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Graham Perrin

ODF Alliance Weblog: Microsoft's ODF Support Falls Short - 0 views

  • “Unfortunately, serious shortcomings have been identified in Microsoft’s support for ODF. Putting potentially millions of ODF files into circulation that are non-interoperable and incompatible with the ODF support provided by other vendors is a recipe for fragmentation.”
    • Alex Brown
       
      I think Mr Marcich forgot to put inverted commas round his particular use of "ODF" to denote its special meaning ...
  • Microsoft’s ODF Support Falls Short
  • some of the so-called ‘plug-ins’ were revealed to provide better support for ODF than the recently released Microsoft Office 2007 SP2
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • plug-ins for Microsoft Office written by third parties were revealed to provide better support for ODF than the recently released Microsoft Office 2007 SP2
  • SourceForge “OpenXML/ODF Translator Add-in for Office
  • Sun Plug-In 3.0
  • fail when using the “built-in” support provided by Office 2007 SP2
Paul Merrell

GullFOSS - 0 views

  • I normally don't post my ODF Plugin news and information on GullFOSS, but so many people complain (everywhere, including in OOo mailing lists) about the bad ODF support in Microsoft Office 2007 SP2, that I thought it might be a good idea to post some information about the ODF Plugin here... The Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office, which is based on OpenOffice.org, adds support for ODF to Microsoft Office 2000 and newer versions. So you don't have to use the very latest Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 version (in case you really need Microsoft Office for some reason) , where ODF support is insufficient anyway.
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    Like IBM, Sun bad mouths Microsoft ODF support rather than repairing the relevant defects in the ODF specification. This despite no one yet having come forward with an example of non-conformance that withstands scrutiny. So what should have been bug reports filed against the specification is instead wielded as an advertising weapon against competitors. This is simply more "OOo defines what is valid ODF" horse puckey.
Alex Brown

Doug Mahugh : Tracked Changes - 0 views

  • Much was made during the IS29500 standards process of the difference in the size of the ODF and Open XML specifications.  This is a good example of where that difference comes from: in this case, a concept glossed over in three vague sentences of the ODF spec gets 17 pages of documentation in the Open XML spec.
    • Alex Brown
       
      This is the nub; OOXML may be overweight, but ODF is severely undernourished as a spec.
  •  
    Alex, I know from your previous writings that you do not regard OOXML as completely specified. But your post might be so misinterpreted. In my view, neither ODF nor OOXML has yet reached the threshold of eligibility as an international standard, completely specifying "clearly and unambiguously the conformity requirements that are essential to achieve the interoperability." ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives, Annex I. . OOXML is ahead of ODF in some aspects of specificity, but the eligibility finish line remains beyond the horizon for both.
  • ...2 more comments...
  •  
    Paul, that's right - though so far the faulty things in OOXML turn out to be more round the edges as opposed to ODF's central lapses. Still, it's early days in the examination of OOXML so I'm reserving making any firm call on the comparative merits of the specs until I have read a lot (a lot) more. Is there an area of OOXML you'd say was particularly underbaked? I'm quite interested in the fact that neither of these beasts specify scripting languages ...
  •  
    Hi, Alex, Most seriously, there are no profiles and accompanying requirements to enable less featureful apps to round trip documents with more featureful apps, a la W3C Compound Document by Reference Framework. That's an enormous barrier to market entry and interoperability. That defect reacts synergistically with the dearth of semantic conformity requirements, with the incredible number of options including those 500+ identified extension points, and with a compatibility framework for extensions that while a good start leaves implementers far too much discretion in assigning and processing compatibility attributes. There are also major harmonization issues with other standards that get in the way of transformations, where Microsoft originally rolled its own rather than embracing existing open standards. I think it not insignificant that OOXML as a whole is available only under a RAND-Z pledge rather than being available for the entire world. The patent claims need to be identified and worked around or a different rights scheme needs Microsoft management's promulgation. This is a legal interoperability issue as opposed to technical, but an interoperability barrier nonetheless, an "unnecessary obstacle to international trade" in the sense of the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade. And absent a change by Microsoft in its rights regime, the work-arounds are technical. This is not to suggest that ODF lacks problems in regard to the way it implements standards incorporated by reference. The creation of unique OASIS namespaces rather than doing the needed harmonizing work with the relevant W3C WGs is a large ODF tumor in need of removal and reconstructive surgery. I'm not sure what is happening with the W3C consultation in that regard. I worked a good part of the time over several months comparing ODF and Ecma 376, evaluating their comparative suitability as document exchange formats. I gave up when it climbed well past 100 pages in length because the de
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    1. Full-featured editors available that are capable of not generating application-specific extensions to the formats? 2. Interoperability of conforming implementations mandatory? 3. Interoperability between different IT systems either demonstrable or demonstrated? 4. Profiles developed and required for interoperability? 5. Methodology specified for interoperability between less and more featureful applications? 6. Specifies conformity requirements essential to achieve interoperability? 7. Interoperability conformity assessment procedures formally established and validated? 8. Document validation procedures validated? 9. Specifies an interoperability framework? 10. Application-specific extensions classified as non-conformant? 11. Preservation of metadata necessary to achieve interoperability mandatory? 12. XML namespaces for incorporated standards properly implemented? (ODF-only failure because Microsoft didn't incorporate any relevant standards.) 13. Optional feature interop breakpoints eliminated? 14. Scripting language fully specified for embedded scripts? 15. Hooks fully specified for use by embedded scripts? 16. Standard is vendor- and application-neutral? 17. Market requirement -- Capable of converging desktop, server, Web, and mobile device editors and viewers? (OOXML better equipped here, but its patent barrier blocks.)
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    Didn't notice that my post before last was chopped at the end until after I had posted the list. Then Diigo stopped responding for a few minutes. Anyway, the list is short summation of my research on the comparative suitabilities of ODF 1.1 and Ecma 376 as document exchange formats, winnowed to the defects they have in common except as noted. The research was never completed because in the political climate of the time, the world wasn't ready to act on the defects. The criteria applied were as objective as I could make them; they were derived from competition law, JTC 1 Directives, and market requirements. I think the list is as good today in regard to IS 29500 as it was then to Ecma 376, although I have not taken an equally deep dive into 29500. You might find the list useful, albeit there is more than a bit of redundancy in it.
Alex Brown

OOXML leap-year bug unfix (Norbert Bollow's Comments on Standards) - 0 views

  • The precise proposed addition to the text of ISO/IEC 29500-4 is: §10.7, "Additional representation for dates and times (Part 1, Section 18.17.4 )" For a document of a transitional conformance class, each unique instant in SpreadsheetML time shall be stored as an ISO 8601-formatted string or as a serial value. This would override, for files of the "transitional" conformance type, the statements in Section 18.17.4 which allow only the ISO 8601 date format.
    • Jesper Lund Stocholm
       
      This is amazing ... is there no end to the stupidity? also ... what happened to the "web2.0-ish" way of enabling your readers to comment? This reminds me of when Bob Sutor disabled comments on his pieces on OOXML.
  • I have been shocked to find that they're actually proposing to re-introduce the leap-year bug
    • Alex Brown
       
      And I'm shocked to see a member of the Swiss NB, who has contributed ZERO effort to WG 4 huge efforts in this area, poop out such an ignorant piece of rubbish as this blog article
Gary Edwards

Productivity Moving To The Web | BNET Technology Blog | Michael Hickins - 0 views

  •  
    What Web business systems really need are advanced desktop editors capable of producing business process rich compound documents in the language of the Web: HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript........
Gary Edwards

Office Web Apps : Silverlight Web Platform Lock-in for MSOffice documents - 0 views

  •  
    How Does Word Web App Get Better With Silverlight? Faster load performance, since typically fewer bytes need to be downloaded before showing the document. Improved text fidelity at 100% zoom. This includes better text spacing and rendering. Greatly improved text fidelity at other zoom levels not 100%. Text will respect settings set in cleartype tuner, so you're able to determine how much (if any) cleartype you'd like to see. The cleartype tuner is available on the web for older versions of Windows, and is included in Windows 7. Improved accuracy of hit highlighting in Find.
Graham Perrin

Next round of ODF vs OOXML… « CyberTech Rambler - 0 views

  • approval of an standard that wasn’t ready
  • no one at ISO listened
  • for not incorporating BRM resolutions in the published standard
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • in the time frame taken to approve it
  • by National Body to trust that BRM has influence
  • by BRM for not attending to every concerns of national bodies
  • The whole OOXML thing is a collection of mistakes
  • OOXML is fundamentally intended to document a format for a pre-existing technology and feature set of recent proprietary systems.
  • years for IS29500 to have a really good debugged version
  • years for ODF to have a good, complete debugged version
  • the nature of big standards
  • sad about OOXML meeting
  • Apple, Oracle and British Library did not even bothered to turn up
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    Found myself blocked from commenting on that blog entry for some reason. Here's the comment I tried to post. @ctrambler "Between vendor-heavy or user-heavy, I choose vendor-heavy. It is after all, a office document format designed for office application. Linking with other systems is important, but it is not the ultimate aim." That statement bespeaks lack of familiarity with what an IT standard *IS.* But it is a lack of familiarity shared by all too many who work on IT standards. Standards are about uniformity, not variability. An international standard must by law specify [i] all characteristics [ii] of an identifiable product or group of products [iii] only in mandatory "must" or "must not" terms. WTDS 135 EC - Asbestos, (World Trade Organization Appellate Body; 12 March 2001; HTML version), para. 66-70, http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds135_e.htm And IT standards in particular must "clearly and unambiguously specify all conformity requirements that are essential to achieve the interoperability." ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives, (5th Ed., v. 3.0, 5 April 2007) pg. 145, http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0856rev.pdf Absent such specifications, a standard is a standard in name only. A standard is intended to establish a market in standardized goods, creating economic efficiency and competition. This is perhaps most simply illustrated with weights and measures, where a pound of flour must weigh the same regardless which vendor sells the product. But we can also see it in the interoperability context, e.g., with standardized nuts, bolts, and wrenches. Absent sufficient specificity to enable and require interoperability, ODF and OOXML create technical barriers to trade rather than promoting competition. And the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade unambiguously requires that national standardization bodies "shall ensure that technical regulations [includes international standards] are not prepared, adopted or applied with a v
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    (continuation). . And the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade unambiguously requires that national standardization bodies "shall ensure that technical regulations [includes international standards] are not prepared, adopted or applied with a view to or with the effect of creating unnecessary obstacles to international trade." http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/17-tbt_e.htm#articleII So while I agree that linking IT systems may not invariably be the ultimate goal, sufficient specificity in an IT standard to do so is in fact a threshold user and legal requirement. Otherwise, one has vendor lock-in and definition of the standard is controlled by the vendor with the largest market share, not the standard itself. Neither ODF nor OOXML met than threshold for eligibility as international standards and still do not. In both cases, national standardization bodies voted to adopt the standards without paying heed to fundamental legal and user requirements.
Graham Perrin

Front-page: Microsoft now attempts to sabotage ODF - 0 views

Alex Brown

Gray Matter : Rethinking ODF leadership - 0 views

  • Is it time for Rob to step down as chair? I think so.
    • Alex Brown
       
      That's raising the stakes quite a bit ...
Alex Brown

Doug Mahugh : Working with ODF in Word 2007 SP2 - 0 views

  • built-support for ODF 1.1.
    • Alex Brown
       
      So, the cat is now among the pigeons ...
Alex Brown

Moved by Freedom - Powered by Standards » Blog Archive » News of the Weird (A... - 0 views

  • I just don’t get it
    • Alex Brown
       
      Neither do I: but then this is not the first signal of a less than unanimous attitude towards document formats from the Old Firm.
  • The Durban 2 conference in Geneva makes me think of a bizarre mashup of the first Durban conference and what I experienced at the OOXML BRM
    • Alex Brown
       
      Not the first time somebody seems to have got confused between issues of tynanny and totalitarianism, and ... document formats. What price perspective?
    • Jesper Lund Stocholm
       
      Actually I didn't know Charles participated in the BRM?
    • Alex Brown
       
      He didn't - this is something that Andy Updegrove published at the tim too. What price reality?
  • Alex is right. National transposition is a procedural relic. We should get the specs right out of software vendors and just skip this standardization crap that only justifies to pay useless consultants whose status is construed as some kind of impartial judge. This kind of failed processes have led us to believe that standards and norms could be somehow trusted; as it unfortunately turns out, it stops to be true when strongly applied pressure by one large private monopoly meets the weak morals of the ones in charge of ensuring the process is being duly respected. Thank you Alex, for spelling out the truth. Your lack of impartiality and your strange behaviour during the OOXML standardization process have clarified how poorly qualified you are at patronizing others and lecturing on the ISO and other standards bodies’ processes. I wish you good luck for your next job at Microsoft.
    • Alex Brown
       
      Ah, the sound of a dummy being being spat out ...
Alex Brown

An Antic Disposition - 2 views

shared by Alex Brown on 04 May 09 - Cached
  • If your business model requires only conformance and not actually achieving interoperability, then I wish you well. But remember that conformance and interoperability are not mutually exclusive options. An application can be conformant to a standard and also be interoperable, if you use the legacy formula namespace and syntax. So the desire to be conformant is not an excuse for not also being interoperable, or at least not a valid excuse.
    • Alex Brown
       
      Also known as "do as I do, not as I say". Of course the real culprit here is ODF itself - not an idea which Rob devotes any time to ...
  • Leadership entails foreseeing and preventing problems, not simply reacting to them.
    • Alex Brown
       
      Yup! So we need a parallel change in the PAS process in preparation for a submission of ODF
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
  •  
    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."
Gary Edwards

HTML5 data communications - 1 views

    • Gary Edwards
       
      Sounds like the core of a 1992 Windows Desktop Productivity "Compound Document" model.  Applications need to message, exchange and link data.  In 1992, the key technologies embedded in a compound document were DDE, OLE, ODBC, scripts and macros.  Later on, ActiveX and COM was added.  Today the MSOffice desktop productivity environment links into the MS-Live Productivity Cloud or the BPOS - SharePoint private cloud with a raft of WPF-SilverlightX stuff.  Good to see the Open Web fighting back with their own compound document model.
  • Cross-document messaging
Gary Edwards

The big winner from Apache OpenOffice.org | ITworld - Brian Proffitt - 1 views

  •  
    Brian is once again writing about OpenOffice and ODF, this time in the aftermath of Oracle's decision to cut OOo loose and turn it over to Apache instead of The Document Foundation.  Good discussion - features a lengthy comment from the mighty Marbux where he vigorusly corrects the river of spin coming out of IBM.  Worth a careful read! excerpt: IBM seems to maneuver itself to any open source project that suits its needs, and for whatever reason they have decided to hitch their wagon to Oracle's star (or vice versa). With this historical context, there is really little surprise in Oracle's decision to go with the Apache Software Foundation, because IBM was probably influencing the decision. My second question doesn't have a definitive answer--yet. But it needs to be answered. It is simply this: how will OpenOffice.org remain relevant to end users?
  •  
    I should have added to that comment a stronger warning for the Apache Foundation Board and developers considering joining the IBM-backed Apache OpenOffice.org incubator project in regard to the danger posed by IBM and Oracle's control of the OpenDocument Formats Technical Committee at OASIS, aptly characterized by IBM's Rob Weir: "Those who control the exchange format, can control interoperability and turn it on or off like a water faucet to meet their business objectives." Rob Weir, Those Who Forget Santayana, An Antic Disposition (20 December 2007), http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/12/those-who-forget-santayana.html What IBM, Oracle, and others can do by manipulating the ODF specification that Apache OOo depends upon is something entirely outside the control of the Apache Foundation. And as history has taught us so well, IBM and Sun exercised that control mercilessly via their co-chairmanship of the ODF TC to block all real interoperability initiatives. That is the very reason that only ODF implementations that share the same code base can interoperate. And if one were tempted to think that IBM and Sun/Oracle would not even consider manipulating the ODF specification to their own commercial advantage, consider the fact that in writing the quoted statement above, Rob Weir was speaking from deep personal experience in in such activities. So beware, both Apache Foundation and LibreOffice developers.
Jesper Lund Stocholm

An Antic Disposition: Protocols, Formats and the Limits of Disclosure - 2 views

  • it strips out ODF spreadsheet formulas
    • Alex Brown
       
      Telling ellision. I think Rob means "OpenOffice.org spreadsheet formulas" ...
  • interoperability is achieved by converging on a common interpretation of the format
    • Alex Brown
       
      Or, rather more effectively, by drafting the standard competently enough that the need for "intepretation" is, in practice, eliminated ...
  • However, from an interoperability perspective, MCE doesn't cut it. MCE is really just hand waving and pixie dust.
    • Jesper Lund Stocholm
       
      That is absolutely correct - MCE is not an interop tool or panacea - it is a compatibility-tool.
Alex Brown

Blogger: An Antic Disposition - Post a Comment - 0 views

    • Alex Brown
       
      "practical purposes", "reference implementation" - guys, why not just cut the crap and state you want to use OpenOffice (or MS Office) or whatever? Could it be that's ... not allowed?
  •  
    The New York State "OASIS approval is good enough for us" position has considerable tension with the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade ("ATBT") ratified by the U.S. pursuant to the Uruguay Round Agremeents Act, 19 U.S.C. 2503 and Presidential signature, and are therefore "the law of this land." Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines Co., 516 U.S. 217, 226 (1996). Relevant ATBT provisions are Article 2.4 (member nations must use appropriate international standards where they exist or parts of them as their technical regulations; I don't see an applicable exception); and 3.1 (member nations required to take such reasonable measures as may be available to them to ensure compliance by "local government and non-governmental bodies within their territories" with the provisions of Article 2). http://www.wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/17-tbt_e.htm New York State is a "local government" within the meaning of the ATBT. Likewise, a New York State decision to adopt a standard for its internal use is a technical regulation. See definition 1 in ATBT Annex 1 and the holding in regard to the term's meaning by the WTO Appellate Council in the case of EC Asbestos, http://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/dispu_e/cases_e/ds135_e.htm (para. 66-70 in the HTML version). Given that we have two relevant international standards, ISO/IEC:26300 and ISO/IEC:29500, it would seem that legally, mere "OASIS approval is [NOT] good enough" for New York State. Some people just don't get that the ATBT was intended to force government action to remove unnecessary obstacles to international trade (such as interoperability barriers) rather than just to rubber-stamp the status quo ante. The Feds have the enforcement responsibility here.
  •  
    Re "reference implementation," if you check this video of a Rob Weir presentation, at about 44 minutes, he states: " "ISO doesn't have the concept of a reference implementation." http://ooocon-kiberpipa.kiberpipa.org/media/index-2007.html#ODF_Interoperability_Robert_Weir But if you check his slides from the same presentation, at slide 22 we find, "Let's work to make OpenOffice.org be the full reference implementation for ODF!" http://www.robweir.com/blog/publications/Interoperability-Barcelona.pdf An ODF "reference implementation" controlled by a single vendor, Sun Microsystems, through its padlock on the code commit rights? Sounds like a moving interoperability target to me that a standards development organization has no control of. Not ISO. Not OASIS. The implementation tail should wag the standard dog according to Weir. Too bad New York State fell for that piece of baloney.
Graham Perrin

Interoperability vs Homogeneity « Arnaud's Open blog - 1 views

  • Interoperability vs Homogeneity
  • leaked updated document of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF)
  • taking back what could be considered one of the most advanced features of the previous document
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • how could “homogeneity” possibly qualify has a way of obtaining “interoperability”?
  • why would the EU endorse the notion of having everybody select one specific solution or system? Isn’t that in total contradiction with its very goal?
  • I seriously hope the EU realizes how misguided this move was and takes it back.
  • November 10, 2009
  • Arnaud Le Hors
Alex Brown

An Antic Disposition: Asking the right questions about Office 2010's OOXML support - 1 views

    • Alex Brown
       
      ... and we can expect similar censure for people claiming to support "ODF"?
  • Remember, the conformance language of OOXML is so loose that even a shell statement of "cat foo.docx > /dev/null" would qualify as a conformant application.
    • Alex Brown
       
      Think you're confusing ODF and OOXML here Rob; hint - look at OOXML "application descriptions"
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • But that is not what WG4 was recently told in Seattle, where they were told that Office would not write out Strict documents until Office 16
  • In other words, will Office 2010 be "strictly conformant" with the ISO/IEC 29500:2008 standards?
    • Alex Brown
       
      interesting made up concept, this "strictly conformant", for a standard which contains an extensibility mechanism ...
    • Alex Brown
       
      err, news to me ... and I was at the meeting.
  • To do otherwise is to essentially specify a require for the use of Microsoft Office and Microsoft Office alone.
    • Alex Brown
       
      or any of those other applications which support that format (including some from IBM even) ...
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