ODF's limited spec can't support all MS Office features unless Microsoft goes on a major entending trip.
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ODF useless for Microsoft needs - Google: OOXML 'insufficient and unnecessary' - Talkba... - 0 views
www.zdnet.co.uk/...282-39001068c-20091780o,00.htm
embrace-extend google harmonization odf ooxml opendocument unification
shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Mar 08
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Harmonizing ODF and OOXML: The DIN - ISO "Harmonization" Project - 0 views
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Contact: Gerd Schürmann Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS Tel +49 (0)30 3463 7213 gerd.schuermann@fokus.fraunhofer.de Berlin
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At a recent meeting in Berlin, The DIN Fraunhoffer Institute pushed forward with the EU project to harmonize ODF and OOXML. Microsoft and Novell attended the harmonization effort. Sun and IBM did not. This in spite of invitations and pleas to cooperate coming into Sun and IBM from government officials across the European continent. We've long insisted that inside the OASIS ODF Technical Committee walls there have been years of discussions concerning ODF compatibility with the billions of MS binary documents, and ODF interoperability with MSOffice. Sun in particular has been very clear that they will not compromise OpenOffice application innovations to improve interoperability with MSOffice and MSOffice documents. The infamous List Enhancement Proposal donnybrook that dominated OASIS ODF discussions from November 20th, 2006, to the final vote in April of 2007, actually begins with a statement from Sun arguing that application innovation is far more important than market demands for interoperability. The discussions starts here: Suggested ODF1.2 items The first of many responses declaring Sun's position that innovation trumps interop, and that if anyone needs to change their application it should be Microsoft: see here DIN will submit a "harmonization" report with recommendations to ISO JTC1. I wonder if IBM and Sun will continue to insist on government mandated "rip out and replace" solutions based on their ODF applications when ISO and the EU have set a course for "harmonization"?
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IBM's Director of Strategy comes clean on OpenXML - IBM *WILL* support OpenXML in its L... - 0 views
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Well, if that's IBM's plan they're going to need more than ODF, that's for sure - and that brings us to the announcement I've been wondering about: IBM favors ODF as a file format because it is "truly open" and technically elegant, Heintzman said. But IBM will support Open XML, which is the current document format in Office 2007, in its Lotus collaboration and portal products. IBM already supports older versions of Office. I feel a Pamela Jones moment coming on .... there it is, as plain as day for the world to see, Doug Heintzman breaks through all IBM's doublespeak and hypocrisy and admits it. I don't know about "Beyond Office" as a plan, I think the real game here is "Beyond ODF"
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» Getting enveloped by the potential of Cloud computing | Web 2.0 Explorer | ... - 0 views
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By taking a fundamentally Web-based approach to the development of applications, we shift from bolting Web capabilities onto the silo toward a mode in which data and functionality are native to the Web: a mode in which the design decisions are more about modelling business requirements for limiting the ways in which data flows from one point to another rather than trying to anticipate the places in which it might be needed in order to design those pathways into software from the outset.
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How do we change the mindset of today’s application developers, in order that they stop building ‘old’ applications in the new world?
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Re: [office-comment] Public Comment - 0 views
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Regarding section 1.5 itself: The Open Office TC decided to use the term MAY rather than MUST (or will) at the mentioned location, because it wanted to ensure that the OpenDocument specification can be used by as many implementations as possible. This means that the format should also be usable by applications that only support a very small subset of the specification, as long as the information that these applications store can be represented using the OpenDocument format. A requirement that all foreign elements and attributes must be preserved actually would mean that some applications may not use the format, although the format itself would be suitable. Therefor, we leave it up to the implementations, which elements and attributes of the specification they support, and whether they preserve foreign element and attributes. Some more information about this can be found in appendix D of the specification.
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This OASIS ODF discussion is about the Compliance - conformance clause of the ODF specification: Section 1.5. A developer has complained that use of MAY instead of MUST in the wording of the clause would enable conforming applications to destroy foreign elements and alien attribute markup at will. This of course would result in ZERO Interoeprability!!!!! The foreign elments and alien attributes were included for the purposes of improved ODF compatibility with the billions of MSOffice binary documents that would need to be converted to ODF. Sadly, the section 1.5 loop hole falls short of the compatibility goal, but that only begins to scratch the surface of the ODF problems. OpenOffice only supports foreign elements and alien attributes for text spans, and paragraphs!!!!!! All other such markup is unrecognized and therefore "destroyed" by OpenOffice. ZERO interop. No roundtripping with MSOffice desktops. Lossy conversion with jagged fidelity. Guaranteed.
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Opportunity Knocks - 0 views
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With the news that another state–California–is considering adopting open standard XML-based file formats for office documents (which could be interpreted to mandate ODF), and the continued march of governments around the world to ODF (ISO/IEC 26300:2006), their poorly-done translator is not likely to meet the standard. For one thing, it “bolts” ODF capability on, rather than building it in as a fully-native peer format. It also uses XSLT to attempt the translation when OOXML’s design is not fully usable with XSLT. I cannot see how they could have created a more error-prone method to do the conversions. This could potentially cause Microsoft’s office applications suite to be expelled from government agencies and their employees and contractors.
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Count on Walt Hucks to nail it every time. Once again he comes through with another gem, commenting on the Mary Jo Foley interview with the slippery Tom Robertson, General Manager of laugh out loud "Interoperabiltiy and Standards" for Microsoft. I kid you not.
Microsoft describes their highly proprietary and self serving implementation of interoperbiltiy as, "Interoperability by design". Which means, only those applications, systems and services designed by Microsoft will have the needed interoperability consumers must have to make sense of the many volumes of information and information processes that drive critical day to day workflows.
Now with Ecma 376, we have a clear example of Microsoft "Standards by Design". Very sad, but it's our lot in life.
Thanks Walt, once again a great commentary,
~ge~
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ODF versus OOXML: Don't forget about HTML! - O'Reilly XML Blog - 0 views
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Doug Mahugh : Standards-Based Interoperability - 0 views
blogs.msdn.com/...ds-based-interoperability.aspx
interop standard ODF OOXML Excel spreadsheet OpenFormula
shared by Graham Perrin on 28 Jul 09
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First, let’s consider how software interoperability works when it is not standards-based. Consider the various ways that four applications can share data, as shown in the diagram to the right. There are six connections between these four applications, and each connection can be traversed in either direction, so there are 12 total types of interoperability involved.
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As the number of applications increases, this complexity grows rapidly. Double the number of applications to 8 total, and there will be 56 types of interoperability between them:
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through standards maintenance, transparency of implementation details, and collaborative interoperability testing.
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In the real world, interoperability is almost never achieved in this way. Standards-based interoperability is much better approach for everyone involved,
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each application implements the published standard as written, and this provides a baseline for delivering interoperability.
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the existence of a standard addresses many of the issues involved, and the other issues can be addressed
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In the standards-based scenario, the standard itself is the central mechanism for enabling interoperability between implementations: This diagram is much simpler
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How this all applies to Office 2007 SP2 I covered last summer the set of guiding principles that we used to guide the work we did to support ODF in Office 2007 SP2.
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What about Bugs and Deviations? Of course, the existence of a published standard doesn’t prevent interoperability bugs from occurring.
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Our approach to the transparency issue has been to document the details of our implementation through published implementer notes.
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a standard (evolved and improved as reality demands) is the proper foundation for resolving interoperabilty
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All complex software has bugs, and some bugs can present significant challenges to interoperability. Let’s consider the case that 3 of the 4 applications have bugs that affect interoperability, as shown in the diagram to the right.
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I am creating my own fantasy about the state of affairs
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I was at the year-ago DII meeting where the guiding principles were announced and their application to spreadsheet formulas described. I applauded the principles and understood the reasoning for formulas.
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How this would impact various groups of users and non-users (who still want to interoperate) of Office 2007 did not surface in my consciousness.
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In the case of spreadsheet formulas, help is on the way -- OpenFormula is under development for use with ODF 1.2.
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PC Pro: News: Google Docs accommodates Office 2007 file formats - 0 views
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Google has now rectified this situation following the ratification of the Open XML standard last year, but anybody looking to import the PPTX files used by PowerPoint 2007 will need to wait. The files can be converted into a Google Docs-friendly format, but you'll lose formatting, themes and transition effects.
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GullFOSS - 0 views
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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.
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Groklaw - Digging for Truth : The problem with XML document formats - 0 views
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The problem with that, as I understand it, is that the transitional spec is pretty much unimplementable by anybody except MS
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Wow! The ODF peasants with pitchforks are have taken to the streets, and ISO document expert Alex Brown is taking them on. The volumes of traffic generated by any discussion of the ISO XML document wars continues to amaze. It's very one sided though. The basic problem seems to be that ISO has accepted two XML document format standards, OOXML and ODF, with OOXML being held to a higher set of expectations than ODF. Alex would do well if he could step back from the OOXML - ODF war, and move the discussion to something like the theoretical IDABC ODEF: the European "Open Document Exchange Formats" design. With ODEF as single set of XML format requirements against which both OOXML and ODF can be measured and compared, Alex might be able to neutralize the heated emotions of angry Open Source - Open Standards - Open Web supporters, who mistakenly think ODF measures up to ODEF expectations and requirements. Trying to compare ODF to OOXML isn't getting us anywhere. At some point, we have to ask ourselves what is it that we want from a standardized XML document format. Having participated in both the Massachusetts pilot study and the California pilot discussions, i have to say that the public expectations were that XML formats would have a basic set of characteristics: open markup; structured separation of content, presentation and logic; high level interoperability (exchange), and Web ready. These are basic "must have" expectations. XML formats were expected to be "better" than 1998 HTML-CSS. But when we apply the basic set of expectations, todays HTML+ (webkit HTML5, CSS4, SVG/Canvas, JS, JS Libs) turns out to be a far better format. Where the XML formats really fall off the wagon are the interoperability and Web ready expectations. For the life of me i don't see how anyone can compare ODF or OOXML interoperability with that of HTML+. And of course, HTML+ is the native language/for
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Jesper Lund Stocholm was kind enough to point out that, once again, GrokLaw is stoking the fires of the XML document wars. This time PJ takes on Alex Brown, of the ISO SC34 document standards group convenor. And Alex responds ... and responds ... and responds. of course, the attacks keep coming! I left Jesper a rather lengthy comment at: http://tinyurl.com/document-wars
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An Antic Disposition - 2 views
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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.
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Groklaw - When Would You Use OOXML and When ODF? -- What is OOXML For? - 0 views
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If you say Groklaw is an echo chamber, for example, it has insulting connotations
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Groklaw deserves respect
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on a committee set up to help a national body
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Microsoft (and Alex Brown) are working within JTC1/SC34
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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.
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HTML5 data communications - 1 views
www.networkworld.com/...020911-html5-data.html
visual-document visually-immersive web-document HTML5 Web-Compound-Document
shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Feb 11
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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.
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