ODF's limited spec can't support all MS Office features unless Microsoft goes on a major entending trip.
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ODF useless for Microsoft needs - Google: OOXML 'insufficient and unnecessary' - Talkba... - 0 views
www.zdnet.co.uk/...282-39001068c-20091780o,00.htm
embrace-extend google harmonization odf ooxml opendocument unification
shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Mar 08
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IBM's Stance Against OpenXML Is Increasingly Confusing : Oliver Bell's weblog - 0 views
osrin.net/...nxml-is-increasingly-confusing
cdf heintzman ibm odf ooxml opendocument openxml symphony weir
shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 08
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Events have played out in the media and in the blogosphere over the last couple of weeks that represent a breakdown of some of those anti-OpenXML arguments that have been played back so frequently over the last year. Arguments that there is a lack of demand for Open XML, the specification is too complex to implement, the specification can’t be deployed cross platform and the long running but baseless claim that the Ecma-376 specification might be encumbered by IPR and patent threats all appear to have been cast aside as big blue steps up to meet the demands of their own customers and the market in general. Here is a blow by blow review of the relevant activity over the last two weeks…
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A Closer Look At Those "Single Standard" Policy Mandates : Oliver Bell's weblog - 0 views
osrin.net/...ingle-standard-policy-mandates
cdf heintzman ibm odf ooxml opendocument openxml symphony weir
shared by Gary Edwards on 25 Jan 08
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2. Achieving interoperability is rarely as straight forward as selecting a single technical standard, and many of the policy positions around the world recognize this. Applications need to be designed to work together, groups need a solid framework for collaboration and the standards need to be ready to support these two objectives.
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ongoing · Life Is Complicated - 0 views
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Fortunately for Microsoft, the DaVinci plugin is coming, which will enable Microsoft office applications to comply with ISO 26300. We all understand the financial issues that prompted the push to make OOXML a standard (see Tim's comment above and http://lnxwalt.wordpress.com/2007/01/21/whose-finances-are-on-the-line/ for more on this) and ensure continued vendor lock-in. However, OOXML is not the answer.
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ODF can handle everything and anything Microsoft Office can throw at it. Including the legacy billions of binary documents, years of MSOffice bound business processes, and even tricky low level reaching add-ons represented by assistive technologies.
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Yes! It's Da Vinci time. I wonder if W^ has downloaded ACME 376 and taken the Da Vinci conversion engine out for a test run? Belgium and Adobe took a look, and have expressed an interest in getting their hands on the ODF 1.2 version of Da Vinci. California and Massachusetts have yet to comment about ACME 376, but of course they are also waiting for Da Vinci.
I'll thank W^ for his kind comments, and make sure he knows about the ACME 376 proof of concept. If DaVinci can hit perfect conversion fidelity with those billions of binary documents using XML encoded RTF, there is no reason why Da Vinci can't do the same with ODF. We do however need ODF 1.2 to insure that perfect interoperability with other ODF ready applications. - ...1 more comment...
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Yes! It's Da Vinci time. I wonder if W^ has downloaded ACME 376 and taken the Da Vinci conversion engine out for a test run? Belgium and Adobe took a look, and have expressed an interest in getting their hands on the ODF 1.2 version of Da Vinci. California and Massachusetts have yet to comment about ACME 376, but of course they are also waiting for Da Vinci.
I'll thank W^ for his kind comments, and make sure he knows about the ACME 376 proof of concept. If DaVinci can hit perfect conversion fidelity with those billions of binary documents using XML encoded RTF, there is no reason why Da Vinci can't do the same with ODF. We do however need ODF 1.2 to insure that perfect interoperability with other ODF ready applications. -
Yes! It's Da Vinci time. I wonder if W^ has downloaded ACME 376 and taken the Da Vinci conversion engine out for a test run? Belgium and Adobe took a look, and have expressed an interest in getting their hands on the ODF 1.2 version of Da Vinci. California and Massachusetts have yet to comment about ACME 376, but of course they are also waiting for Da Vinci.
I'll thank W^ for his kind comments, and make sure he knows about the ACME 376 proof of concept. If DaVinci can hit perfect conversion fidelity with those billions of binary documents using XML encoded RTF, there is no reason why Da Vinci can't do the same with ODF. We do however need ODF 1.2 to insure that perfect interoperability with other ODF ready applications. -
Hi guys,
There is an interesting discussion triggered by Tim Bray's "ongoing · Life Is Complicated" blog piece. Our good friend Mike Champion has some interesting comments defending ISO/IEC approval of MS Ecma 376 based on many arguments. But this one seems to be the bottom line;
<mike> "there is not an official standard for one that (in the opinion of the people who actually dug deeply into the question, and I have not) represents all the features supported in the MS Office binary formats and can be efficiently loaded and processed without major redesign of MS Office.
..... So, if you want a clean XML format that represents mainstream office document use cases, use ODF. If you want a usable XML foormat that handles existing Word documents with full fidelity and optimal performance in MS Office, use OOXML. If you think this fidelity/performance argument is all FUD, try it with your documents in Open Office / ODF and MS Office 2007 / OOXML and tell the world what you learn." </mike>
Mike's not alone in this. This seems to be the company line for Microsoft's justification that ISO/IEC should have two conflicting file formats each pomising to do the same thing, becaus eonly one of those formats can handle the bilions of binary documents conversion to XML with an acceptable fidelity.
This is not true, and we can prove it. And if we're right that you can convert the billions of binaries to ODF without loss of fidelity, then there was no "technology" argument for Microsoft not implementing ODF natively and becoming active in the OASIS ODF TC process to improve application interoperability.
<diigo_
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BetaNews | Microsoft: Office Format War Over - 0 views
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"Over the past few years, we've had two important file formats come into the market, OpenXML and ODF. Both were designed for different purposes, and both have been valuable additions to the market. Now we can also say that we have multiple implementations of both formats."
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The war is over? When did Microsoft surrender? And when did they sign the official terms of surrender?
The terms of surrender are simple. Microsoft must agree to fully support and implement ODF as a native file format in all versions of MSOffice qualified for the current OOXML compatibility kit. Furthermore, MSOffice must offer end users the choice of selecting ODF as the default MSOffice file format.
Those are the terms of surrender, and i for one don't see how the Microsoft or Novell Translator plugin's qualify? These things are garbage!
What if an MSOffice user was to work on a document, save it to OOXML only to open it later to find a near totally useless and corrupted document with a conversion fidelity equal to that achieved by the hapless MCN Translator Plugins?
Right. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Until these idiotic MCN Translators can achieve a conversion fidelity between ODF and OOXML acceptable to MSOffice users - comparable to native documents use and expectations, they should be regarded for what they are: an experimentation proving conclusively that OOXML is not even close to being interoperable with ODF.
~ge~
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The Meaning of Open Standards - 0 views
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The marbux comment:
See particularly section 6.8 and its discussion of "etiquettes," which sounds like CDF profiles to me.
This 1998 academic paper on open standards could give us a solid foundation to build our arguments for Universal Interop from. I may have forwarded this link before, roughly a year ago. Here is the abstract of the paper:
This paper develops the argument that many Information Technology standardization processes are in transition from being controlled by standards creators to being controlled by standards implementers. The users of standardized implementations also have rights that they wish addressed. Ten basic rights of standards creators, implementers and users are identified and quantified. Each of these ten rights represents an aspect of Open Standards. Only when all ten rights are supported will standards be open to all.
It builds upon a previous work by Bruce Perens. Well worth the read.
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Office generations 1.0 - 4.0| Rough Type: Nicholas Carr's Blog: - 0 views
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The key is to extend both functionality and interoperability without taking away any of the capabilities that users currently rely on or expect. Reducing interoperability or functionality is a non-starter, for the end user as well as the IT departments that want to avoid annoying the end user. You screw with PowerPoint at your own risk.
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Exactly! This is also the reason why ODF failed in Massachusetts! Reducing the interoperability or functionality of of any workgroup related business process is unacceptable. Which is why IBM's rip out and replace MSOffice approach as the means of transitioning to ODF is doomed. The Office 2.0 (er 3.0) crowd is at a similar disadvantage. They offer web based productivity services that leverage the incredible value of web collaboration. The problem is that these collaboration services are not interoperable with MSOffice. This disconnection greatly reduces and totally neutralizes the collaboration value promise. Microsoft of course will be able to deliver that same web based collaborative comp[uting value in an integrated package. They and they alone are able to integrate web collaboration services into existing MSOffice workgroups. In many ways this should be an anti trust issue. If governments allow Microsoft to control the interop channels into MSOffice, then Microsoft web collaboration systems will be the only choice for 550 million MSOffice workgroup users. The interop layer is today an impossible barrier for Office 2.0, Web 2.0, SaaS and SOA competitors. This is the reasoning behind our da Vinci CDF+ plug-in for MSOffice. Rather than continue banging the wall of IBM's transition to ODF through government legislated rip out and replace mandates, we think the way forward is to exploit the MSOffice plug-in architecture, using it to neutralize and re purpose existing MSOffice workgroups. The key is getting MSOffice documents into a web ready format that is useful to non Microsoft web platform (cloud) alternatives. This requires a non disruptive transition. The workgroups will not tolerate any loss of interop or functionality. We believe this can be done using CDF+ (XHTML 2.0 + CSS). Think of it as cutting off the transition of existing workgroup business p
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Microsoft sees this coming, and one of its biggest challenges in the years ahead will be figuring out how to replace the revenues and profits that get sucked out of the Office market.
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The real problem that I see is the reduced functionality and integration. I don’t think there can be a Revolution until someone builds an entire suite of Revolutionary office products on the web. Office has had almost (or more than, don't quote me) 15 years of experience to build a tight cohesive relationship between it's products.
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Rather than replace MSOffice, why not move the desktop bound business processes to the web? Re write them to take advantage of web collaboration, universal connectivity, and universal interop.
Once the business processes are up in the cloud, you can actually start introducing desktop alternatives to MSOffice. The trick is to write these alternative business processes to something other than .NET 3.0, MS-OOXML, and the Exchange/SharePoint Hub.
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left standing in a few years will be limited to those who succeeded in getting their products adopted and imbedded into the customers 'workflow' (for lack of a better term) and who make money from it. A silo'ed PPA is not embedded in a company's workflow (this describes 95% of the Office 2.0 companies) thus their failure is predetermined. A Free PPA is not making money thus their failure is predetermined as well. For those companies who adapt to a traditional service and support model and make it through the flurry.....would they really qualify as Office 4.0?
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In this 2006 article Nick Carr lays out the history of office productivity applications, arguing the Office 2.0 is really Office 3.0 - the generation where desktop productivity office suites mesh with the Web. This article is linked to The Office question, December 18, 2007
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In this 2006 article Nick Carr lays out the history of office productivity applications, arguing the Office 2.0 is really Office 3.0 - the generation where desktop productivity office suites mesh with the Web. This article is linked to The Office question, December 18, 2007
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Prince: What's New - Docuemnt Publishing on Steroids with XHTML - CSS 3.0 (CDF+) - 0 views
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Prince is a computer program that converts XML and HTML into PDF documents. Prince can read many XML formats, including XHTML and SVG. Prince formats documents according to style sheets written in CSS. Standards support HTML, CSS, SVG, MathML Web enabled Load documents, style sheets, images and fonts over HTTP Publishing features Hyphenation, crop marks, columns, page floats and footnotes Eye candy Rounded borders, small caps, CMYK and RGBA colors
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Doug Mahugh : Standards-Based Interoperability - 0 views
blogs.msdn.com/...ds-based-interoperability.aspx
interop standard ODF OOXML Excel spreadsheet OpenFormula
shared by Graham Perrin on 28 Jul 09
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First, let’s consider how software interoperability works when it is not standards-based. Consider the various ways that four applications can share data, as shown in the diagram to the right. There are six connections between these four applications, and each connection can be traversed in either direction, so there are 12 total types of interoperability involved.
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As the number of applications increases, this complexity grows rapidly. Double the number of applications to 8 total, and there will be 56 types of interoperability between them:
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through standards maintenance, transparency of implementation details, and collaborative interoperability testing.
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In the real world, interoperability is almost never achieved in this way. Standards-based interoperability is much better approach for everyone involved,
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each application implements the published standard as written, and this provides a baseline for delivering interoperability.
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the existence of a standard addresses many of the issues involved, and the other issues can be addressed
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In the standards-based scenario, the standard itself is the central mechanism for enabling interoperability between implementations: This diagram is much simpler
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How this all applies to Office 2007 SP2 I covered last summer the set of guiding principles that we used to guide the work we did to support ODF in Office 2007 SP2.
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What about Bugs and Deviations? Of course, the existence of a published standard doesn’t prevent interoperability bugs from occurring.
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Our approach to the transparency issue has been to document the details of our implementation through published implementer notes.
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a standard (evolved and improved as reality demands) is the proper foundation for resolving interoperabilty
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All complex software has bugs, and some bugs can present significant challenges to interoperability. Let’s consider the case that 3 of the 4 applications have bugs that affect interoperability, as shown in the diagram to the right.
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I am creating my own fantasy about the state of affairs
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I was at the year-ago DII meeting where the guiding principles were announced and their application to spreadsheet formulas described. I applauded the principles and understood the reasoning for formulas.
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How this would impact various groups of users and non-users (who still want to interoperate) of Office 2007 did not surface in my consciousness.
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In the case of spreadsheet formulas, help is on the way -- OpenFormula is under development for use with ODF 1.2.
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PC Pro: News: Google Docs accommodates Office 2007 file formats - 0 views
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Google has now rectified this situation following the ratification of the Open XML standard last year, but anybody looking to import the PPTX files used by PowerPoint 2007 will need to wait. The files can be converted into a Google Docs-friendly format, but you'll lose formatting, themes and transition effects.
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RE: [office] ODF 1.2 drafts/Committee Draft Ballot - 0 views
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I'm running the version we'll be releasing shortly, which has ODF 1.1 support, and it identifies the problem and offers to repair it
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This (slughtly cheeky) posting foreshadows what I suspect is going to be a heated debated about which implementation of ODF is more conformant and whether that matters. Despite the potential for lots of silliness in the sort term, in the long term I think this is going to be healthy for implementations, and for ODF itself (assuming the Oracle takeover of Sun doesn't unduly impact that effort).
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Groklaw - Digging for Truth : The problem with XML document formats - 0 views
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The problem with that, as I understand it, is that the transitional spec is pretty much unimplementable by anybody except MS
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Wow! The ODF peasants with pitchforks are have taken to the streets, and ISO document expert Alex Brown is taking them on. The volumes of traffic generated by any discussion of the ISO XML document wars continues to amaze. It's very one sided though. The basic problem seems to be that ISO has accepted two XML document format standards, OOXML and ODF, with OOXML being held to a higher set of expectations than ODF. Alex would do well if he could step back from the OOXML - ODF war, and move the discussion to something like the theoretical IDABC ODEF: the European "Open Document Exchange Formats" design. With ODEF as single set of XML format requirements against which both OOXML and ODF can be measured and compared, Alex might be able to neutralize the heated emotions of angry Open Source - Open Standards - Open Web supporters, who mistakenly think ODF measures up to ODEF expectations and requirements. Trying to compare ODF to OOXML isn't getting us anywhere. At some point, we have to ask ourselves what is it that we want from a standardized XML document format. Having participated in both the Massachusetts pilot study and the California pilot discussions, i have to say that the public expectations were that XML formats would have a basic set of characteristics: open markup; structured separation of content, presentation and logic; high level interoperability (exchange), and Web ready. These are basic "must have" expectations. XML formats were expected to be "better" than 1998 HTML-CSS. But when we apply the basic set of expectations, todays HTML+ (webkit HTML5, CSS4, SVG/Canvas, JS, JS Libs) turns out to be a far better format. Where the XML formats really fall off the wagon are the interoperability and Web ready expectations. For the life of me i don't see how anyone can compare ODF or OOXML interoperability with that of HTML+. And of course, HTML+ is the native language/for
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Jesper Lund Stocholm was kind enough to point out that, once again, GrokLaw is stoking the fires of the XML document wars. This time PJ takes on Alex Brown, of the ISO SC34 document standards group convenor. And Alex responds ... and responds ... and responds. of course, the attacks keep coming! I left Jesper a rather lengthy comment at: http://tinyurl.com/document-wars
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Microsoft Finds Fault With Google Upgrade -- Redmondmag.com - 2 views
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Google's announcement this week that it had improved its Google Docs Web apps drew ridicule from a Microsoft official on Wednesday.
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Kisslo also accused Google of not following the OpenDocument Format (ODF) spec with fidelity in Google Docs applications. The Google spokesperson called that claim "ironic" for Microsoft. (Microsoft has had its own issues staying true to the ISO/IEC-standardized version of its Office Open XML document format spec. However, the company did previously announce support for ODF in Office 2007.) This seemingly minor spat between the two companies has deep implications. At stake may be much of Microsoft's empire, based on its two cash cows: Microsoft Office and Windows.