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Gary Edwards

OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC - 0 views

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    ODF FAQ written by Michael Brauer with editing by David Faure. Excellent discussion of differences between ODF and MSXML and, the OASIS ODF TC process and the ECMA MSXML process
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    ODF FAQ written by Michael Brauer with editing by David Faure. Excellent discussion of differences between ODF and MSXML and, the OASIS ODF TC process and the ECMA MSXML process
  •  
    ODF FAQ written by Michael Brauer with editing by David Faure. Excellent discussion of differences between ODF and MSXML and, the OASIS ODF TC process and the ECMA MSXML process
Gary Edwards

NewsForge | SCALE Announces Workshop On Open Standards For Government - 0 views

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    OpenDocument Fellowship, Gary Edwards - OpenOffice.org, J. David eisenberg - Fellowship
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    OpenDocument Fellowship, Gary Edwards - OpenOffice.org, J. David eisenberg - Fellowship
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    OpenDocument Fellowship, Gary Edwards - OpenOffice.org, J. David eisenberg - Fellowship
Gary Edwards

What is RDF and what is it good for? - 0 views

  • On the Semantic Web, computers do the browsing for us. The SemWeb enables computers to seek out knowledge distributed throughout the Web, mesh it, and then take action based on it. To use an analogy, the current Web is a decentralized platform for distributed presentations while the SemWeb is a decentralized platform for distributed knowledge. RDF is the W3C standard for encoding knowledge.
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    Exellent introduction to RDF and the Semantic Web!
Graham Perrin

Doug Mahugh : Standards-Based Interoperability - 0 views

  • Standards-Based Interoperability
  • 05 June 09
  • Interoperability without Standards
  • ...46 more annotations...
  • 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.
  • 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:
  • through standards maintenance, transparency of implementation details, and collaborative interoperability testing.
    • Graham Perrin
       
      Issues relating to CalDAV are well addressed in these ways.
  • Here’s where those workarounds will need to be implemented: Note the complexity of this diagram.
  • In the real world, interoperability is almost never achieved in this way.  Standards-based interoperability is much better approach for everyone involved,
  • whether that standard is an open one such as ODF (IS26300)
  • or a de-facto standard set by one popular implementation.
  • or Open XML (IS29500)
  • The core premise of open standards-based interoperability is this:
  • each application implements the published standard as written, and this provides a baseline for delivering interoperability.
  • the existence of a standard addresses many of the issues involved, and the other issues can be addressed
  • In the standards-based scenario, the standard itself is the central mechanism for enabling interoperability between implementations: This diagram is much simpler
  • there is no question that users of other products are massively surprised by
  • 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.
  • applied in a specific order
  • I’d like to revisit the top two guiding principles
  • Guiding Principle #1: Adhere to the ODF 1.1 Standard
  • Guiding Principle #2: Be Predictable
  • Being predictable is also known as the principle of least astonishment.
  • What about Bugs and Deviations? Of course, the existence of a published standard doesn’t prevent interoperability bugs from occurring.
  • deviations from the requirements
  • different interpretations
  • Our approach to the transparency issue has been to document the details of our implementation through published implementer notes.
  • Interoperability Testing The final piece of the puzzle is hands-on testing
  • What else would you like to know about how Office approaches document format interoperability?
  • a standard (evolved and improved as reality demands) is the proper foundation for resolving interoperabilty
  • 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.
  • (1) their spreadsheets having their formulas lost when interchanged with Excel 2007
  • (2) not being able to handle the formulase received in Excel 2007's ODF output.
  • I am creating my own fantasy about the state of affairs
    • Graham Perrin
       
      :-)
  • it is far too early to declare it to be unsuccessful
  • I cannot fault the Microsoft approach as incorrect
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • there is NO published standard for ODF spreadsheet formulas yet.
  • Nor is there any de-facto standard that everyone agrees on.
  • the “spaghetti diagram" method, with all of the complexity and risk of bugs that entails
  • No implementer we know of has attempted that
  • In the case of spreadsheet formulas, help is on the way -- OpenFormula is under development for use with ODF 1.2.
  • I’d like to keep this thread on-topic
  • I appreciate the post, very good
  • Visually I would rather frame it in terms of convergence, a spiral.
  • and user satisfaction.
  • I doubt someone would ever find a magic bullet to interoperability
  • New Comments to this post are disabled
    • Graham Perrin
       
      Hurrah!
  • © 2009 Microsoft Corporation
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    Diagrams here are eye-catching.
Paul Merrell

PC Pro: News: Google Docs accommodates Office 2007 file formats - 0 views

  • Google has added support for the DOCX and XLSX file formats to the Google Docs office suite.
  • 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.
Graham Perrin

Doug Mahugh : 1 + 2 = 1? - 0 views

  • five prioritized guiding principles for Office’s ODF implementation
  • When Will Office Support OpenFormula?
  • nobody knows yet when ODF 1.2 will be published as an OASIS or ISO standard
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • risk that the results might not be the same
  • Open XML / ODF Translator Add-Ins for Office can be used with Office 2007 SP2
  • Sun ODF Plugin
  • apparently works with SP2
Jesper Lund Stocholm

Front-page: What is the definition of an "existing document"? - 0 views

  • Can you provide a definition of what an "existing documents" means?
    • Jesper Lund Stocholm
       
      "Existing documents" refer to both binary Microsoft Office documents as well as ECMA-376 1st Ed. documents.
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    This is defined in the scope of OOXML: ISO/IEC 29500 defines a set of XML vocabularies for representing word-processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. On the one hand, the goal of ISO/IEC 29500 is to be capable of faithfully representing the pre-existing corpus of word-processing documents, spreadsheets and presentations that had been produced by the Microsoft Office applications (from Microsoft Office 97 to Microsoft Office 2008, inclusive) at the date of the creation of ISO/IEC 29500.
Alex Brown

Groklaw - When Would You Use OOXML and When ODF? -- What is OOXML For? - 0 views

shared by Alex Brown on 28 Apr 09 - Cached
  • If you say Groklaw is an echo chamber, for example, it has insulting connotations
    • Alex Brown
       
      It's also true; but never mind
  • Groklaw deserves respect
    • Alex Brown
       
      The level of self-delusion here is truly scary
  • on a committee set up to help a national body
    • Alex Brown
       
      Oh? I'd be interested to know which NB was nuts enough to appoint Groklaw as an advisor!
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • among others
  • Microsoft (and Alex Brown) are working within JTC1/SC34
    • Alex Brown
       
      Aha, a new line of attack. It is, though, the Countries who want to have the Standard reflect the documents they actually have ...
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    The more interesting issue to me is whose voice Groklaw echoes. On the document format war, it's seemed since I stopped contributing articles to Groklaw a few years ago that it is the IBM public relations department's voice being echoed. I'll save for another day the topic of whether the echo chamber is self-delusional or deliberately intended to delude readers.
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    ... and who it's aimed at. It's not as if Groklaw carries any weight (is it?)
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    Groklaw throws a pretty good punch. E.g., it launched ODF vs. Microsoft XML formats as a public issue. The blog is very influential with trade press reporters who are sympathetic to open source software. And Groklaw has done some good reporting, albeit with evident bias. Its chronicles of the SCO vs. IBM and Novell saga is undoubtedly the most thorough out there. But on ODF and OOXML, the coverage has been presented entirely as a black hat/white hat issue, ODF being perfect and designed for interoperability but OOXML as being pure evil. See e.g., http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080417104016186 (""If you want true interoperability, you need to implement ODF. Seriously. Any limitations to interoperability are entirely on Microsoft's side of the aisle, and the whole world knows it"). Intended or not, Groklaw justly deserves much credit for forestalling public oversight of the ODF TC's utter failure to deal with interoperability issues effectively and credit for keeping the oversight focus solely on OOXML. You'll find no coverage of ODF bugs on Groklaw, only ODF hugs and kisses. I see the blog as having substantially delayed ODF's repair. Groklaw has an enormous readership and particularly among citizen activists who approach ODF as a political cause rather than as a technical specification. But the Groklaw flavor of ODF v. OOXML propaganda remains consistent with that of IBM VP Bob Sutor.
Alex Brown

Lotus Symphony gets some OOXML support : News : Software - ZDNet Asia - 0 views

  • Symphony 1.3, released last week, now enables imports of documents using Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format. However, the free-of-charge office suite does not yet let users save documents in OOXML.
    • Alex Brown
       
      shhhhh
Alex Brown

Is There Life After Office? | BNET Technology Blog | BNET - 0 views

  • Kafkaesque joke exemplifying vendor ambition, inexperience and stupidity
    • Alex Brown
       
      Sounds familiar
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    Glynn Moody, who is quoted in the article, obviously does not understand what was involved in Massachusetts. Sam Hiser, also quoted, was deeply and personally involved. OOXML wasn't even on the horizon then. Microsoft Office 2003 wrote to a flat XML format that was irrelevant in any event. What Massachusetts wanted --- and deserved from the ODF community --- was an ability to integrate OpenOffice.org with business processes that were already thoroughly bound to Microsoft Office. The problem was in fact solved by the OpenDocument Foundation's ODF plug-ins for Microsoft Office, but the project had to be ditched because Sun would neither adapt OOo nor allow ODF to be adapted for the purpose. Gary Edwards and I wrote an in-depth and heavily-referenced article on why ODF failed in Massachusetts. http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/072307-opendocuments-grounded.html (.) Those who do not comprehend that integration of data created by end point solutions and stored in legacy data silos is a fundamental requirement in service oriented architectures will never comprehend why interoperability is so vitally important. They wind up being unwitting advocates of incredibly expensive rip out and replace solutions. Good luck, particularly in the current economic climate. The wonderment is why anyone believes that Microsoft Office can be toppled by ODF from its monopoly position without ultra-high fidelity interoperability with Microsoft Office. Too much "what works well enough for me works well enough for anyone" mindset, I suspect.
Paul Merrell

i4i-Microsoft battle over Word coming to a head - 0 views

  • "The implications going forward are immense," i4i Chairman Loudon Owen said. "We were accused initially of wanting to shut down Word. We don't want to shut down Word, we want to open it up."
Paul Merrell

Microsoft Finds Fault With Google Upgrade -- Redmondmag.com - 2 views

  • Google's announcement this week that it had improved its Google Docs Web apps drew ridicule from a Microsoft official on Wednesday.
  • 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.
Gary Edwards

Florian's libopc webkit demo - 1 views

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    Florian Reuter has published another video demonstrating his LibOPC work; this time with his LibOPC library running in WebKit.
paul silmonet

Instant Fix Slow Computer Solutions - 0 views

I bought a brand new PC with good specifications just last month. But only three weeks of use, I noticed that my PC froze and slowed down a bit. For the next three days, it continued to slow down. ...

Fix Slow Computer ODF OOXML OpenDocument cdf iso Microsoft OASIS openxml officeopenxml xml

started by paul silmonet on 12 Jun 11 no follow-up yet
Jesper Lund Stocholm

Groklaw - Digging for Truth - 6 views

  • You harmed us and our families. You harmed the public, and you will have to live with that judgment from us.
    • Jesper Lund Stocholm
       
      Legendary comment ... :o) "You harmed our families. You harmed the public and you will have to live with that judgement from us"
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    What an amazing conversation. It's true that ODF was NOT designed to be compatible with MSOffice and the legacy binary format. That's not to say there were not considerable efforts within the OASIS Open Office XML TC (ODF) pushing for compatibility. But Sun successfully held off these efforts, insisting that ODF was not designed to be compatible with MSOffice or the MSOffice binaries. Many asked the obvious question, "How are end users supposed to convert their information (billions of legacy "in-process" binary documents) to ODF if ODF is not designed for that conversion?" Stellent, represented by Phil Boutros, and Corel, represented by Paul Langille and Tom Magliery, were particularly obsessed with this problem. Without "compatibility", how were end users supposed to convert their documents? Needless to say, Sun prevailed. ODF is 100% perfectly compatible with OpenOffice/StarOffice, by design. It is not compatible with the billions of "in-process" compound business documents essential to world trade, commerce and information exchange. What a shame, ~ge~
Graham Perrin

FR: Advocacy group protests government's approving of OOXML - - 0 views

  • FR: Advocacy group protests government's approving of OOXML
  • Nov 20, 2009
  • Gijs Hillenius
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • April, a French free and open source software advocacy group, is protesting the French government's approval of Microsoft's OOXML as a government document standard, alongside the open document format ODF.
  • General interoperability framework for public administrations and local governments, RGI
  • Référentiel Général d'Interopératibilité
  • We have just missed a historical opportunity to support openness and innovation in the software market
  • calling on members of the French parliament to clarify the RGI
  • The RGI does not resolve the controversy between software publishers and supporters of free software. Both standards office are placed 'under observation', and their use remains at the discretion of each administrative authority.
Gary Edwards

An interesting offer: get paid to contribute to Wikipedia - Rick Jelliffe - 1 views

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    Classic argument about ODF vs OOXML.  Need to send Rick an explanation about how the da Vinci plug-in works.  It is entirely possible to capture everythign MSOffice editors do in ODF using namespace extensions compliant with ODF 1.1 standard.   What was impossible was to round-trip those MSOffice ODF documents to OpenOffice.org.  And as it turns out, replacing MSOffice/Windows on new workgroup desktops with OpenOffice/Linux was one of the primary objectives behind the Massachussetts effort to standardize on ODF.  They believed the hype that ODF was cross platform interoperable.  It wasn't then, and it still isn't five years later. As for capturing all the complexities and nuances of the very robust MSOffice productivity environment and authoring system?  Sure, ODf could easily be extended for that. What an incredible discussion!
Gary Edwards

We Can No Longer Unbundle Microsoft Office - 0 views

  • In 2007, productivity reached the cloud when the EU forced Microsoft to open the file formats to OpenXML and add an x at the end of our familiar file extensions .pptx, .xlsx and .docx. Google Docs also quickly floated cloud versions of each Office document format. However, in the same year, Apple launched iPhone without a view to file storage on the device. Since then a lot of startup innovation came from Dropbox and Box unbundling file storage from the OS, but software that enables the creation and editing of files on touchscreen devices has been less of a concern.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      2007 was also the year that Apple released the first iPhone. ISO standardised PDF with a unique very valuable attribute; "tags". Tagged PDF raced into the mobility breach enabling all kinds of data binding and digital signature advances critical to mobile document centric workflows. In 2008 we saw a global financial collapse that put more pressure than ever on productivity. To survive, companies had to do more with less. Less people, less resources and less money. Cloud computing and mobility rose to the occasion, but the timing of the cloud tsunami connects the incredible synchronicity of XML compound document formats (business documents), Tagged PDF, the iPhone, and the financial collapse of 2008. The rise of sync-share-store services like DropBox is a natural replacement of the local, workgroup bound, client/server hard drive problem. Most importantly though, the iPhone is the first device to integrate and combine communications with computation. The data had to move to the Cloud before it could become useful to mobile apps combining for the first time, communications, content and computation is hand held devices. Anyone who ever worked in the Microsoft client/server productivity ecosystem will tell you that the desktop PC was totally lacking in "communications"; let alone the kind of integrated communications that the iPhone offers. It is the integration of communications, content and collaborative computation that will make the productivity of Cloud Computing something extraordinary.
  • Three years ago, CloudOn CEO Milind Gadekar started using OpenXML formats to bring Microsoft Office to iPad. Since then, the company opened its interface to file authoring tools from Office and Google Drive, and storage providers like Dropbox, Box and Hightail, Google Drive, and OneDrive, and will soon be hard at work adding Apple’s CloudDrive. CloudOn feels that if it focuses on providing the best compatibility and exportability across devices, then they can be the place where users can “preserve, render and manipulate” documents on mobile. Once CloudOn can maintain its goal of giving consumers a familiar look and feel and lossless publishing for all the most popular document creation and storage providers, they plan to optimize for touchscreens. CloudOn sees only single-digit-minute session times in files, so their next step is to enable gestures to edit charts and annotate text with your fingers to help make better use of that time.
  • Feature-bundled workflows to get things done on the device you’re looking at are necessities, not nice pairings like chocolate and peanut butter.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Pellucid Analytics takes a different strategy to rebuilding PowerPoint. Instead of looking at PowerPoint as a design tool, Pellucid fixes the design and enables archive search for thousands of financial accounting slide templates that an analyst would need to fill a pitch book such as ROE, EBITDA and other fun acronyms. Since the formatting is already set, analysts can just enter company names and based on the data sources that the bank they work for has licensed, Pellucid can fill in any of that data automatically and keep it up to date. However, the concept of live data in presentations is a shock to most bankers, so Adrian Crockett of Pellucid admits that it’s one of the first things he has to explain to new users. Of course, Pellucid offers the ability to snapshot data for use in later presentations. But Adrian stressed that in addition to Pellucid’s approach to removing grunt work for analysts, it is giving senior bankers access to live data right in the presentation that would normally require VPN access, logins, app switching and all other sorts of headaches to be able to access, especially on tablets.
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