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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?"
  •  
    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

The Future is CDF | Metaphorical Web - Kurt Cagle - 0 views

  • As editing increasingly moves onto the web, its safe to say that the document of choice will be neither ODF nor OOXML, both of which gain their power on the basis of supporting legacy word processing systems. Instead, what seems to be emerging from the W3C is something that is not an office suite because it didn’t evolve from one, but that nonetheless is capable of most if not all of the same functions that office suite documents pose.
Gary Edwards

Cheers for the Prince - More Cagle Championing CDF | O'Reilly XML Blog - 0 views

  • In other words, I would like to lay out my printable documents in a way that’s familiar to me, for which I have tools that can support this and that can easily be changed without having to do a search and replace through a hundred distance instances of a paragraph. In short, I want CSS, acting on XHTML, generating my printed pages as readily as it displays that content to the screen. A previous blog from Michael Day about PrinceXML reminded me that I hadn’t had a chance to play with it. My previous experiences with XHTML to PDF conversion were, to put it bluntly, terrifying, and so, as I was downloading the JAR file I wasn’t expecting a lot. When I tried it, I wasn’t disappointed … I was stunned. I had taken an article that I’d recently written for XML.com and run it through Prince. It digested the ten page article and cranked out a PDF in under a second, and the quality was better than anything I’d been able to get with a straight DocBook/FO/PDF rendering. I looked up the documentation, and found that it supported the CSS 3.0 page rendering set, as well as support for columns (including columnar rules), it could be used to print SVG content embedded or linked to the main XHTML document, and it included a nice set of extension properties for handling headers and footers, internal links, rounded borders, and the full panoply of CSS selectors including nth-child (which seemingly no one supports), content search and the whole gamut of pseudo-classes.
Gary Edwards

Once More unto the Breach: Office Open XML Conformance (A Lesson in Claiming Standards ... - 0 views

    • Gary Edwards
       
      Presentation fidelity and round tripping? Looks like someone has been attention to what happened in Massachusetts.
  • As far as I can tell in the Massachusetts poster-child case, ODF has simply come to mean whatever OpenOffice.org does
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Keep in mind orchmid that it is the OpenOffice code base that ODF is bound to. There are many instances of the OOo code base pushed by various vendors. Sun provides OpenOffice.org and StarOffice versions of the code base. Novell Open Office is the same code base. Same with Red Hat Office and IBM WorkPlace. Outside this common code base, ODF has near ZERO interoperability.
  •  
    unfortunately the MS argument that support for OOXML equals "conformance" is also the same argument used by OpenDocument supporters to prove multi vendor, multi platform, multi application support.

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

Open Sources | InfoWorld | While you were sleeping... (The Sharepoint Trojan Horse) | A... - 0 views

  •  
    Matt Asay's commentary pointing out that the Microsoft monopoly is moving from the desktop to the SharePoint Server. Matt's cites a recent Wall Street Journal article as his reference. And both have it right except that i would have called this the Exchange/SharePoint Hub juggernaut.

    The idea is to migrate existing MSOffice bound business processes to the E/S Hub. From there, end user documents, collaboration and workflow interfaces are wired into Microsoft backends and web fronts (MS SQL Server, MS IIS, MS Active Directory, MS Dynamics, MS Communications Server, etc.)
Gary Edwards

File-Format Fistfight | Redmond Developer News - 0 views

  • Gary Edwards, president of the OpenDocument Foundation, flatly stated to me that any effort to "peel away the politics" in this debate was doomed to fail. Another very prominent member of the open source development community refused to comment on the record due to the sheer acrimony he's faced in this debate. And my newsletter articles, which have been generally critical of Microsoft's stance in this area, have drawn a significant amount of ire.
  •  
    More great stuff from Michael Desmond
Gary Edwards

Taking an incremental approach to SOA | Avoiding costly "rip out an dreplace" - 0 views

  • Current implementation issues One of the biggest hurdles to implementing a realistic SOA is understanding what the business units and end users are doing today. This understanding is critical to the success of any SOA project since the new services must match exactly what each business unit is doing today. Neglecting these business processes and replacing them with individual services will most likely lead to hundreds of non-used services and frustrated business units.
  •  
    Excellent article from NetManage's Archie Roboostoff.  He lays out all the difficulties and mistakes experienced with SOA efforts.
Gary Edwards

Universal Interoperability Framework for OpenDocument - 0 views

  • SUMMARY: The OpenDocument Foundation proposes that the OASIS Office TC begin now to create an interoperability framework for inclusion in OpenDocument v. 1.2. This document, one of a series of planned proposals, proposes first steps towards a comprehensive interoperability framework and OpenDocument conformance requirements.  This proposal is designed to bring ODF v. 1.2 into compliance with current ISO Interoperability Requirements.
  •  
    The OpenDocument Foundation "Universal Interoperability Framework" Proposal has not been submitted to the OASIS ODF TC as of this bookmarking.  But this version is complete except for a closing summation.
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

SynOA What? Syndicated Application Architectures Come of Age - O'Reilly XML Blog - 0 views

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    Excellent explanation of syndication oriented architectures and the concepts possible impact on the web's future.
Gary Edwards

Microsoft Watch - Corporate - Microsoft's Stunning Court Defeat - 0 views

  • "The Court considers that the Commission was correct to conclude that the work group server operating systems of Microsoft's competitors must be able to interoperate with Windows domain architecture on an equal footing with Windows operating systems if they are to be capable of being marketed viably. The absence of such interoperability has the effect of reinforcing Microsoft's competitive position on the market and creates a risk that competition will be eliminated."
  • Here, U.S. oversight of Microsoft will continue until at least November 2009, largely because of server protocol licensing. The so-called "California group" of states—those that didn't settle the U.S. antitrust case—and other parties will likely ask the court here to align the two disclosure programs, extending the ruling's impact well beyond Europe.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      I wonder if this is correct? My understanding is that the California Group will be brushed aside by the Feds?
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    Microsoft Watch Joe Wilcox is on the job.  This particular hgihlighted quote speaks volumes.  The USA anti trust settlement famously allowed Microsoft to commercialize interoperability through expensive licenses -  $8 Million per year for just the basic package.

    It looks like the EU would force those interoperability API's out into the open.  I wonder how this position will impact the November 12 th hearing on lifting the USA anti trust oversight?  We have the EU saying the monopolist is illegally maintaining their monopoly through various interop barricades.  And, the USA about to declare that the interop barricades no longer exists, therefore, the monopolist should be free to wreck havoc. 

    The stage looks set for a vey dramatic final act.

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"?
  •  
    Great inteview, i'll comment as i make my way down the page.  Hopefully others will do the same.
Gary Edwards

Frankly Speaking: Microsoft's Cynicism - Flock - 0 views

  • In July, Jones was asked on his blog whether Microsoft would actually commit to conform to an officially standardized OOXML. His response: “It’s hard for Microsoft to commit to what comes out of Ecma [the European standards group that has already OK’d OOXML] in the coming years, because we don’t know what direction they will take the formats. We’ll of course stay active and propose changes based on where we want to go with Office 14. At the end of the day, though, the other Ecma members could decide to take the spec in a completely different direction. ... Since it’s not guaranteed, it would be hard for us to make any sort of official statement.”
    • Gary Edwards
       
      Then why is Microsoft dragging us through this standardization nonsense? Is this nothing more than thinly veiled assault on open standards in general?
  • To at least some people at Microsoft, this isn’t about meeting the needs of customers who want a stable, solid, vendor-neutral format for storing and managing documents. It’s just another skirmish with the open-source crowd and rivals like IBM, and all that matters is winning.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      The battle between OOXML and ODF is very much about two groups of big vendor alliances. Interestingly, both groups seek to limit ODF interoperability, but for different reasons.

      See: The Plot To Limit ODF Interop
  •  
    Good commentary from Frank Hayes of Computerworld concerning a very serious problem. Even if ISO somehow manages to approve MS-OOXML, Microsoft has reserved the right to implement whatever extension of Ecma-OOXML they feel like implementing. The whole purpose of this standardization exercise was to bring interoperability, document exchange and long term archive capability to digital information by separating the file formats from the traditions of application, platform and vendor dependence.

    If Microsoft is determined to produce a variation of OOXML that meets the needs of their proprietary application-platform stack, including proprietary bindings and dependencies, any illusions we might have about open standards and interoeprability will be shattered.  By 2008, Microsoft is expected to have over a billion MS-OOXML ready systems intertwined with their proprietary MS Stack of desktop, server, device and web applications. 

    How are we to interoperate/integrate non Microsoft applications and services into that MS Stack if the portable document/data/media transport is off limits?  If you thought the MS Desktop monopoly posed an impossible barrier, wait until the world gets a load of the MS Stack!

    Good article Frank.

    ~ge~

Gary Edwards

Indecision in Redmond as Web apps charge : Office 2.0 and Google Apps - 0 views

  • the fact is that Redmond could own this new space if it wanted to. All it would need to do is push interoperability and integration between lightweight Web versions of Office applications and its desktop fatware. Advanced features would be absent from the lightweight versions, but the company could ensure any Office doc would load on the Web -- whatever new desktop service packs and upgrades might appear -- and online document management could be integrated with Windows for offline access.
  •  
    Great quote from Eric Knorr.  He hits the nail on the head here, pointing out the problem Office 2.0  Web Apps and SaaS apps face:  If these Web wonders have interoperability and high fidelity document exchange with MSOffice, their collaborative features are value added wonders for existing business processes and workgroup-workflow scenarios.  If, on the other hand they lack this level of interop - integration with MSOffice documents and processes, the value add becomes a problematic split in a business process.  The only way to overcome that kind of a split is to take the entire process.  Which is difficult for lightweight mashup happy web wonders to do.

    Which leaves each and every one of these Office 2.0 - Web 2.0 - Saas Apps vulnerable to Microsoft.  As long as Micrsoft owns the interop-integration keys to MSOffice, the web wonders live a precarious life.  At any time Microsoft can swoop in and take it all.

    Today, the MSOffice OOXML file format displays perfectly in a browser.  It's 100% web ready, but only the MS Stack of applications gets to play.  Web wonders are not likely to recieve a Redmond invite now or ever.

    Which brings us to the issue of the da Vinci plug-in for MSOffice.  da Vinci is a clone of the OOXML plug-in for MSOffice, and fully leverages the same internal conversion process that OOXML enjoys.  It can achieve the same high fidelity "round trip" conversion that OOXML is capable of.  Maybe even better. 

    The problem for da Vinci isn't conversion fidlelity.  Nor is it capturing  business process important VBa scripts, macros, OLE, and security settings.  da Vinci can do that just fine.  The problem is that da Vinci cannot pipe MSOffice developer platform documents into ODF!!  For the love of five generic eXtensions, called the iX "interoperability enhancements", which the OASIS ODF TC blew off, ODF
Gary Edwards

Open XML trumps ODF in document format fight, consulting firm says - 0 views

  • The OpenDocument Format (ODF) remains "more of an anti-Microsoft political statement than an objective technology selection" by users, according to a report released Monday by analysts at Burton Group, who recommend that companies adopt Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML document format whether or not it is approved as an ISO standard next month.
Gary Edwards

Whoops?! IBM products support Microsoft's Open XML doc format! Lotushpere - 0 views

  • Nobody has invested more to defeat Microsoft Corp.'s Open XML document format than IBM Corp. So why is IBM supporting Open XML in a handful of its products? According to technical documentation on IBM's own Web sites, Big Blue already supports Open XML, the native file format of Microsoft Office 2007, in at least four of its software. However, Microsoft Office users interested in testing or switching to Lotus Symphony, IBM's upcoming challenger to Office, may be disheartened by signs that IBM won't budge from its stance that it will only support documents created in Office 2003 and prior versions.
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."
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