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Gary Edwards

Interoperability, choice and Open XML - spot the odd one out - 0 views

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    Excellent summary from Edward Macnaghten. It all comes down to this: OOXML is designed entirely to extend the Microsoft Desktop Monopoly, leveraging that monopolist control into server systems, devices and the future of the Internet
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    Excellent summary from Edward Macnaghten. It all comes down to this: OOXML is designed entirely to extend the Microsoft Desktop Monopoly, leveraging that monopolist control into server systems, devices and the future of the Internet
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    Excellent summary from Edward Macnaghten. It all comes down to this: OOXML is designed entirely to extend the Microsoft Desktop Monopoly, leveraging that monopolist control into server systems, devices and the future of the Internet
Gary Edwards

IBM vs. ISO and Open XML - 0 views

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    The blog itself really sucks, but the comments are explosive and well worth reading. Especially Stephan's summary response. It's clear that Microsoft's entire justification for OOXML rests on the billions of binary documents that only Microsoft knows th
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    The blog itself really sucks, but the comments are explosive and well worth reading. Especially Stephan's summary response. It's clear that Microsoft's entire justification for OOXML rests on the billions of binary documents that only Microsoft knows th
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    The blog itself really sucks, but the comments are explosive and well worth reading. Especially Stephan's summary response. It's clear that Microsoft's entire justification for OOXML rests on the billions of binary documents that only Microsoft knows th
Alex Brown

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

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

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

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

Microsoft bashed in OOXML shens (and comparing loos) - Computerworld Blogs - 0 views

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    Collection of clips from the blogosphere concerning the pending Sep 2nd ISO vote on MS OOXML
Gary Edwards

Not Even Close? OOXML Vote Tally for INCITSLB2341 - 0 views

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    Wow. The USA votes ISO approval of MS OOXML (DIS 29500) with only three no votes being cast out of 16 members! It's not even close.
Gary Edwards

The French AFNOR Proposal to Merge ODF and MS-OOXML - 0 views

  • Summary Statement:  Hey, this is an excellent plan!  We can fully support this effort, even though the ISO National Bodies still have to work their way through the treacherous big vendor consortia controlled channels of OASIS ODF and Ecma 376.  Bringing the big vendor applications to heel is not going to be easy.  Merging ODF and MS-OOXML however is a worthwhile effort - one that the conversion and translator plug-in communities have been working on for the past three years!  It can be done!  And all it takes is five generic elements added to the existing ODF 1.2 specification ........
Gary Edwards

INTERVIEW: Craig Mundie -- Microsoft's technology chief, taking over from Bill Gates - 0 views

  • In this exclusive interview with APC, Mundie says the notion of all software delivered entirely through the web browser is now widely recognised as being 'popular mythology'. He also stakes the claim that Google's existence and success was contingent on Microsoft creating Windows. He talks about what's coming down the pipeline for future versions of Windows, and his belief that Windows can get still more market share than it has today. He also discusses the issues around the recent controversy over the Office Open XML file format.
  • So Vista is in its diffusion cycle and until there is enough of it out there, you won't really see the developer community come across.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Uh, the diffusion we really should be focused on involves the OOXML plug-in for MSOffice, IE 7.0, MSOffice 2007, and the Exchange/SharePoint Hub. 

      The Exchange/SahrePoint juggernaught is now at 65% marketshare, with Apache servers in noticeable decline.

      So it seems the improtant "diffusion" is going forward nicely.  The exploitation of the E/S Hub has also started, and here the Microsoft deelopers have an uncahllenged advantage.  Most of the business processes being migrated to the E/S Hub are coming off the MSOffice bound desktop.  Outsiders to the MS Stack do not have the requisite access to the internals that drive these MSOffice bound business processes, so they have little hope of getting into the "exploitation" cycle.

      This aspect was on full display at the recent Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco.  The only way a O2 provider can position their service as a collaborative addon to existing business processes is to have some higher level of interop-integration into those processes beyond basic conversion to HTML.

      Most O2 operatives struggle to convince the market that an existing business process can be enhanced by stepping outside the process and putting the collaboration value elsewhere.  While this approach is disruptive and unfriendly, it tends to work until a more integrated, more interoperable coolaboration value becomes available.

      And that's the problem with O2.  Everyone is excited over the new collaboration possibilities, but the money is with the integration of collaborative computing into existing business processes.  This is a near impossible barrier for non Microsoft shops and would be competitors.  If you're Microsoft though, and you control existing formats, applications and processes, the collaboration stuff is simple value added on.  It's all low hanging fruit that Microsoft can get paid to deliver while O2 players struggle to f
  • So far, we have delivered about 60 million copies. That would represent about six per cent of the global Windows install base. So it has probably got to get up another few percentage points before you will start to see a big migration of the developer community.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      What is he talking about? Does a developer write to Vista? Or do they write to MS Stack ready .NET - OOXML-Smart Documents, XAML, Silverlight stuff?
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Rather, what will happen is that you'll have, a seamless integration of locally running software in increasingly powerful client devices (not just desktops) and a set of services that work in conjunction with that. A lot of what we are doing with the Live platform not only allows us to provide the service component for our parts, but also gives the abilities for the developer community to perfect their composite applications and get them deployed at scale.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Bear in mind that these "service components" are proprietary, and represent the only way to connect MS clients to the rest of the MS STack of applications.
  • Microsoft's business is not to control the platform per se, but in fact to allow it to be exploited by the world's developers. The fact that we have it out there gives us a good business, but in some ways it doesn't give us an advantage over any of the other developers in terms of being able to utilise it.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Oh right! The anti trust restrictions will not be lifted until November. Have to be careful here. But how is it Craig that non Microsoft devlopers and service providers will be albe to access and interoperate with important "service components"?
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    Great inteview, i'll comment as i make my way down the page.  Hopefully others will do the same.
Gary Edwards

[office] List Proposal Vote Deadline on Wednesday - 0 views

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    The List Proposal donnybrook refuses to go away. In a recent argument concerning Rick Jellife's controversial post, "Harmonization by augmenting ODF with OOXML elements", ODF defender Bruce D'Arcus pointed to his own OASIS ODF TC message thread in an effort to defend Sun.

    The issue is that Rick Jellife and others are wondering why it is that Sun opposes interoperability enhancements to ODF that would solve the problem of converting MS binary and XML documents to ODF, and back.

    Bruce's reference introduces the incredibly acrimonious "List Proposal Vote Deadline" thread. He also brings up a really important problem. The ODF Charter does not reference compatibility with existing file formats as a key objective.

    The consequences of this neglect in the ODF Charter is that every time the issue of compatibility with existing MS binary or xml documents comes up, Sun claims it's, "Outside the Charter and Out of Scope".

    I've been hearing that excuse for the last five years!! Meanwhile, the world has discovered it's impossible to implement ODF without also having to totally rip out and replace MSOffice. And that means a costly re engineering all existing business processes, line of business integrated apps, and assistive technology add-ons.

    ODF failed in Massachusetts because Sun and OASIS TC refused to recognize the importance of an ODF plugin for MSOffice offering the same high fidelity "round trip" conversion as the OOXML plugin for MSOffice.

    For one reason or another, big ODF vendors are locked into a "rip out and replace - legislative mandate" strategy. A strategy to limit the interoperability of ODF with MS documents, applications, and processes has only one consequence. As Massachusetts proved to the world, ODF is impossible to implement if you have workgroups and business processes based
Gary Edwards

Microsoft Will Support ODF! But Only If It Doesn't 'Restrict Choice Among Formats' - 0 views

  • 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
Gary Edwards

ODF infighting could help Microsoft's OOXML - zdnet Mary Jo - 0 views

  • As a result of the latest infighting, is Microsoft now all-but-guaranteed that OOXML will sail through the ISO standardization vote in Feburary 2008 because ODF — and its backers — will be in disarray? This has nothing to do with the outcome of the Ballot Resolution Meeting.
  • But we also oppose adoption of ODF 1.2 as an ISO standard in the form we expect it to emerge from OASIS.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Bad phrasing. We would really like to see ODF 1.2 succeed at ISO, but this would require compliance with ISO Interoperability Requirements. Today, ODF 1.2 is not compliant with those requirements, and we fully expect it to be defeated at ISO due to the obvious shortcoming. In May of 2006, ISO Directorate issued a clear and unequivocal statement tha tODF must conform to ISO Interoeprability Requirements. ODF 1.2 work was closed in July of 2007, without the needed changes.
  • Matusow sounds reasonable only if you are not a file format congnoscenti. He uses an appeal to ignorance. A single universal set of formats is entirely feasible from a technical standpoint; e.g., the example of HTML. But the chances of getting there by opening application-specific formats are dim at best, as the ODF experience teaches. You might acquire an entirely different perspective if you spent some time viewing the short sets of slides from the IDABC Open Document Exchange Formats Workshop 2007, which laid down the market requirements for 21 European government IT national bodies. http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6474 (.) I particularly recommend Dr. Barbara Held's report to the plenary session linked from this page, http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6704/5935 and the four workshop reports linked from the bottom of this page, http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6702/5935 (.) Those slides reflect a lot of careful research into the issue you and Matusow discuss.
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    Hey, great comments! 
Gary Edwards

CDF: The common format you've never heard of - O'Reilly XML Blog - Flock - 0 views

  • Quick! Do you use the Compound Document Format?! You, know, CDF … surely you use CDF, right? Chances are pretty good that you have no idea about what I’m talking about. Everyone knows Microsoft’s word document format and Adobe’s PDF, chances are pretty good that if you’re reading this on XML.com you’ve heard of ODF and OOXML, especially after the fairly rancorous discussions about ISO status for these two formats. Yet CDF, hmmmm … that’s a rough one. Didn’t it belong to Corel, once upon a time?
  • CDF was in the news recently with the implosion of the Open Document Foundation, originally established to endorse ODF, though in its death throes it briefly highlighted the CDF format as perhaps a better format for documents than either OOXML or ODF. This is admittedly one of those areas where it may be justified in looking at XHTML especially and going “huh”? How can that be a full document format - it’s used for web pages, after all - you wouldn’t want to use it to mark up a full book, would you? Document formats are a lot like religions - people are ready to defend them to the death if need be, yet at the same time it becomes easy to dismiss certain religions that don’t even seem to be religions at all (such as my personal favorite, the rather philosophical Tao). Could you mock up a brochure in XHTML and CSS? Actually, it turns out that its surprisingly easy to do just that - especially if you throw a little SVG into the mix and allow the possibility of embedding XHTML within SVG (for all those odd little bits of rotation and other special effects).
Gary Edwards

OpenDocument Foundation Dissolves, Leaving Projects in Disarray - Scott Fulton Beta News - 0 views

  • But in serving as that "glue," the Foundation's founders had recently said they believed CDF could fulfill the original goals of the ODF format - goals they described as having been circumvented by their current backers, perhaps in the effort to keep OOXML from being considered an equal player. To that end, they established what had been called the da Vinci Project, whose stated goal was to build a better bridge between OOXML and ODF than Microsoft itself is working on, using CDF as a go-between.Today, the da Vinci Project appears dead, as its home pages on Google were also struck down.
Gary Edwards

ODF 1.2 Metadata? You're Dreaming! Microsoft starts rolling out more OOXML translators... - 0 views

  • Sorry Shish, you're wrong about ODF 1.2 Try ODF 1.5 or ODF 2.0, maybe. The metadata requirements for ODF 1.2 actually did include two way lossless translation capability. Unfortunately these features did not survive the final cut, and were not included in the April 2007 submission. You might also want to check the February 23, 2007 metadata proposal from Florian Reuter. That also would have delivered the goods and perhaps put ODF that grand convergence category of usefulness across desktops, servers, devices and web systems currently the exclusive domains of MS-OOXML and CDF+. Florian had devised a means of using metadata to describe the presentation aspects of content and structural objects. Very revolutionary. And based on the simple notion that bold, font, margins etc. are simply metadata about content and style objects. Where the train came off the track had to do with the concept of an XML ID means of linking metadata to content. Not that there was anything wrong with this mechanism. It's actually quite clever. What went wrong was that Sun insisted that only those elements approved and supported by OpenOffice would be allowed to make use of XML ID metadata. For independent developers, this is a serious constraint. Because of this constraint, the metatdata sub committee started off with six elements supported by OOo that metadata could be appied to. IBM then came in and asked for eleven more elements having to do with charts and graphs. The OpenOffice crew decided they could support this, so in they went. Then an interesting question was posed, "How are independent developers supposed to submit elements for metadata consideration?"
Gary Edwards

ODF Split Shakes Up Document Battle | Redmond Developer News Michael Desmond - 0 views

  • The ongoing file format battle between proponents of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) took a surprising turn lthis week, when a key ODF proponent announced that it intended to abandon the ISO-approved specification. The move by the OpenDocument Foundation comes less than two months after Microsoft lost a key ISO vote to approve OOXML as a standard.
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    Thi sis Michael Desmons's second article on the file format wars.
Gary Edwards

Standard or Not, OOXML Has a Lot Going for It | Redmond Developer News - Desmond - 0 views

  • Ultimately, O'Kelly said it best in his report: "The relative success of ODF and OOXML, in any case, will be determined more by its utility and which community effectively exploits W3C standards than it will by one or the other more effectively navigating through ISO standards procedures."
Gary Edwards

Burton Group Responds to Ars Technica's Angry ODF/OOXML Rebuttal - 0 views

  • Five days ago Ars Technica issued its view of the Burton Group ODF/OOXML report and made it clear that they disagreed with its findings, going with the headline, "Analyst group slams ODF, downplays Microsoft ISO abuses." We've had some questions from Burton Group clients and others about the article, so I thought it would be worthwhile to go through where we agree, where we disagree, where Ars Technica mischaracterizes what we said, and where it's wrong.
Gary Edwards

The future of XML - 0 views

  • Of course, the most important conversion isn't from OpenDoc to OOXML or vice versa: it's a down conversion from either OpenDoc or OOXML to XHTML. The HTML exporters in OpenOffice and Microsoft Office are uniformly atrocious. Look for third-party developers to pick up the slack. Most important, look for individual corporate developers and webmasters to begin publishing custom templates for their sites. This will enable regular folks to write in Microsoft Word as they're accustomed to doing and then upload their musings straight into the local content-management system. Editing and reviewing tools can be built right in. Because machines generate all the markup (the humans see the GUI interface they're used to), well-formedness will be a freebie. The majority of the Web won't be well-formed by the end of 2008, but a larger percentage will be than today.
Gary Edwards

OOXML-ODF: The Harmonization Hope Chest | Orcmid's Lair - 0 views

  • 4. The Reality in the Punchbowl Meanwhile, Sam Hiser offers a different impression of the DIN effort [4]: "The ODF-to-OOXML harmonization effort being hosted by the German standards group, DIN, is Europe's best effort to resolve our Mexican Standoff between Microsoft, Sun and IBM. Even though harmonization is laughably complex and will not work unless the applications are harmonized too, the best and brightest of Germany are left to hope for success."  [emphasis mine: dh] Although the mission of the German effort is translation (Übersetzung), not harmonization, I find there is a very important point that is not made often enough:  People write, read, and edit office documents with little, if any, understanding of the particular format that makes them persistent in digital form.  The XML-based open formats do not change that.   People adapt to the software/device they are using by trial and error.  We train ourselves to obtain the visible results that we want.  Different people obtain superficially similar results by quite different means.   Even when someone has gone to the trouble to create style sheets, forms, macros, templates and other format-impacting aids, it is very loosey-goosey in practice.  And it still does not require paying attention to the file format.  
Gary Edwards

Microsoft's OOXML limps through ISO meeting - ZDNet UK - 0 views

  • Gary Edwards, former president of the Open Document Foundation, an industry group that promoted ODF but then rejected both approaches and closed itself down in November 2007, said: "Ecma and Oasis are vendor consortia where the rules governing standards specification work favour vendor innovation over the open and transparent interoperability consumers, governments and FLOSS efforts demand... Shutting that door on Ecma OOXML is proving very difficult exactly because the primary and fundamental rule of ISO interoperability requirements has been breached."
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