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The First Law of the Interent is that of interoperability. Interop ALWAYS comes first.
Interop trumps innovation!!!
This is why the Interent changes everything. Innovation takes place within the bounds of ineroperabiltiy. Vendors of course rely on innovation as the primary means of market differentiation. They would of course champion innovative features. Interop on the other hand is a leveling force.

Is there nothing that can cool the flames of this document war? Interesting coverage of the recent OOXML Interoperability event in London (Monday). Real stuff not talk. Since Florian, Jason and i are working on an OpenWeb ready HTML+ layer riding over OOXML there are some things mentioned that look very interesting. ..."An Opera browser plug-in for Open XML Document Viewer v1.0 was released at the meeting; the tool provides direct translation for Open XML documents (.DOCX) to HTML, enabling access to Open XML documents from any platform with a Web browser, including mobile devices. The document-viewing software already includes a plug-in for Firefox, Internet Explorer 7 and Internet Explorer 8...." ..."Microsoft and the other participants in Monday's forum also made available a beta of Apache POI 3.5, a Java API (application programming interface) to access information in the Open XML Format....."

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.

... and who it's aimed at. It's not as if Groklaw carries any weight (is it?)

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.

"Version 4.3 of LibreOffice, the free and open source productivity suite developed by the Document Foundation and derived from the OpenOffice.org project, was released today. Aside from the usual array of bug fixes and new features designed to make it more cross-compatible with Microsoft Office, version 4.3 has features that give files from legacy Macintosh productivity software a new lease on life. Take control! 30 essential OS X command-line tips Go beyond the graphical user interface and take full advantage of Mac OS X at the command line READ NOW Most of the improvements around file handling in 4.3 involve better support for various aspects of the Office Open XML (OOXML) format used by Microsoft for its productivity software. LibreOffice users have often complained of opening Word 2010 or Word 2013 documents and finding that the formatting had been mangled or features like annotations hadn't survive being resaved in LibreOffice. Version 4.3 preserves many more of the attributes used in OOXML documents, such as style attributes for text and images. Also new to this edition of LibreOffice is import support for document formats created by a slew of legacy Macintosh applications: BeagleWorks, ClarisWorks, Claris Resolve, GreatWorks, MacWorks, SuperPaint, and Wingz. Likewise, Microsoft Works spreadsheets and databases -- not just word processing documents -- can now also be imported into LibreOffice. Another change, which might not directly affect many users but hints at how the refactoring of LibreOffice's code is reaching many legacy issues, involves the lengths of paragraphs. Previously, paragraphs in a LibreOffice document couldn't exceed 65,000 characters due to a bug in the underlying OpenOffice.org code that had persisted for over a decade and remained unclosed. Other changes include comments that can now be "printed in the document margin, formatted in a better way, and imported and exported," according to the Document Foundation; better behaviors for sp

Whoa, another must read analysis of OOXML. This one is provided by the University of Toronto, with a focus on "accessibility" issues. Not surprisingly, OOXML fails on nearly all counts.

The authors recommend that we go back to work on improving ODF and the accessibility of ODF ready applications.

This is a follow up comment to a question cocerning my previous post, "commercialization of interoperability".  The question from "mosborne" is as follows:

A different viewI'm not on the ODF TC, but I have followed its evolution through the information publicly available at Oasis.

My outside view of some of the various interoperability discussions you mention is different than yours. I saw a resistance to adoption of features if the sole reason was because OOXML did it that way. The dissenting members wanted a more substantial reason, not simply to add OOXML "features" to ODF.

If the goal is to simply make ODF like OOXML, then what is the point? You would have conceded all control to Microsoft since they have effective control of OOXML.It's an interesting question, but not well informed.  The threads at OASIS ODF having to do with interoperability are focused on efforts to have our cake and eat it too. 

The List Enhancement Proposal thread played out over a six month period.  And yes, it is true that Sun fought the Novell proposal because they felt new and innovative features for OpenOffice/StarOffice were more important than the interoperability CIO's and IT departments are demanding.   But that misses the more important point that Novell was able to craft their interoperability proposal exactly so that the precious advanced feature sets of applications that command les sthan 1% marketshare would be accommodated.

What Sun and most others on the ODF TC don't get is that the markets have no use for these new and innovative feature sets unless and until they can transition their documents and business processes out of MSOffice.  If workgroup bound end users can't do that first, it won't matter how

Uh OH! Look what Microsoft has put into the new .NET 3.0 SDK! Flow Documents is a Microsoft specific version of HTML that is part of the Windows Presentation Foundation Browser Developers Framework. XAML - XPS-XABL. It also looks as though Microsoft has reserved MS-OOXML MSOffice level integration for themselves. Another thought is that MSOffice is being positioned as a developers framework for Web 2.0 development. This docuemnt is goign to take some serious study. Bad news for IBM and Adobe for sure. PDF, Flash and AJAX are all going to be in the fight of their lives. The conversion tools are going to become of critical importance. Some initial thoughts are that we could convert MSOffice documents to CDF+; convert OpenOffice documents to CDF+; and convert Flow Documents to CDF+, using the same XHTML 2.0 - CSS desktop profile (WICD Full). Converting MS-OOXML to Flow Documents however appears to be next to impossible by design. The easy approach would be to let the da Vinci plug-in perfect an internal conversion to either CDF+ or Flow. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft provides a Flow plug-in for MSOffice. I doubt it, but perhaps there will be a demand from Flow developers. da Vinci could of course be configured to produce Flow Documents. At first glance, my assumption would be that the ability to convert native MSOffice documents and allication genrated Flow Documents to CDF+ would be the most important course to take. We''ll see. This is no doubt explosive stuff. Microsoft is truly challenging the W3C for the Web.

Uh OH! Look what Microsoft has put into the new .NET 3.0 SDK! Flow Documents is a Microsoft specific version of HTML that is part of the Windows Presentation Foundation Browser Developers Framework. XAML - XPS-XABL. It also looks as though Microsoft has reserved MS-OOXML MSOffice level integration for themselves. Another thought is that MSOffice is being positioned as a developers framework for Web 2.0 development. This docuemnt is goign to take some serious study. Bad news for IBM and Adobe for sure. PDF, Flash and AJAX are all going to be in the fight of their lives. The conversion tools are going to become of critical importance. Some initial thoughts are that we could convert MSOffice documents to CDF+; convert OpenOffice documents to CDF+; and convert Flow Documents to CDF+, using the same XHTML 2.0 - CSS desktop profile (WICD Full). Converting MS-OOXML to Flow Documents however appears to be next to impossible by design. The easy approach would be to let the da Vinci plug-in perfect an internal conversion to either CDF+ or Flow. It will be interesting to see if Microsoft provides a Flow plug-in for MSOffice. I doubt it, but perhaps there will be a demand from Flow developers. da Vinci could of course be configured to produce Flow Documents. At first glance, my assumption would be that the ability to convert native MSOffice documents and allication genrated Flow Documents to CDF+ would be the most important course to take. We''ll see. This is no doubt explosive stuff. Microsoft is truly challenging the W3C for the Web.

Will ISO follow either the AFNOR or Brittish proposals to merge ODF and OOXML? I think so. If they continue on their current path of big vendor sponsored document wars, ISO will beocme irrelevant. Sooner or later the ISO National Bodies must take back the standards process from corporate corruption and influence. One thing is clear. Neither Microsoft or IBM is about to compromise. IBM has had many chances to improve ODF's interoperability with Microsoft Office and the Office documents, but has been steadfast in their stubborn refusal to concede an inch. Microsoft hides behind their legacy installed base of over 550 million MSOffice desktops. There simply isn't a pragmatic or cost effective way of transitioning the installed base to ODF without either seriously re writing and replacing those applications, or, changing ODF to be compatible. The marketplace is clear on what they intend on doing. Pragmatism will rule. Productivity trumps standards initiatives whenever they are out of sink. In the face of this clear marketplace intent, one would think IBM might compromise on ODF. No way! They are intent on using ODF to force a market wide rip out and replace of MSOffice. Most people assume that there are two opposing groups at war here; the Microsoft OOXML group vs. the IBM ODF group. This isn't an accurate view at all. There is a third, middle group of developers working the treacherous space of conversion - the no man'sland between OOXML MSOffice and ODF OpenOffice. The conversion group know the problems involved, and are actually trying to dliver marketplace facing solutions. The vendors of course are in this war to the bitter end, and could care less about the damage they cause to end users. It's also true that the conversion group seeks to bridge desktop productivity into the larger, highly interoeprable web platform. It's also possible that ISO will chose to merge

A Second response to Mary Jo's, "Microsoft starts rolling out more OOXML translators" is also posted here. The title is "Standardization by Corporation". Shish-Ka-Bob makes the assertion the ODF 1.2 metadata model will enable lossless two way conversion between MSOffice and ODF. While it's true that that intent was a key component of the original July of 2006 Metadata Requirements, the proposal was eventually stripped from the final submission made in April of 2007. I try to explain to Shish how that came about. The second post here, "Standardization by Corporation", is a follow on to statements made to Shish. The statements have to do with the events at ISO, and what i think will eventually happen. IMHO, ISO will follow either the AFNOR or Brittish proposals to merge ODF and OOXML. To do this they will remove entirely the coproarate vendor influence of Ecma and OASIS, and perfect the merger entirely at ISO. My post just happened to coincide with ISO Governor Mark Bryan's "Standardization by Corporations" letter. A derpressing but nevertheless very true concern. In fact, the OpenDocument Foundation was created specifically to address our concerns about the undue influence big application vendors were exerting on ODF following the April 30th, 2005 approval of ODF 1.0 (which went on to become ISO 26300). ~ge~

Thanks to the CDF Workgroup! 

This quote from Chalres Schultz is ridiculous. Because Novell is not allowed to commit code to OpenOffice, they must maintain a separate code base of extensions and improvements. With each build of OpenOffice, Novell must reintegrate their changes into the code base, making for a managerial nightmare. When Novell does have improvements that Sun wants though, there is no end to the hoops of fire the Sun developers will jump through to get it. The Field Enhancement routine written by Novell's Florian Router is one of those improvements that Sun had to have. Sun even went so far as to arguing for changes in the way ODF implements fields to accomodate the Novell improvements! It's important to note however that Sun did not support the ODF Field Enhancements UNTIL Novell agreed to donate Florian's code to OpenOffice!!!!!! Proving conclusively what i have been arguing for years: Sun does not allow for any changes to ODF unless and until those changes can be implemented by OpenOffice. The ODF Field Enhancements needed by Florian's fix to OpenOffice were originally proposed on July 12th, 2006, when Florian was the CTO of the OpenDocument Foundation. These changes to the way ODF implements fields were needed by the da Vinci plug-in as part of our efforts to save ODF in Massachusetts. so here we have a rather direct example of Sun refusing improvements to ODF when needed by another application (da Vinci), but supporting those exact same changes when it is OpenOffice that can be improved!!! The arguments that the OpenOffice.org Community isn't open also apply to the OASIS ODF TC work!!!!!!

Good catch by Eric!
This link is to the infamous Sun statement of support for MS OOXML issued by Jon Bosak when ISO DIS 2900 was voted on by the US delegation to ISO.
The statement is important because it directly references the core issue: MS OOXML was written for MSOffice and the billions of binary docuemnts bound to that application suite. ODF on the other hand was written to OpenOffice.
Because ODF was not designed for the conversion of those billions of MSOffice documents, conversion is next to impossible. The implementation of ODF in MSOffice is next to impossible. The loss of information, especially the presentation-layout information, is so severe as to be intolerable in the real world.
This leaves the real world, where MSOffice dominates over 550 million desktops, unable to implement ODF. In light of this real world problem, Sun's Bosak urges support for MS OOXML as an ISO standard!!!
So we have this situation at OASIS ODF where Sun is in control of both ODF and OpenOffice, refusing in all cases to compromise the linkage or accomodate the much needed interoperability enhancemnts seeking to improve the conversion of billions of documents to ODF. And publicly supporting MS OOXML as the only pragmatic alternative to the situation Sun is responsible for!

While the workgroup failed to decide between "choice" (Microsoft's mantra) and "openness" (the ODF mantra), predictably punting this question to a new Electronic Records Committee, it did issue a number of interesting findings, the most important of which reads as follows: In the office suite format debate, there currently is no compelling solution for the State's openness needs. The State needs open standards and formats. Simultaneously, the State needs electronic records to be preserved in their original formats whenever possible. Many Request for Public Comments commenters, particularly in response to the e-discovery questions, stated preserving a record in the same format as it was created results in a more faithful record and diminishes the possibility of expensive e-discovery disputes. This is important to ensure future generations of New Yorkers can access the permanently valuable electronic records being created today. Moreover, State Archives emphasizes creating records in open formats makes it easier to preserve their essential characteristics and demonstrates they are authentic (i.e., they were created in the course of State government business and have not been altered without proper authorization). I imagine that the workgroup must have found some level of solace in arriving at the one conclusion that all the experts seem to agree on: that electronic documents should be published using the same format in which they are created. If this principle held true for state documents, it would reduce the job of the new Electronic Records Committee to deciding between three alternatives: (1) require all state agencies to create and publish their documents in OOXML, (2) require all state agencies to create and publish their documents in ODF, or (3) allow each agency to decide which of these formats, OOXML or ODF, they will use in creating and publishing their documents. Unfortunately, this central assumption is incorrect, and adopting it as a basi

Yes!  It's Da Vinci time.  I wonder if W^ has downloaded ACME 376 and taken the Da Vinci conversion engine out for a test run?  Belgium and Adobe took a look, and have expressed an interest in getting their hands on the ODF 1.2 version of Da Vinci.  California and Massachusetts have yet to comment about ACME 376, but of course they are also waiting for Da Vinci.

I'll thank W^ for his kind comments, and make sure he knows about the ACME 376 proof of concept.  If DaVinci can hit perfect conversion fidelity with those billions of binary documents using XML encoded RTF, there is no reason why Da Vinci can't do the same with ODF.  We do however need ODF 1.2 to insure that perfect interoperability with other ODF ready applications.

Yes!  It's Da Vinci time.  I wonder if W^ has downloaded ACME 376 and taken the Da Vinci conversion engine out for a test run?  Belgium and Adobe took a look, and have expressed an interest in getting their hands on the ODF 1.2 version of Da Vinci.  California and Massachusetts have yet to comment about ACME 376, but of course they are also waiting for Da Vinci.

I'll thank W^ for his kind comments, and make sure he knows about the ACME 376 proof of concept.  If DaVinci can hit perfect conversion fidelity with those billions of binary documents using XML encoded RTF, there is no reason why Da Vinci can't do the same with ODF.  We do however need ODF 1.2 to insure that perfect interoperability with other ODF ready applications.

Hi guys,

There is an interesting discussion triggered by Tim Bray's "ongoing · Life Is Complicated" blog piece.  Our good friend Mike Champion has some interesting comments defending ISO/IEC approval of MS Ecma 376 based on many arguments.  But this one seems to be the bottom line;

<mike> "there is not an official standard for one that (in the opinion of the people who actually dug deeply into the question, and I have not) represents all the features supported in the MS Office binary formats and can be efficiently loaded and processed without major redesign of MS Office.

..... So, if you want a clean XML format that represents mainstream office document use cases, use ODF. If you want a usable XML foormat that handles existing Word documents with full fidelity and optimal performance in MS Office, use OOXML. If you think this fidelity/performance argument is all FUD, try it with your documents in Open Office / ODF and MS Office 2007 / OOXML and tell the world what you learn." </mike>

Mike's not alone in this.  This seems to be the company line for Microsoft's justification that ISO/IEC should have two conflicting file formats each pomising to do the same thing, becaus eonly one of those formats can handle the bilions of binary documents conversion to XML with an acceptable fidelity. 

This is not true, and we can prove it.  And if we're right  that you can convert the billions of binaries to ODF without loss of fidelity, then there was no "technology" argument for Microsoft not implementing ODF natively and becoming active in the OASIS ODF TC process to improve application interoperability.

<diigo_

The war is over?  When did Microsoft surrender?  And when did they sign the official terms of surrender?

The terms of surrender are simple. Microsoft must agree to fully support and implement ODF as a native file format in all versions of MSOffice qualified for the current OOXML compatibility kit. Furthermore, MSOffice must offer end users the choice of selecting ODF as the default MSOffice file format.

Those are the terms of surrender, and i for one don't see how the Microsoft or Novell Translator plugin's qualify?  These things are garbage!

What if an MSOffice user was to work on a document, save it to OOXML only to open it later to find a near totally useless and corrupted document with a conversion fidelity equal to that achieved by the hapless MCN Translator Plugins?

Right.  What's good for the goose is good for the gander.  Until these idiotic MCN Translators can achieve a conversion fidelity between ODF and OOXML acceptable to MSOffice users - comparable to native documents use and expectations, they should be regarded for what they are: an experimentation proving conclusively that OOXML is not even close to being interoperable with ODF.

~ge~