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Gary Edwards

What will it be for ODF? Continuation of limited interop? Or a transition to Universa... - 0 views

    • Gary Edwards
       
      Preserving metadata! Preserving application specific information. Preserving "unknown" information inside of a document
  • Unless we add conformance requirements for the preservation of metadata and processing instructions, the less featureful apps will never  be able to round-trip documents with the more featureful apps. Our language should require that. Personally, I believe that the software-as-an-end-point client-side office suites are dinosaurs at the end of their era. They are being finished off by a thousand cuts as users spend less and less time using them and more and more time using other apps, such as web apps. ODF either develops methods for interoperability among all apps or it will die along with the office suites. E.g., Microsoft knows this and is busily migrating its Office development budget across the Sharepoint/Exchange server hubs to the network. Meanwhile, this TC fiddles with preserving the 1995 software-as-an-endpoint vision.
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    Marbux is clearly at the top of his game here as he hammers the interoperability issue.
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?
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  • 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

OpenDocument Foundation drops support for ODF, backs obscure W3C format - Arstechnica R... - 0 views

  • The OpenDocument Foundation has decided to end its support for OASIS's OpenDocument Format (ODF) and instead support W3C's Compound Document Format (CDF), which is currently described in the Web Integration Compound Document Core 1.0 draft. This move reflects growing concerns within the interoperability advocacy community about the long-term viability of both ODF and Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML).
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

Computerworld - South Africa, Netherlands and Korea striding toward ODF - Eric Lai - 0 views

  • One prominent ODF backer, the unrelated Open Document Foundation, said in late October that it would stop backing ODF in favor of a more viable universal format called the Compound Document Format (CDF). Marcich said that "won't have any effect on the alliance or on ODF" adoption. Moreover, CDF, which is a World Wide Web Consortium format, differs greatly in features and goals than ODF. "We're talking about apples and oranges here," he said.
Gary Edwards

Greg McNevin : Open Document Foundation Abandons Namesake, Closes up Shop - 0 views

  • The decision to go with CDF has left some industry commentators scratching their heads, with arstechnica.com’s Ryan Paul noting that the decision is curious as CDF doesn't support “the full range of functionality required for office compatibility”. Paul does add, however, that the formats broad use of formats such as XHTML and SVG does give it a compelling edge.
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    The W3C's Chris Lilley, IBM and the lawyer for OASIS have been making quite a bit of noise claiming that CDF doesn't support "the full range of functionality required for office compatibility". 

    This a strange claim, especially when considering IBM as the primary source.  CDF WiCD Full 1.0 is a desktop profile for CDF.  Other profiles include WICD Mobile and WICD Core.  The call for implementations for WICD core, mobile and full went out on Monday, November 12, 2007. 

    To understand cdf, one must first get a handle on the terms used to describe cdf technologies.
    ..... CDF= compound document formats
    ..... CDRF= compound document by reference framework
    ..... WICD = Web Integration Compound Document
    ..... CDR using WICD = Compound Document by Reference using a WICD profile, (Core, Full or Mobile)
    ..... Compound Document by Reference Framework 1.0
    ..... WICD Core 1.0
    ..... WICD Mobile 1.0 Profile
    ..... WICD Full 1.0 Profile

    The WICD Full 1.0 Profile is the "DESKTOP" profile for CDF.
    Some interesting Quotes:

    "WICD Full 1.0 is targeted at desktop agents".

    "The WICD Full 1.0 profile is designed to enable rich multimedia content on desktop and high capability handheld agents."

    From the Compound Document by Reference Use Cases and Requirements Version 1.0 :

    "The capability to view documents with preserved formatting, layout, images and graphics and interactive features such as zooming in and out and multi-page handling."

    "
    <
Gary Edwards

Does ODF 1.2 Metadata Solve the Interop Problem? - Microsoft starts rolling out more O... - 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?"
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    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~
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

Collaboration and Content Strategies Blog: Free Report on ODF/OOXML Available - 0 views

  • The overall document summary: Industry debate about the relative merits of OpenDocument Format (ODF) and Ecma 376 Office Open XML (OOXML) highlights the significance of the productivity application market shift from binary and proprietary file formats to vendor- and product-independent Extensible Markup Language (XML) models. The competitive stakes are huge, and the related political posturing is sometimes perplexing. In this overview, Research Directors Guy Creese and Peter O’Kelly introduce ODF, OOXML, and related World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards, and project their implications for future productivity applications.
Gary Edwards

Harmonizing ODF and OOXML using NameSpaces | Tim Bray's Thought Experiment - 0 views

  • First, what if Microsoft really is doing the right thing? Second, how can we avoid having two incompatible file formats? [Update: There’s been a lot of reaction to this piece, and I addressed some of those points here.]
  • On the technology side, the two formats are really more alike than they are different. But, there are differences: O12X’s design center, Microsoft has said repeatedly, is capturing the exact semantics of the billions of existing Microsoft Office documents. ODF’s design center is general-purpose reusability, and leveraging existing standards like SVG and MathML and so on.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      OOXML, or to put it more accurately "O12X" as Tim suggests, is designed to capture the exact semantics of MSOffice 12. In fact, OOXML is an XML encoding of the MSOffice 12 in-memory-binary-representation dump. When it comes to representing older versions of MSOffice documents, OOXML must use legacy compatibility settings" to capture the semantics. And it's not an exacting science to say the least. The thing is, OpenOffice ODF uses the same technique resulting in application specific ODF documents with over 150 un docuemnted, unspecified "compatibility settings". After years of requests from the OASIS ODF Technical Committee to document these application specific settings, Sun has yet to provide any kind of response. And this kills ODF interoperability. Especially concerning KOffice. There is also the issue of OASIS ODF high-jacked namespaces. When ODF applications reference a namespace, the actual URL is high-jacked with http://oasis-open.org/???? replacing the proper namespace of http://W3C.org/???? This high-jacking impacts the oDF reuse of important W3C technologies such as XForms, SVG, MathML, and SMiL. So where's the problem you ask? Well, when a developer imports or tries to process an OpenOffice ODF document, they rely on say the W3C XForms specification for their understanding. OpenOffice however seriously constrains the implementation of XForms, SVG, MathML, RDFa and RDF/XML. This should be reflected in the new namespace. However, if you follow the high-jacked URL, you'll find that there is nothing there. There is no specification describing how OpenOffice implements XForms in ODF! This breaks developer libraries, breaks ODF interoperability between ODF applications, and, offends the W3C to no end. So i think it might be fair to say that at this point, neither ODF or OOXML have come close to fulfilling their design objectives.
  • The capabilities of ODF and O12X are essentially identical for all this basic stuff. So why in the flaming hell does the world need two incompatible formats to express it? The answer, obviously, is, “it doesn’t”.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Exactly!! Except for one thing that Tim misses: the presentation layers of both ODF and OOXML are application specific. It is also the application specific nature of OpenOffice ODF presnetation layer that prevents interoperability with KOffice ODF! There is near zero interop between OpenOffice and KOffice, and KOffice has been a contributing member of the OASIS ODF TC for FIVE YEARS! It's the presentation layer Tim. ODF and OOXML are application specific formats because their presentation layers are woefully applicaiton specific and entirely reflective of each applications layout engine and feature set implementation model. I often imagine what ODF would be like if back in 2001, Sun had chosen to implement CSS as the OpenOffice presentation layer instead of the quirky but innovative, and 100% application specific automatic-styles presentation layer we now see in ODF. Unlike ODF's "automatic-styles", CSS is a totally application independent presentation model prized exactly for it's universal interoperability!
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The ideal outcome would be a common shared office-XML dialect for the basics—and it should be ODF (or a subset), since that’s been designed and debugged—then another extended vocabulary to support Microsoft features , whether they’re cool new whizzy features or mouldy old legacy features (XML Namespaces are designed to support exactly this kind of thing). That way, if you stayed with the basic stuff you’d never need to worry about software lock-in; the difference between portable and proprietary would be crystal-clear. And, for the basic stuff that everybody uses, there’d be only one set of tags. This outcome is technically feasible. Who could possibly be against it?
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Bingo! ODF and OOXML should strip off the application specific complexities and seek a neutral generic XML representation of basic document structures common to ALL documents. Then, use the XML NameSpace mechanism to extend (with proper descriptions) the generic to include the volumes of application specific features that now fill each format. One thing i disagree with Tim about. And that's that the interop of ODF and OOXML is hopelessly broken. The OpenDocument Foundation tried for over a year to close the compatibility gap between ODF and MSOffice binary - xml documents. The OASIS ODF TC would have none of it. IBM and Sun are set on a harsh course of highly disruptive and costly rip-out-and-replace of MSOffice based on government mandates for ODF. There is no offer of compromise to be had. On the Microsoft side, even if they did want to compromise (a big IF), there is that problem of over 550 million MSOffice workgroup-workflow desktops to contend with. The thing is, the only way to harmonize, merge, convert or translate between two application specific formats is to actually harmonize the applications themselves. While the generic subset is a worthy goal, the process would be fraught with real world concerns that the existing application workflows are not disrupted. My proposal? Demand that ODF and OOXML application vendors provide format options for PDF, and the W3C's family of formats: (X)HTML5, (X)HTML - CSS, and CDF (XHTML-CSS-XForms-SVG-SMil-MathML). That will do it. We might never see the quality of interoperability we had hoped for in a desktop application to application scenario. But we can and should fully expect high quality interop at the higher level of the Web. You can convert an application specific format to a generic like CDF. By setting up conversion channels to the same CDF profile within MSOffice, OpenOffice, KOffice, Symphony, and Google Docs, we can achieve the universal interoperabil
Gary Edwards

A Fresh Cup » About - 0 views

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Feb 08 - Cached
  • Then I got fed up with Microsoft. It took about fifteen years, but I finally reached the point where, no matter how good some of their software was, or how well-meaning some of the rank and file employees were, I could no longer stomach the corporate policies. You can read more about that in my posts What’s Going On Here?,&nbsp; The Rest of the Story, and The Examined Software Life. Certainly, reasonable people can disagree on these things, but for me, working with Microsoft tools and technologies is no longer an option. So I quit.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Same here. For me the 1996 JavaONE Conference was a great reunion of former Windows - Microsoft Developer Network members i had not seen since the old OS2-Windows Conference days. It was clear to me then that much of the Internet wave surge back then was charged by developers and investors dissaffected with Microsoft and the Windows monopoly. What people at that first JavaONE Confernece were looking for was a means to convert the Interent into a full fledged computational platform; augmenting the ubiquitous communications, access and exchange grid with web ready applications. They sought an alternative to Windows platform development. One of the more prominent memes back then was provided by the rather small but vocal FOSS developers community attending the conference. They had this strong belief that much of the value of the Internet was captured in this phrase, "Owned by none, used by all". For anyone familiar with the abusive monopolist's tactics, the meme was quite resonant. So much so that the openness of Java became a serious issue dooging Sun for years. I've always thought Sun paid an iincredible price for the reprehensible business practices of Microsoft. In early times, Java would have rode the same wave of application developer take up that Windows enjoyed in the early 90's. The monopolist however had changed the rules forever. And that's actually a good thing. Thanks for writing about your journey Mike. I'm looking forward to your blogervations.
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    Not specific to Document formatting, but a huge example of Microsoft vs. "The right thing". Read the three articles linked in the post.
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    Talk about "Switch", this is incredible. Very interesting fellow and a good
Alex Brown

Is ODF designed to be not implementable without source code? - Wouter - 0 views

  • How come I am the one to notice how deficient ODF really is?
    • Alex Brown
       
      "But mummy, he's not *wearing* any clothes ..."
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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.
Paul Merrell

Microsoft Finds Fault With Google Upgrade -- Redmondmag.com - 2 views

  • Google's announcement this week that it had improved its Google Docs Web apps drew ridicule from a Microsoft official on Wednesday.
  • Kisslo also accused Google of not following the OpenDocument Format (ODF) spec with fidelity in Google Docs applications. The Google spokesperson called that claim "ironic" for Microsoft. (Microsoft has had its own issues staying true to the ISO/IEC-standardized version of its Office Open XML document format spec. However, the company did previously announce support for ODF in Office 2007.) This seemingly minor spat between the two companies has deep implications. At stake may be much of Microsoft's empire, based on its two cash cows: Microsoft Office and Windows.
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