How come I am the one to notice how deficient ODF really is?
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Is ODF designed to be not implementable without source code? - Wouter - 0 views
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Exactly! It's not that ODF is under-specified. It's that ODF can't be fully specified until OpenOffice is completely documented and capable of supporting expected features. There is this famous quote from Sun's Svante Schubert that pretty much says it all; "Nothing goes into the ODF specification unless it's supported by OpenOffice". The statement was made at a meeting of the OASIS ODF Metadata SC while discussing the controversial use of "XML ID". IBM's Elias Torres, of RDFa fame, was passionately arguing that use of the XML ID should be left open to all developers. Sun had taken the position that XML ID should be limited to only a handful of elements supported by OpenOffice. The discussion acutally got far worse than the quote would indicate. Elias compromised his arguments suggesting that we should allow developers to have at it with XML ID for at least one year, and then revisit the issue. This suggestion lead to a discussion of how developers implementing elements with metadata would notify the metadata sub committee of their use case. A discussion list was proposed. The idea being that developers would send in their use cases and the oligarchs on the sub c would approve or disprove. Incredibly, this suggestions was shot down by Bruce d'Arcus (OpenDocument Foundation). Bruce thought that any developer needing metadata support for particular elements should have to join the OASIS ODF Metadata SC like everyone else before their needs would be considered. ( i.e. - like the other oligarchs). At the next weeks meeting, Rob Weir showed up with a list of 14 spreadsheet related elements that IBM needed XML ID support for. Sun representatives Svante Schubert and Michael Brauer immediately approved the use, agreeing that OpenOffice would support that implementation. This how things work at OASIS ODF. Ever wonder why SVG or XForms support in ODF is so limited? It's because the specification directly reflects the limits of the OpenOffice implement
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Sorry. Diigo cut my comment off about half way through. I've complained to Wade and Maggie about this problem, especially how it impacts and cripples the "Group Auto-Blog Post" feature . Months have gone by. Yet still the issue remains.
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In Office SP2, Microsoft manages to reduce interoperability | TalkBack on ZDNet - 0 views
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ODF is important. So What Went Wrong? Response to Jeremy Allison: Having participated in a number of government pilot studies, I must say that you are right; government officials do care about ODF. They really want it to work. But they also had expectations that ODF simply wasn't designed for. What they expected ODF to be was an open technology based on highly-structured XML markup that was application, platform, and vendor-independent, backward compatible, universally interoperable, and importantly, Web ready. That is not ODF nor is it OOXML. In fact, the closest thing we have for meeting these expectations is an ajax-webkit style HTML+ (HTML5, CSS4, SVG/Canvas, JS jQuery, etc.). ODF is highly structured, but it is not application-independent. .....
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The collective comments of gary.edwards's as posted on CNET - 0 views
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Can Microsoft Count on Inertia to Spur Office 2010 Upgrades? | Eric Lai - CIO Article C... - 0 views
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This article left me a bit confused. The author poses an important question about the next release of MSOffice; MSOffice 2010. Or what others have called MSOffice 11. The question is whether or not end users will buy into the new features, and continue on the upgrade treadmill as they have for the past 15 years or so. Strangely though, there is no discussion of the traditional factors binding end users to the upgrade treadmill. Things like ever changing formats, protocols and interfaces. Nor is there discussion as to the impact of marketplace demands that Microsoft comply with open standards; including open document exchange formats like ODF, OOXML and HTML+ (the advanced WebKit-Ajax document model).
The thing is, it's more than simple "inertia" that compels people to jump on the upgrade treadmill. The ODF pilot studies conducted in Massachusetts, California, Denmark and Belgium brought into sharp focus the difficulties workgroups have in replacing MSOffice. Years of client/server systems designed to run within the MSOffice productivity environment has left many a business process bound to the MSOffice suite of editors and the compound documents they produce.
I left my response in the reader feedback section of this CIO article.
".....In the past, the MSOffice upgrade treadmill was unavoidable due to the file format compatibility problem. As workgroups and business divisions purchased new computers with newer versions of MSOffice, resulting file format incompatibilities made workflow exchange of documents impossibly frustrating. Eventually, entire workgroups were forced into upgrading just to keep day to day business processes working....."
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Microsoft preps Office 365 document management tool for lawyers | Network World - 2 views
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The product apparently has a special search engine that can be accessed from within Outlook and Word, and it offers functionality to “track or pin” frequently used documents and “matters,” those issues related to managing a law practice. Emails can be dropped into the appropriate context from Outlook, and documents retain their metadata, permissions and version control as they’re stored and shared.
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"Microsoft has developed a document management add-on for Office 365 intended for lawyers, signaling a possible interest by the company in creating vertical-industry tools for the suite. Featured Resource Presented by Riverbed Technology 10 Common Problems APM Helps You Solve Practical advice for you to take full advantage of the benefits of APM and keep your IT environment Learn More Microsoft announced the product, called Matter Center for Office 365, Monday, saying it's in limited preview and available via a beta program to which customers can apply. The company provided few details about how the product works and what features it has, focusing instead on the fact that it is closely integrated with Office 365. Customers will be able to use Matter Center from within the suite's interface and components, like the Word and Excel apps, the SharePoint Online collaboration server and the OneDrive for Business cloud storage service. Matter Center has been designed to let lawyers and other legal professionals "easily find, organize and collaborate on files" within Office 365, instead of having to use a separate document management product. It remains unclear whether Matter Center will have all the security, compliance, retention and search functionality of full-featured document management products already used in legal settings."
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Big barrier in that vertical market; law firms are required by Bar disciplinary rules to protect the confidentiality of client files. Unless Microsoft implements end to end encryption for Office 365 so that it's nigh impossible for the NSA et ilk to gain access to the plain text and rewrites its end user license to guarantee confidentiality of customer files, MSFT will get only the unwary law offices to use Office 365.
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Free Online PDF to HTML5 Converter, convert pdf to html5 flip book | pubhtml5 - 1 views
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"PUB HTML5 automatically converts your legacy content to rich and interactive eBooks. Add interactivity, audios, videos, documents, HTML activities, assessments and more to provide a rich reading experience to your readers. PUB HTML5 enables you to convert your content only once and publish them to multiple platforms like iPad, Android and Windows 8 tablets, PC/Mac and industry standard formats like HTML5 and MOBI. For PUB HTML5, the operating steps of creating fabulous digital magazines are foolproof ones. We extol minimum efforts and maximum outputting effects. Just follow the right procedures of the software, and you can totally customize your own digital magazine on your IPAD. After you have converted your PDF files, with multiple Custom Setting buttons, you get the privilege to design your own digital magazines .You may chose the template you prefer; change the background image; insert rich media including audios, video, images; add links, etc. The whole process can be easily achieved within minutes. Converting your PDFs into HTML5 in order to create iPad magazines can be a simple and worthwhile experience following the right procedures. This video provides you with a step by step procedure on how to create iPad magazines from the very beginning. Even though the PDF is great for posting reading documents like manuals on a website, it can sometimes annoy and even deter your viewers. Public or shared computers may not have a PDF viewer installed or downloading a PDF might not agree with a user's browsing habits. In order to make material in a PDF more accessible to others, converting your PDF to HTML5 file may be an alternative to consider. You can convert PDF to HTML5 free by using the Export tool in PUB HTML5. This option lets you perform different types of on-the-fly PDF conversions. After you have personalized your digital creation by using PUB HTML5 on your PC, you may easily preview your digital work on your IPAD or any other electronic devices. You ma
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shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Aug 14
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We Can No Longer Unbundle Microsoft Office - 0 views
techcrunch.com/...cannot-unbundle-office-anymore
wordsdk Office-365 office-formats Office-Productivity
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Feature-bundled workflows to get things done on the device you’re looking at are necessities, not nice pairings like chocolate and peanut butter.
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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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ODF - the state of play - The future of ODF under OASIS, now that the... - 1 views
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"ODF - open document format - is an open, XML-based rich document format that has been adopted as the standard for exchanging information in documents (spreadsheets, charts, presentations and word processing documents), by many governments and other organisations (see, for example, here), including the UK Government. This is despite strong opposition by Microsoft; but I have seen Microsoft's proposed "open XML" standard and, frankly, it is huge and horrid (in the word of standards, these go together). If I remember correctly, the early draft I saw even incorporated recognition of early Excel leap-year bugs into the standard. ODF is now a pukka ISO standard, maintained by OASIS, under the proud banner: "The future is interoperability". My personal thoughts, below, are prompted by an ODF session at ApacheCon Core titled "Beyond OpenOffice: The State of the ODF Ecosystem" held by Louis Suárez-Potts (community strategist for Age of Peers, his own consultancy, and the Community Manager for OpenOffice.org, from 2000 to 2011), and attended by very few delegates - perhaps a sign of current level of interest in ODF within the Apache community. Nevertheless, and I am talking about the ODF standard here, not Apache Open Office (which is currently my office software of choice) or its Libre Office fork (which seems to be where the excitement, such as it is, is, for now), the standards battle, or one battle, has been won; we have a useful Open Document Format, standardised by a recognised and mature standards organisation, and even Microsoft Office supports it. That's good. So what could be the problem? Well, I don't care whether I use ODF from Open Office, Libre Office or even Office 365, I just want to be sure that everyone else can read my ODF documents (with a .odt, .ods or .odp extension, for text, presentation or spreadsheet, respectively), with whatever software they like; and that they'll either see exactly the functionality and formatting I see; or a well defined (an
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shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
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Odf - Converters & the ODF Zero Interop problem - 0 views
odf-converter.sourceforge.net/features.html
microsoft mooxml oasis odf officeopenxml opendocument openxml sun
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The ODF-Converter translates OpenXML documents (.DOCX) to Open Document Format (.Open Document Format) (and conversely) for Open XML processing applications. You will find below the list of unsupported features which may be due to standard compatibility issues, or to the translator itself (see rendering issues as discussed in the blog)...
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Explosive compatibility - interoperability study concerning ODF and MOOXL! This has Florian's signature written all over it, and it goes right to the heart of the matter.
David A. Wheeler submitted a comment to the OASIS ODF TC outlining his concerns with this publication. He suggests that a few minor changes to ODF could greatly improve compatibility - interop issues. He also figures out that OpenOffice - ODF has more features than MSOffice - MOOXML. Wha the doesn't ge is that it is these new and innovative features that continue to increase the difficulties of implementing ODF in real world business process workgroups!
David also ignores the fact that the TC jus tvoted down the Novell "LIt Enhancement Proposal" which was specifically designed to address the compatibility - interop issues outlined in this odf-converter blog! Given a choice, the ODF TC members chose the new and innovative features of the interop breaking Sun-KOffice "List Enhancement Proposal".
The List Enhancement Proposal discussion was so contentious and focused on personal destruction as to represent a total break down of the ODF concensus process. There is no way that either the Foundation or Novell will ever contribute another compatibility - interop enhancement proposal given the personal assault and determined oppostion of Sun to compatibility - interoperability initiatives.
The hard lesson the Foundation learned is that if you oppose Sun, you'll get booted out of OASIS!
The lesson Novell learned is that they are better off working through Ecma 376 to resolve these issues that the public demands be addressed.
Notice the last line in David's comment, "In any case, the MUCH, MUCH longer list of problems with Microsoft XML format isn't our problem."
During the contentious List Enhancement Proposal and the compatibility - interop related Metadata RDF/XML discussions, ODF members freque -
These are the same guys who just voted against the Novell List Enhancement Proposal that did exactly what the odf-converter blog claims needs to be done if the compatibility-interop problems are to be resolved!
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shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
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Sun-Bosak "Yes" Vote on ISO approval of MS OOXML - 0 views
www.ibiblio.org/...2007Jul16-081558.eml
bosak ecma iso microsoft oasis odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument openxml
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We wish to make it completely clear that we support DIS 29500 becoming an ISO Standard and are in complete agreement with its stated purposes of enabling interoperability among different implementations and providing interoperable access to the legacy of Microsoft Office documents.
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Sun announces support for ISO approval of MS OOXML as an international standard:
"We wish to make it completely clear that we support DIS 29500 becoming an ISO Standard and are in complete agreement with its stated purposes of enabling interoperability among different implementations and providing interoperable access to the legacy of Microsoft Office documents."
Bosak tries to obscure this "YES" vote by pointing to their comments that Microsoft should finally reveal the MS binary secret blueprints with a mapping of the binary blueprints to OOXML. Ha Ha Ha! Now we know what Microsoft paid Sun $2 Billion for in 2004. -
Yagotta B. Kidding: The vote was "yes, with comments." That is not, per ISO rules, a "conditional" yes, it's a just-plain-yes. The comments are advisory and regardless of whether they're resolved there's no way to change the "yes" to a "no." Specifically, ISO voting procedure [1] states, "Conditional approval should be submitted as a disapproval vote." Yes, it's confusing. The way these things work, there's no way to vote "unconditional no." The options are "yes, as it currently stands" and "yes, if the following problems are addressed." That makes the enormous effort to get unconditional approval quite curious. [1] JTC1 Directives, 5th Edition, Version 3.0, Section 9.8
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Comments on 'On the Office format wars' - 0 views
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A fatal flaw in your analysis By Marbux Posted Saturday 21st April 2007 08:15 GMT Your analysis contains a fatal flaw, Martin. That is your belief that adequate Microsoft XML <> OpenDocument translators will be available. In fact, all of the translators suck mightily and there is no prospect at all of them being perfected. The major problems are: (i) that Microsoft's XML formats seem deliberately designed to thwart their parsing with XPath, which is essential to XML transformations; (ii) that Microsoft's "XML" file formats include binary blobs, bitmasks, and multiple Windows and Microsoft dependendencies, all of which defy XML transformations; and (iii) OpenDocument assumes a richer page layout engine than Microsoft Word provides, so while DOCX can be completely mapped to ODT it is impossible to fully map in the other direction without declaring an MS Office interoperability subset of OpenDocument and ODF applications implementing a compatibility mode with reduced features. (That is more than somewhat ironic, given Microsoft's spin that it couldn't implement all of its features in OpenDocument. In fact, the exact opposite is true.) In fact, Steve Ballmer is on record as saying that the developers of the Novell-Microsoft-Clever Age plug-ins will not even attempt to achieve full fidelity file translations between the two formats. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2050848,00.asp?kc=EWEWEMNL103006EP17A Those translators achieve at best far less conversion fidelity than existing file conversion filters between OpenDocument and Microsoft binary file formats such as the OpenOffice.org conversion filters, which achieve only about 80 per cent fidelity. The file format cognescenti know this. See e.g., the paper by Gary Edwards and Sam Hiser included in this edition of the European Journal for the Informatics Professional. http://www.upgrade-cepis.org/issues/2006/6/up7-6Hiser.pdf (PDF). (Note that I contributed to that paper.) And as also detailed in that paper, what works well enough for some of us does not necessarily work well enough for all. Anything less than full fidelity data conversions is absolutely unacceptable in the context of wholly automated business processes and is in fact illegal in various contexts, including government records. So your thesis doesn't fly. In fact, I'd go so far as to bet that you have been suckered by the Microsoft spin doctors. Another indication is your depiction of the file format wars as being waged primarily between IBM and Microsoft, a recent theme of Microsoft's public relations machine. While it is seductive to believe that the controversy is just another chapter in the war between major competitors, the pro-ODF camp is far broader than IBM. For example, nearly 20 governments recently opposed fast track processing of Microsoft's draft standard at ISO. Do you believe they were all carrying water for IBM? Government bodies in more than 50 nations have chosen to adopt ODF. http://opendocumentfellowship.org/government/precedent And dozens of developers now support the OpenDocument standard in their applications. http://opendocumentfellowship.org/applications While IBM has had a noteworthy role in proliferating the OpenDocument formats, there is a movement without a recognizable leader in the industry. When it comes to vendor influence on things relevant to ODF, Sun Microsystem's far outshines IBM. But in fact, a core group of open standards and free and open source developers and advocates -- inside and outside government -- have played a far larger role. This is a customer-driven phenomenon, not a vendor-driven effort as you portray. So I will respectfully suggest that you reexamine your position on these issues. Reasonable minds can differ, but not on the grounds you advocate.
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Here we go again. A couple of boot lickin lackies at The Register make some moronic statements about the OpenDocument XML file format, and the portable document cognisceti experts come out of the wood work to set the record straight. I think it's a scam to get boost hits.
Once again Marbux hands out a major bitch splappin to Microsoft shills who have no idea what's coming. What a great job Marbox does, and does with a kind consideration that certainly isn't warranted given the idiocy of the main article. Where does the man's patience come from? I gave up long ago.
~ge~
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shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
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Q&amp;A: Calif. CIO Steers Clear of Ideology on File Formats - 0 views
www.computerworld.com/...article.do
california iso microsoft mooxml msoffice odf ooxml opendocument openxml xml
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We’re trying to view it as a straight business decision. What are the costs associated with one approach over another? Does it serve all of our business needs? If it doesn’t serve a business need, how do we satisfy that business need? We’re trying to view this just as a plain-vanilla, nonpartisan, nonideological issue.
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A mus tread. Carol Sliwa of ComputerWorld intervies Clark Kelso, California CIO. ODF is the main issue, with clark casting all his answers in the context of business decisions. Carol o fcourse is asking the best questions of any journalist alive.
Keep in mind that ComputerWorld and the Boston globe filed for the Freedom of Information Act to be invoked in Massachusetts. They got access to all the eMail, documnetation, and conferencing notes concerning ODF and Microsoft. Carol's interview with Louis Gutierrez last week was filled with the same hard questions Clark Kelso fielded so deftly.
The "committee" Clark Kelso has set up to look at these issues is headed by Bill Welty, the CIO of the California Air Resources Board. Bill is a long time opensource - Linux guy, but will be the firs tto admit that Microsoft is the only vendor providing a means of getting everything inot XML. And that's the heart of any SOA strategy, "First, get everything into XML".
With a 500 million MSOffice desktop bound business process headstart, Microsoft has the extreme advantage in this much needed migration to XML.
They now have their own proprietary application and platform bound version of XML; MOOXML (Microsoft OfficeOpenXML) heading for international standardization at ISO.
They now have their XML Hub in place; the Exchange4/SharePoint Hub. This is also an essential part of any SOA strategy. You've got to have an XML Hub where the XML information streams and service connection to legacy black box systems can be piped into, managed and resolved. The XML must also provide an end user interface to these information flows. One that converges and integrates information, documents, data, and workflows into an easy to manage and participate in interface. The E/S Hub excells at this because it covers the fundamentals of eMail, messaging, portal, calendar, scheduling, c
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Universal Interoperability Framework for OpenDocument - 0 views
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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.
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Does ODF Have a Future? - 0 views
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This section of the Slashdot discussion of the LinuxWorld "Game Over" article concerns itself with RTF and Microsoft. ACME 376 "decodes" and converts MS RTF to XML encoded RTF. The full da Vinci process follows this chain: imbr<>MS RTF<>ACME 376<>InfoSet = output target file format MS RTF is the internal structuring stage that all in-memory-binary-representation are sent through with any conversion. Including the conversion of imbr to OOXML The OOXML plugin process looks like this: imbr<>MS RTF<>OOXML The da Vinci ODF process looks like this: imbr<>MS RTF<>ACME<>InfoSet<>ODF The da Vinci CDF process outputs to CDF instead of ODFThe reason we need to output to something other than ODF is that the OASIS ODF TC has no interest in provisioning the ODF specification with much needed iX "interoperability eXtensions". the iX eXtensions were designed to accomodate the high fidelity "round trip" conversion of existing MS documents to ODF while establishing a high level of interoperability with existing MS applications and workgroup processes.
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Sun Supports OOXML as an ISO Standard? - 0 views
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Sun Microsystems Inc., largely considered an avowed opponent of Open XML because of its own development and support for the competing, ODF-based StarOffice suite, found itself in the unexpected position of stating its support for ratifying Open XML -- albeit after some changes in the proposal are made.
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Quote: Sun Microsystems Inc., largely considered an avowed opponent of Open XML because of its own development and support for the competing, ODF-based StarOffice suite, found itself in the unexpected position of stating its support for ratifying Open XML -- albeit after some changes in the proposal are made. "We wish to make it completely clear that we support DIS 29500 becoming an ISO Standard and are in complete agreement with its stated purposes of enabling interoperability among different implementations and providing interoperable access to the legacy of Microsoft Office documents," Jon Bosak, a Sun representative to V1, wrote in an e-mail to other committee members over the weekend. "Sun voted No on Approval because it is our expert finding, based on the analysis so far accomplished in V1, that DIS 29500 as presently written is technically incapable of achieving those goals, not because we disagree with the goals or are opposed to an ISO Standard that would enable them." Sun "found itself in the unexpected position of stating its support for ratifying OOXML"? What???? This is the official position of Sun?
For the near five years that i have been a member of the OASIS ODF TC, Sun has opposed
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shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
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Microsoft Watch Finally Gets it - It's the Business Applications!- Obla De OBA Da - 0 views
www.microsoft-watch.com/...obla_de_oba_da.html
odef odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument vista-stack
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To be fair, Microsoft seeks to solve real world problems with respect to helping customers glean more value from their information. But the approach depends on enterprises adopting an end-to-end Microsoft stack—vertically from desktop to server and horizontally across desktop and server products. The development glue is .NET Framework, while the informational glue is OOXML.
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OOXML is the transport - a portable XML document model where the "document" is the interface into content/data/ and media streaming.
The binding model for OOXML is "Smart Documents", and it is proprietary!
Smart Documents is how data, streaming media, scripting-routing-workflow intelligence and metadata is added to any document object.
Think of the ODF binding model using XForms, XML/RDF and RDFA metadata. One could even use Jabber XMP as a binding model, which is how we did the Comcast SOA based Sales and Inventory Management System prototype.
Interestingly, Smart Documents is based on pre written widgets that can simply be dragged, dropped and bound to any document object. The Infopath applicaiton provides a highly visual means for end users to build intelligent self routing forms. But Visual Studio .NET, which was released with MSOffice 2007 in December of 2006. makes it very easy for application and line of business integration developers to implement very advanced data binding using the Smart Document widgets.
I would also go as far to say that what separates MSOOXML from Ecma 376 is going to be primarily Smart Documents.
Yes, there are .NET Framework Libraries and Vista Stack dependencies like XAML that will also provide a proprietary "Vista Stack" only barrier to interoperability, but Smart Documents is a killer.
One company that will be particularly hurt by Smart Documents is Google. The reason is that the business value of Google Search is based on using advanced and closely held proprietary algorithms to provide metadata structure for unstrucutred documents.
This was great for a world awash in unstructured documents. By moving the "XML" structuring of documents down to the author - workgroup - workflow application level though, the world will soon enough be awash in highly structured documents that have end user metadata defining document objects and
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Microsoft seeks to create sales pull along the vertical stack between the desktop and server.
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The vertical stack is actually desktop - server - device - web based. The idea of a portable XML document is that it must be able to transition across the converged application space of this sweeping stack model.
Note that ODF is intentionally limited to the desktop by it's OASIS Charter statement. One of the primary failings of ODF is that it is not able to be fully implemented in this converged space. OOXML on the other hand was created exactly for this purpose!
So ODF is limited to the desktop, and remains tightly bound to OpenOffice feature sets. OOXML differs in that it is tightly bound to the Vista Stack.
So where is an Open Stack model to turn to?
Good question, and one that will come to haunt us for years to come. Because ODF cannot move into the converged space of desktop to server to device to the web information systems connected through portable docuemnt/data transport, it is unfit as a candidate for Universal File Format.
OOXML is unfi as a UFF becuase it is application - platform and vendor bound.
For those of us who believe in an open and unencumbered universal file format, it's back to the drawing board.
XHTML+ (XHTML + CSS3 + RDF) is looking very good. The challenge is proving that we can build plugins for MSOffice and OpenOffice that can fully implement XHTML+. Can we conver the billions of binary legacy documents and existing MSOffice bound business processes to XHTML+?
I think so. But we can't be sure until the da Vinci proves this conclusively.
One thign to keep in mind though. The internal plugins have already shown that it is possible to do multiple file formats. OOXML, ODF, and XML encoded RTF all have been shown to work, and do so with a level of two way conversion fidelity demanded by existing business processes.
So why not try it with XHTML+, or ODEF (the eXtended version of ODF en
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Microsoft's major XML-based format development priority was backward compatibility with its proprietary Office binary file formats.
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This backwards compatibility with the existing binary file formats isn't the big deal Micrsoft makes it out to be. ODF 1.0 includes a "Conformance Clause", (Section 1.5) that was designed and included in the specification exactly so that the billions of binary legacy documents could be converted into ODF XML.
The problem with the ODF Conformance Clause is that the leading ODF application, OpenOffice, does not fully support and implement the Conformance Clause.
The only foreign elements supported by OpenOffice are paragraphs and text spans. Critically important structural document characteristics such as lists, fields, tables, sections and page breaks are not supported!
This leads to a serious drop in conversion fidelity wherever MS binaries are converted to OpenOffice ODF.
Note that OpenOffice ODF is very different from MSOffice ODF, as implemented by internal conversion plugins like da Vinci. KOffice ODF and Googel Docs ODF are all different ODF implementations. Because there are so many different ways to implement ODF, and still have "conforming" ODF documents, there is much truth to the statement that ODF has zero interoperabiltiy.
It's also true that OOXML has optional implementation areas. With ODF we call these "optional" implementation areas "interoperabiltiy break points" because this is exactly where the document exchange presentation fidelity breaks down, leaving the dominant market ODF applicaiton as the only means of sustaining interoperabiltiy.
With OOXML, the entire Vista Stack - Win32 dependency layer is "optional". No doubt, all MSOffice - Exchange/SharePoint Hub applications will implement the full sweep of proprietary dependencies. This includes the legacy Win32 API dependencies (like VML, EMF, EMF +), and the emerging Vista Stack dependencies that include Smart Documents, XAML, .NET 3.0 Libraries, and DrawingML.
MSOffice 2007 i
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Microsoft's backwards compatibility priority means the company made XML-based format decisions that compromise the open objectives of XML. Open Office XML is neither open nor XML.
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True, but a tricky statement given that the proprietary OOXML implementation is "optional". It is theoretically possible to implement Ecma 376 without the prorpietary dependencies of MSOffice - Exchange/SharePoint Hub - Vista Stack "OOXML".
In fact, this was first demonstrated by the legendary document processing - plugin architecture expert, Florian Reuter.
Florian has the unique distinction of being the primary architect for two major plugins: the da Vinci ODF plugin for MSOffice, and, the Novell OOXML Translator plugin for OpenOffice!
It is the Novell OOXML Translator Plugin for OpenOffice that first demonstrated that Ecma 376 could be cleanly implemented without the MSOffice application-platform-vendor specific dependencies we find in every MSOffice OOXML document.
So while Joe is technically correct here, that OOXML is neither open nor XML, there is a caveat. For 95% of all desktops and near 100% of all desktops in a workgroup, Joe's statment holds true. For all practical concerns, that's enough. For Microsoft's vaunted marketing spin machine though, they will make it sound as though OOXML is actually open and application-platform-vendor independent.
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Microsoft got there first to protect Office.
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No. I disagree. Microsoft needs to move to XML structured documents regardless of what others are doing. The binary document model is simply unable to be useful to any desktop- to server- to device- to the web- transport!
Many wonder what Microsoft's SOA strategy is. Well, it's this: the Vista Stack based on OOXML-Smart Documents-.NET.
The thing is, Microsoft could not afford to market a SOA solution until all the proprietary solutions of the Vista Stack were in place.
The Vista Stack looks like this:
..... The core :: MSOffice <> OOXML <> IE <> The Exchange/SharePoint Hub
..... The services :: E/S HUb <> MS SQL Server <> MS Dynamics <> MS Live <> MS Active Directory Server <> MSOffice RC Front End
The key to the stack is the OOXML-Smart Documents capture of EXISTING MSOffice bound business processes and documents.
The trick for Microsoft is to migrate these existing business processes and documents to the E/S Hub where line of business developers can re engineer aging desktop LOB apps.
The productivity gains that can be had through this migration to the E/S Hub are extraordinary.
A little over a year ago an E/S Hub verticle market application called "Agent Achieve" came out for the real estate industry. AA competed against a legacy of twenty years of contact management based - MLS data connected desktop shrinkware applications. (MLS-Multiple Listing Service)
These traditional desktop client/server productivity apps defined the real estate business process as far as it could be said to be "digital". For the most part, the real estate transaction industry remains a paper driven process. The desktop stuff was only useful for managing clients and lead prospecting. No one could crack the electronic documents - electonic business transaction model. This will no doubt change with the emer
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Microsoft can offer businesses many of the informational sharing and mining benefits associated with the markup language while leveraging Office and supporting desktop and server products as the primary consumption conduit.
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By adapting XML
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The requirements of these E/S Hub systems are XP, XP MSOffice 2003 Professional, Exchange Server with OWL (Outlook on the Web) , SharePoint Server, Active Directory Server, and at least four MS SQL Servers!
In Arpil of 2006, Microsoft issued a harsh and sudden End-of-Life for all Windows 2000 - MSOffice 2000 systems in the real estate industry (although many industries were similarly impacted). What happened is that on a Friday afternoon, just prior to a big open house weekend, Microsoft issued a security patch for all Exchange systems. Once the patch was installed, end users needed IE 7.0 to connect to the Exchange Server Systems.
Since there is no IE 7.0 made for Windows 2000, those users relying on E/S Hub applications, which was the entire industry, suddenly found themselves disconnected and near out of business.
Amazingly, not a single user complained! Rather than getting pissed at Microsoft for the sudden and very disruptive EOL, the real estate users simply ran out to buy new XP-MSOffice 2003 systems. It was all done under the rational that to be competitive, you have to keep up with technology systems.
Amazing. But it also goes to show how powerfully productive the E/S Hub applications can be. This wouldn't have happened if the E/S Hub applications didn't have a very high productivity value.
When we visited Massachusetts in June of 2006, to demonstrate and test the da Vinci ODF plugin for MSOffice, we found them purchasing en mass E/S Hubs! These are ODF killers! Yet Microsoft sales people had convinced Massachusetts ITD that Exchange/SahrePoint was a simple to use eMail-calendar-portal system. Not a threat to anyone!
The truth is that in the E/S Hub ecosystem, OOXML is THE TRANSPORT. ODF is a poor, second class attachment of no use at the application - document processing chain level.
Even if Massachusetts had mandated ODF, they were only one E/S Hub Court Doc
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Microsoft will vie for the whole business software stack, a strategy that I believe will be indisputable by early 2009 at the latest.
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Finally, someone who understands the grand strategy of levergaing the desktop monopoly into the converged space of server, device and web information systems.
What Joe isn't watching is the way the Exchange/SharePoint Server connects to MS SQL Server, Active Directory Server, MS LIve and MS Dynamics.
Also, Joe does not see the connection between OOXML as the portable XML document/data transport, and the insidiously proprietary Smart Documents metadata - data binding system that totally separates MSOOXML from Ecma 376 OOXML!
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I'm convinced that Office as a platform is an eventual dead end. But Microsoft is going to lead lots of customers and partners down that platform path.
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Yes, but the new platform for busines process development is that of MSOffice <> Exchange/SharePoint Hub.
The OOXML-Smart Docs transport replaces the old binary document with OLE and VBA Scripts and Macros functionality. Which, for the sake of brevity we can call the lead Win32 API dependencies.
One substantial difference is that OOXML-Smart Docs is Vista Stack ready, while the Win32 API dependencies were desktop bound.
Another way of looking at this is to see that the old MSOffice platform was great for desktop application integration. As long as the complete Win32 API was available (Windows + MSOffice + VBA run times), this platform was great for workgroups. The Line of Business integrated apps were among the most brittle of all client/server efforts, bu they were the best for that generation.
The Internet offers everyone a new way of integrating data, content and streaming media. Web applications are capable of loosly coupled serving and consuming of other application services. Back end systems can serve up data in a number of ways: web services as SOAP, web services as AJAX/REST, or XML data streams as in HTTPXMLRequest or Jabber P2P model.
On the web services consumption side, it looks like AJAX/REST will be the block buster choice, if the governance and security issues can be managed.
Into this SOA mash Microsoft will push with a sweeping integrated stack model. Since the Smart Docs part of the OOXML-Samrt Docs transport equation is totally proprietary, but used throughout the Vista Stack, it will provide Microsoft with an effective customer lockin - OSS lockout point.
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Is It Game Over? - ODF Advocate Andy UpDegrove is Worried. Very Worried - 0 views
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This seems to me to be a turning point for the creation of global standards. Microsoft was invited to be part of the original ODF Technical Committee in OASIS, and chose to stand aside. That committee tried to do its best to make the standard work well with Office, but was naturally limited in that endeavor by Microsoft's unwillingness to cooperate. This, of course, made it easier for Microsoft to later claim a need for OOXML to be adopted as a standard, in order to "better serve its customers." The refusal by an incumbent to participate in an open standards process is certainly its right, but it is hardly conduct that should be rewarded by a global standards body charged with watching out for the best interests of all.
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Andy UpDegrove takes on the issue of Microsoft submitting their proprietary "XML alternative to PDF" proposal to Ecma for consideration as an international standard. MS XML-PDF will compliment ECMA 376 (OOXML - OfficeOpenXML) which is scheduled for ISO vote in September of 2007. Just a bit over 60 days from today.
Andy points out some interesting things; such as the "Charter" similarities between MS XML-PDF and MS OOXML submisssions to Ecma:
MS XML-PDF Scope: The goal of the Technical Committee is to produce a formal standard for office productivity applications within the Ecma International standards process which is fully compatible with the Office Open XML Formats. The aim is to enable the implementation of the Office Open XML Formats by a wide set of tools and platforms in order to foster interoperability across office productivity applications and with line-of-business systems. The Technical Committee will also be responsible for the ongoing maintenance and evolution of the standard. Programme of Work: Produce a formal standard for an XML-based electronic paper format and XML-based page description language which is consistent with existing implementations of the format called the XML Paper Specification,…[in each case, emphasis added]
If that sounds familiar, it should, because it echoes the absolute directive of the original OOXML technical committee charter, wh
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It's All Over But For The Shouting :: Xandros to Provide Enhanced Interoperability Betw... - 0 views
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Xandros, the leading provider of intuitive Linux solutions and cross platform interoperability tools, today announced it will join Microsoft and other companies to build and ship open source translators between documents stored in Ecma Office Open XML and Open Document Formats. The translators, being developed through the Open XML/ODF Translator project, will be made available to Xandros users via the Xandros Networks update facility. Every Xandros product that includes OpenOffice.org will be equipped with the translators. This announcement underscores the shared view of Xandros and Microsoft that competing office productivity applications should make it easy for customers to exchange files with one another and allow them to use their operating system and office productivity applications of choice. "This is good news for customers. Xandros and Microsoft share the view that competing office productivity applications should make it easy for customers to exchange files with one another," said Tom Robertson, general manager for Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft. "Mixed system environments are becoming more common, and we believe in delivering interoperability by design for the benefit of our customers. Our ongoing collaborative relationships with commercial open source companies like Xandros help us achieve that goal." "We are delighted to join forces with Microsoft and others to provide interoperability between standardized XML document formats," said Andreas Typaldos, Xandros CEO. "The work of the world is done using various document formats as well as operating systems, so it is vital to provide our customers with the means interoperate with ease in this diverse environment."
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shared by Gary Edwards on 12 Dec 07
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Microsoft Will Support ODF! But Only If It Doesn't 'Restrict Choice Among Formats' - 0 views
www.betanews.com/...1181922127
ecma-376 interoperability iso marbux microsoft odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument xml
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By Marbux posted Jun 19, 2007 - 3:16 PM Asellus sez: "I will not say OOXML is easy to implement, but saying ODF is easier to implement just by looking at the ISO specification is a fallacy." I shouldn't respond to trolls, but I will this time. Asellus is simply wrong. Large hunks of Ecma 376 are simply undocumented. And what's more, absolutely no vendor has a featureful app that writes to that format. Not even Microsoft. There's a myth that Ecma 376 is the same as the Office Open XML used by Microsoft. It is not. I've spend a few hundred hours comparing the Ecma 376 specification (the version of OOXML being considered at ISO) to the information about the undocumented APIs used by MS Office 2007 that recently sprung loose in litigation. See http://www.groklaw.net/p...Rpt_Andrew_Schulman.pdf Each of those APIs *should* have corresponding metadata in the formats, but are not in the Ecma 376 specification.
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Incredible comment by Marbux! With one swipe he takes out both Ecma 376 and ODF.
Microsoft has written a letter claiming that they will support ODF in MSOffice, but only if ISO approves Ecma 376 as a second office suite XML file format standard. ODF was approved by ISO nearly a year ago.
Criticizing Ecma 376 is easy. It was designed to meet the needs of a proprietary application, MSOffice, and, to meet the needs of the emerging MS Vista Stack of applications that spans desktop to server to device to web platforms. It's filled with MS platform dependencies that make it impossibly non interoperable with anything not fully compliant with Microsoft owned API's.
Criticizing ODF however is another matter entirely. Marbux points to the extremely poor ODF interoperability record. If MOOXML (not Ecma 376 - since that is a read only file format) is tied to vendor-application specific MSOffice, then ODF is similarly tied to the many vendor versions of OpenOffice/StarOffice.
The "many vendor" aspect of OpenOffice is somewhat of a scam. The interoperability that ODF shares across Novell Office, StarOffice, IBM WorkPlace, Red Office, and NeoOffice is entirely based on the fact that these iterations of OpenOffice are based on a single code base controlled 100% by Sun. Which is exactly the case with MSOffice. With this important exception - MOOXML (not Ecma 376) is interoperable across the entire Vista Stack!
The Vista Stack is comprised of Exchange/SharePoint, MS Live, MS Dynamics, MS SQL Server, MS Internet Server, MS Grove, MS Collaboration Server, and MS Active Directory. Behind these applications sits a an important foundation of shared assets: MOOXML, Smart Documents, XAML and .NET 3.0. All of which can be worked into third party, Stack dependent applications through the Visual Studio .NET IDE.
Here are some thoughts i wou