002 through the next five years, i have to disagree.

It's not that Microsoft wasn't welcome. They were. It's that the "welcome" came with some serious strings. Fo rMicrosoft to join OASIS would have meant strolling into the camp of their most erstwhile and determined competitors, and having to ammend an existing standard to accomodate the implementation needs of MSOffice.

There is simply no way for the layout differences between OpenOffice and MSOffice to be negotiated short of putting both methodologies into the spec. Meaning, the spec would provide two ways of implementing lists, tables, fields, sections and page dynamics.

A true welcome would have been for ODF to have been written to accomodate these diferences. Rather than writing ODF to meet the implementation model used by OepnOffice, it would have been infinitely better to wrtite ODF as a totally application independent file format using generic docuemnt structures tha tcould be adapted by any application.

It turns out that this is exactly the way the W3C goes about the business of writing their fiel format specifications (HTML, XHTML, CSS, XFORMS, and CDF). The results are highly interoperable formats that any applciation can implement.
posted by garyedwards
You can harmonize an application specific format with a generic, applicaiton independent format. But you can't harmonize two application specific formats!!!!

The easy way to solve the document exchange problem is to leave the legacy applications alone, and work on the conversion of OOXML and ODF docuemnts to a single, application independent generic format. The best candidate for this role is that of the W3C's CDF.

CDF is a desription of how to combine existing W3C format standards into a single container. It is meant to succeed HTML on the Web, but has been designed as a universal file format.

The most exciting combination is that of XHTML 2.0 and CSS in that it is capable of handling the complete range of desktop productivity office suite documents. Even though it's slightly outside the W3C reach, the most popular CDF compound is that of XHTML, CSS and JavaScript. A combination otherwise known as "AJAX".
posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

"We feel that the best standards are open standards," technology industry commentator Colin Jackson, a member of the Technical Advisory committee convened by StandardsNZ to consider OOXML, said at the event. "In that respect Microsoft is to be applauded, as previously this was a secret binary format."

Microsoft's opponents suggest, among a host of other concerns, that making Open XML an ISO standard would lock the world's document future to Microsoft.

They argue that a standard should only be necessary when there is a "market requirement" for it.

IBM spokesperson Paul Robinson thus describes OOXML as a "redundant replacement for other standards".

Quoting from the ISO guide, Robinson said that a standard "is a document by a recognised body established by consensus which is aimed at achieving an optimum degree of order and aimed at the promotion of optimum community benefits".

It can be argued that rather than provide community benefit, supporting multiple standards actually comes at an economic cost to the user community.

"We do not believe OOXML meets these objectives of an international standard," Robinson said.

Tags: australia cdf interop iso microsoft odf ooxml opendocument

Posted by: garyedwards

Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: Fat Guy in Salesforce hell - Flock

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 21:58:49 -0000

Comments:

Wow! Another great quote from Nick. When we were at the Office 2.0 Conference a few weeks ago, this was the problem every single collaborative computing initiative was facing. Sure they had great collaborative efforts. But these efforts were outside exisitng businesss processes and applications! That's fine for kids and consumers. But it's the kiss of death for enterprise, smb, and organizations with workgroup busines sprocesses based on MSOffice and Outlook.

So no matter how innovative the WEb 2.0 - Office 2.0 - Enterprise 2.0 applications and services are, they are setting the marketplace for Microsoft to come in and take everything. Because Microsoft and Microsoft alone ownes the interoperability - integration interfaces into MSOffice and Outlook, they are in a position to destroy any of the 2.0 players at will. It's simply a matter of entering the space with their own 2.0 application or service.

The more i see of this, the more convinced i am that the governemnts of the world are going to have to step in stop Microsoft's push to move from the desktop into server, device and web systems.

~ge~

posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Second, don't underestimate the lock-in power that programs like Outlook and Excel and Quickbooks and Peachtree and their associated files still hold, particularly in smaller businesses. Someday we may have standard document formats and easily transportable data, but we don't yet. The competitive battle for the future of software is going to be fought out at the level of the Little Picture as much as at the level of the Big Picture. Lose sight of either one, and you'll be in trouble. In other words: It ain't over till the Fat Guy rants.

Tags: anti-trust integration interop interoperability

Posted by: garyedwards

Universal Interoperability Framework for OpenDocument

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 23:46:14 -0000

Comments:

The OpenDocument Foundation "Universal Interoperability Framework" Proposal has not been submitted to the OASIS ODF TC as of this bookmarking. But this version is complete except for a closing summation.
posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

SUMMARY: The OpenDocument Foundation proposes that the OASIS Office TC begin now to create an interoperability framework for inclusion in OpenDocument v. 1.2. This document, one of a series of planned proposals, proposes first steps towards a comprehensive interoperability framework and OpenDocument conformance requirements. This proposal is designed to bring ODF v. 1.2 into compliance with current ISO Interoperability Requirements.

Tags: cdf interop interoperability iso odef odf opendocument

Posted by: garyedwards

The French AFNOR Proposal to Merge ODF and MS-OOXML

Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:00:52 -0000

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

Summary Statement: Hey, this is an excellent plan! We can fully support this effort, even though the ISO National Bodies still have to work their way through the treacherous big vendor consortia controlled channels of OASIS ODF and Ecma 376. Bringing the big vendor applications to heel is not going to be easy. Merging ODF and MS-OOXML however is a worthwhile effort - one that the conversion and translator plug-in communities have been working on for the past three years! It can be done! And all it takes is five generic elements added to the existing ODF 1.2 specification ........

Tags: cdf ecma florian-reuter interop iso oasis odf ooxml

Posted by: garyedwards

EU-IDABC ODEF Workshop 2007 in Berlin - Documentation - presentations

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 11:41:55 -0000

Comments:

ODF officially died on February 28, 2007, at the Advanced eGovernment Conference in Berlin. Hellow ODEF
posted by garyedwards

Highlights and Sticky Notes:

IDABC ODEF Workshop 2007 in Berlin

As information exchange in and with public administrations is very often bound to documents, editing, archiving and exchange possibilities for documents are crucial for the optimum function of administrations, both in terms of practicality and cost.

Initiatives such as the PEGSCO Recommendations on Open Document Formats published by the IDABC Management Committee, demonstrate public administrations preference for "open" document exchange and storage formats that are subject to formal standardisation via international standardisation procedures.

The primary objectives of the Berlin event, held at the German Federal Ministry of the Interior (BMI), were to:

compile further input from Member State public administrations on their experiences and strategies on ODEF
gather industry viewpoints on the initiatives relating to ODEF standardization and information on future standardisation developments
provide a platform for exchange between stakeholders in public administrations and main industry players

The program of the workshop included, among other:

ODEF Strategies: Examples from European Administration
Practical Experiences with the implementation of ODEF
Report on ODEF-Standardisation activities
4 parallel sessions with participants
A panel discussion with stakeholders

Tags: california davinci interop iso massachusetts oasis odef odf ooxml opendocument politics xml

Posted by: garyedwards