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Gary Edwards

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

www.betanews.com/...1181922127

ecma-376 iso microsoft odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 19 Jun 07 - Cached
  • 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.
  • Gary Edwards on 19 Jun 07
     
    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

Between a rock and a hard place: ODF & CIO's - Where's the Love? - 0 views

www.consortiuminfo.org/...article.php

cio government microsoft oasis odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument openxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Jun 07 - Cached
  • So I'm disappointed. And not just on behalf of open documents, but on behalf of the CIOs of this country, who are now caught between a rock and a hard place, without a paddle to defend themselves with if they won't to do anything new, innovative and necessary, if a major vendor's ox might be gored in consequence. After the impressive lobbying assault mounted over the past six months against open document format legislation, I expect you won't be hearing of many state IT departments taking the baton back from their legislators.    And who can blame them? If they tried, it wouldn't be likely to be anything as harmless as an open document format that would bite them in the butt.
  • Gary Edwards on 15 Jun 07
     
    Andy Updegrove weighs in on the wave of ODF legislative failures first decribed by Eric Lai and Gregg Keizer compiled the grim data in a story they posted at ComputerWorld last week titled  Microsoft trounces pro-ODF forces in state battles over open document formats.


    Andy believes that it is the failure of state legislators to do their job that accounts for these failures.  He provides three reasons for this being a a failure of legislative duty.  The most interesting of which is claim that legislators should be protecting CIO's from the ravages of aggressve vendors. 


    The sad truth is that state CIO's are not going to put their careers on the line for a file format after what happened in Massachusetts.


    Andy puts it this way, "
      

    And second, in a situation like this, it is a cop out for legislatures to claim that they should defer to their IT departments to make decisions on open formats.  You don't have to have that good a memory to recall why these bills were introduced in the first place: not because state IT departments aren't a good place to make such decisions, but because successive State CIOs in Massachusetts had been so roughly handled in trying to make these very decisions that no state CIO in his or her right mind was likely to volunteer to be the next sacrificial victim.
    As both Peter Quinn and Louis Gutierrez both found out, trying to make responsible standards-related decisions whe
Gary Edwards

Wizard of ODF: OASIS invited to join Microsoft in the DIN technical report - harmoniz... - 0 views

www.oasis-open.org/...msg00040.html

din eu harmonization iso oasis odf ooxml xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Jan 08 - Cached
  • the WG is busy working on a first draft. This'll include mainly work in Wordprocessing. Spreadsheet and Presentation is still in the very early work. So help from the ODF TC would be great --- and a liaison would make sense IMHO. To give you an idea why help from the ÓDF TC would be needed I'll briefly outline some questions which arose: * Need for more use-cases, i.e. feasable interop scenarios * Discussions of unspecified behaviour (e.g numbering in 1.0, spreadsheet formulas, compatibilty options, etc.) and their impact on interop scenarios * Questions regaring generic settings like e.eg. form:control-implementation="ooo:com.sun.star.form.component.Form", or tweaking a la http://www.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=51726. * Possible interop problems not handled by the specs (e.g. graphics, WMF, EMF, SVM, etc.) or e.g. font metrics and font embedding. As you see there are a lot of overlapping areas with eg. the "ODF interop" we dealt with in the workshop in Barcelona. [This issue is hosted in the Adoption TC, right? Maybe this TC is also suited as a liaison partner?]
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 29 Jan 08
       
      Uh Oh. Microsoft and Novell joined the EU's call to harmonize ODF and OOXML, but Sun and IBM refused the invite. Now we have the invite in front of the OASIS ODF TC!. Is there any rock big enough for them to hide under if they also refuse?
      And if the OASIS ODF does join the EU-DIN-ISO effort, where doe stha tleave IBM, Sun and their inistance on a politically mandated "rip out and replace" as the only acceptable solution?
Gary Edwards

ODF versus OOXML: Don't forget about HTML! - O'Reilly XML Blog - 1 views

www.oreillynet.com/...ersus_ooxml_dont_forget_a.html

iso microsoft msoffice oasis odf ooxml opendocument openxml xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 06 Mar 07 - Cached
  • But Lie is right, I think, to be alarmed by the prospect that if OOXMLfails MS will revert away from open formats. I don’t see them adopting ODF as the default format for general sale. for a start, current ODF simply does not have matching capabilities. This issue of fit is strong enough that we don’t even need to get to the issue of control. We have this nice little window now where MS is inclined to open up its formats, something that the document processing community has been pleading for for years. The ODF sideshow runs the risk of screwing this up; I’ve said it before, but I say it again: being pro-ODF does not mean you have have to be anti-OOXML. ODF has not been designed to be a satisfactory dump format for MS Office; OOXMLhas not been designed to be a suitable format for Sun’s Star Office or Open Office or IBM’s products. HTML is the format ｏｆ choice for interchange of simple documents; ODF will evolve to be the format of choice for more complicated documents; OOXML is the format of choice for full-fidelity dumps from MS Office; PDF is the format of choice for non-editable page-faithful documents; all of them are good candidates for standardization, all have overlap but are worthwhile to have as cards in the deck of standards. But systems for custom markup trumps all.
  • Gary Edwards on 06 Mar 07
     
    Famed Microsoft WikiPedia editor Rick Jellife takes on the HTML-CSS proposal put forth by Opera Browser CTO Håkon Wium Lie's in his recent CNET column.

    Rick claims that the Opera proposal is "solid in its ultimate premise .... that inspite of .. all the talk about ODF and OOXML, it is important not to lose track of HTML's potential and actual suitability for much document interchange.

    Good discussion except that MS Rick can't help himself when it comes to the tired moral equivocation argument that the world can and should accept and use two ISO/IEC desktop productivity environment file format standards, ODF and OOXML.  Once again he puts forward the claim that ODF is OPenOffice specific and OOXML is MSOffice specific - each having it's place and value as an international standard.

    Are we standardizing applications here?  I thought it was about creating a universal XML file format that all application can use::  One file format  for OpenOffice, MSOffice, KOffice, Writer, WordPerfect Office, Novell Office, GNOME Office, and even the Flash-Apollo based " Virtual Ubiquity " from Rick Treitman.

    ODF does need to provide the marketplace with at least three profiles; desktop productivity environments, server side portal publication-content-archive management systems, and devices.  This would greatly improve interoperability as ODF documents transition across desktops, servers, devices and Internet information domains.  It would also help the implementation of ODF by SOA, SaaS and Web 2.0 systems.

    But having two file formats that irreconcilably incompatible servicing the exact same market categories?  Doesn't make sense.  And can only end in massive end user confusion where the application with dominant marketshare end up crushing any and all competitive alternative
Gary Edwards

Open Document Foundation Gives Up | Linux Magazine - 0 views

www.linux-magazine.com/...n_document_foundation_gives_up

cdf odf ooxml w3c

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Nov 07 - Cached
  • The reasons for the move to CDF was improved compatibility with Microsoft’s OOXML format the foundation claimed at the time. Cris Lilley from W3C contradicted. CDF is not an office format, and thus not an alternative to the Open Document Format. This turn-down is likely the reason for the abrupt ditching of the foundation.
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Nov 07
     
    I've got to give this one extra points for creativity!  All anyone has to do is visit the W3C web sites for CDF WICD Full 1.0 to realize that there is in fact a CDf profile for desktops.  CDF WICD Mobile is the profile for devices.

    My guess is that Chris Lilley is threading the needle here.  IBM, Groklaw, and the lawyer for OASIS have portrayed the Foundation's support for CDF WICD Full as a replacement for ODF - as in native file format for OpenOffice kind of replacement.  Mr. Lilley insists that CDF WiCD Full was not designed for that purpose.  It's for export only!  As in a conversion of native desktop file formats.

    Which is exactly what the da Vinci group was doing with MSOffice.  The Foundation's immediate interest in CDF WICD was based on the assumption that a similar conversion would be possible between OpenOffice ODF and CDF WICD.

    The Foundation's thinking was that if the da Vinci group could convert MSOffice documents and processes to CDF WICD Full, and, a similar conversion of OpenOffice ODF documents and processes to CDF WICD could be done, then near ALL desktop documents could be converted into a highly interoperable web platform ready format.

    Web platform ready documents from OpenOffice?  What's not to like?  And because the conversion between ODF and CDF WICD Full is so comparatively clean, OpenOffice would in effect, (don't go native file format now) become ahighly integrated rich client end user interface to advancing web platforms.

    The Foundation further reasoned that this conversion of OpenOffice ODF to CDF WICD Full would solve many of the extremely problematic interoperability problems that plague ODF.  Once the documents are in CDF WICD Full, they are cloud ready and portable at a level certain to diminish the effects of desktop applications specific feature sets and implementation models.

    In Massachusetts, the Foundation took
liza cainz

Efficient and Secured Computer Support - 1 views

Several months ago, I decided to change my Microsoft Windows support provider. The Microsoft help company I was using was not proficient in what they do. A friend of mine referred HelpGurus Compute...

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sam neilson

FixComputerpProblemsSite Surely Knows How to Fix Computer Problems! - 1 views

I was having problems with my laptop before. Good thing FixComputerpProblemsSite helped me fix it. And they are really the experts when it comes to solving any computer related issues. They can eas...

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The Number One Computer Tech Support Service - 1 views

Computer Tech Support Service offers the most outstanding computer support service. They have friendly computer support technicians who are very skilled in giving accurate and fast solutions to my ...

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Dale Villar

The Number One Computer Tech Support Service - 1 views

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shalani mujer

Reliable and Fast Online Computer Tech Support - 1 views

I love watching movies and I usually get them online. There was this one time that my computer automatically shut down while downloading a movie. Good thing I was able to sign up with an online ...

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Gary Edwards

OOXML in Norway: The haywire process | Geir Isene : Straight talk on IT - 0 views

blogs.freecode.no/isene

interoperability iso odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Aug 07 - Cached
  • I had read the essay by Jon Bosak (SUN Microsystems) on why SUN voted as it did in the US. He lays out a very different strategy. His view is that the battle is lost to completely reject OOXML as an ISO standard. ISO can only reject it with comments, and that is equivalent to giving Microsoft a todo-list on how to fix the draft so as to get it approved. Microsoft has sufficient manpower to easily tackle that. Most of us had missed what Mr. Bosak saw: OOXML promises interoperability with earlier closed binary formats (the Word Doc, older Excel file formats etc.). But it doesn’t deliver. How on earth could someone be able to convert old binary files to the new format without having the specification of the old formats and a mapping to OOXML. If you are to translate some text from Chinese to English, it doesn’t much help to only know English.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 28 Aug 07
       
      A "Yes with comments" is a yes for the ISO approval of MS-OOMXL. If ISO approves MS-OOXML, it won't matter what Bosak's "comments" strategy is. Microsoft and the Vista Stack will be off to the races. The full disclosure of the MS binary document secret blueprint won't matter much at that point.
  • “Ah c’mon Bosak, you are chickening out, we must stop this dead in the track”
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 28 Aug 07
       
      There you go Geir!

      Sun and Bosak have held the door open for MS-OOXML since 2002, when Sun blocked an effort to write the ODF Charter to include as a priority, "compatibility with existing file formats". This of course would include the billions of legacy MS binary documents.

      The thing is that those who work in the conversion-translation field will tell you that it is currently impossible to pipe converted legacy binary documents and OOXMl docs for that matter into ODF. Just as Microsoft claims, ODF in it's current state is insufficient and unable to handle the rich feature set of the MSOffice developers platform.

      The problem could of course be easily fixed by the inclusion in ODF of five structural generics. In the past year, there have been no less than five iX "interoperability enhancement" proposals submitted to the OASIS ODF TC for discussion and consideration. As uber universal interop expert Florian Reuter points out in his blog, these iX proposals did not fare so well.

      What Florian doesn't point out is that it was Sun who opposed any and all efforts to improve compatibility with existing Microsoft binary and OOXML documents. Just as they have done for nearly five years now.

      Sort of puts the Sun-Bosak support for ISO approval of MS-OOXML in a different light. ~ge~
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Aug 07
     
    see the sticky notes on this one
Gary Edwards

Microsoft Watch Finally Gets it - It's the Business Applications!- Obla De OBA Da - 1 views

www.microsoft-watch.com/...obla_de_oba_da.html

odef odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument vista-stack

shared by Gary Edwards on 13 Jul 07 - Cached
  • To be fair, Microsoft seeks to solve real world problems with respect to helping customers glean more value from their information. But the approach depends on enterprises adopting an end-to-end Microsoft stack—vertically from desktop to server and horizontally across desktop and server products. The development glue is .NET Framework, while the informational glue is OOXML.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      OOXML is the transport - a portable XML document model where the "document" is the interface into content/data/ and media streaming.

      The binding model for OOXML is "Smart Documents", and it is proprietary!

      Smart Documents is how data, streaming media, scripting-routing-workflow intelligence and metadata is added to any document object.

      Think of the ODF binding model using XForms, XML/RDF and RDFA metadata. One could even use Jabber XMP as a binding model, which is how we did the Comcast SOA based Sales and Inventory Management System prototype.

      Interestingly, Smart Documents is based on pre written widgets that can simply be dragged, dropped and bound to any document object. The Infopath applicaiton provides a highly visual means for end users to build intelligent self routing forms. But Visual Studio .NET, which was released with MSOffice 2007 in December of 2006. makes it very easy for application and line of business integration developers to implement very advanced data binding using the Smart Document widgets.

      I would also go as far to say that what separates MSOOXML from Ecma 376 is going to be primarily Smart Documents.

       Yes, there are .NET Framework Libraries and Vista Stack dependencies like XAML that will also provide a proprietary "Vista Stack" only barrier to interoperability, but Smart Documents is a killer.

      One company that will be particularly hurt by Smart Documents is Google. The reason is that the business value of Google Search is based on using advanced and closely held proprietary algorithms to provide metadata structure for unstrucutred documents.

      This was great for a world awash in unstructured documents. By moving the "XML" structuring of documents down to the author - workgroup - workflow application level though, the world will soon enough be awash in highly structured documents that have end user metadata defining document objects and
  • Microsoft seeks to create sales pull along the vertical stack between the desktop and server.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      The vertical stack is actually desktop - server - device - web based.  The idea of a portable XML document is that it must be able to transition across the converged application space of this sweeping stack model.

      Note that ODF is intentionally limited to the desktop by it's OASIS Charter statement.  One of the primary failings of ODF is that it is not able to be fully implemented in this converged space.  OOXML on the other hand was created exactly for this purpose!

      So ODF is limited to the desktop, and remains tightly bound to OpenOffice feature sets.  OOXML differs in that it is tightly bound to the Vista Stack.

      So where is an Open Stack model to turn to?

      Good question, and one that will come to haunt us for years to come.  Because ODF cannot move into the converged space of desktop to server to device to the web information systems connected through portable docuemnt/data transport, it is unfit as a candidate for Universal File Format.

      OOXML is unfi as a UFF becuase it is application - platform and vendor bound.

      For those of us who believe in an open and unencumbered universal file format, it's back to the drawing board.

      XHTML (XHTML CSS3 RDF) is looking very good.  The challenge is proving that we can build plugins for MSOffice and OpenOffice that can fully implement XHTML .  Can we conver the billions of binary legacy documents and existing MSOffice bound business processes to XHTML ?

      I think so.  But we can't be sure until the da Vinci proves this conclusively.

      One thign to keep in mind though.  The internal plugins have already shown that it is possible to do multiple file formats.  OOXML, ODF, and XML encoded RTF all have been shown to work, and do so with a level of two way conversion fidelity demanded by existing business processes.

      So why not try it with XHTML , or ODEF (the eXtended version of ODF en
  • Microsoft's major XML-based format development priority was backward compatibility with its proprietary Office binary file formats.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      This backwards compatibility with the existing binary file formats isn't the big deal Micrsoft makes it out to be.  ODF 1.0 includes a "Conformance Clause", (Section 1.5) that was designed and included in the specification exactly so that the billions of binary legacy documents could be converted into ODF XML.

      The problem with the ODF Conformance Clause is that the leading ODF application, OpenOffice,  does not fully support and implement the Conformance Clause. 

      The only foreign elements supported by OpenOffice are paragraphs and text spans.  Critically important structural document characteristics such as lists, fields, tables, sections and page breaks are not supported!

      This leads to a serious drop in conversion fidelity wherever MS binaries are converted to OpenOffice ODF.

      Note that OpenOffice ODF is very different from MSOffice ODF, as implemented by internal conversion plugins like da Vinci.  KOffice ODF and Googel Docs ODF are all different ODF implementations.  Because there are so many different ways to implement ODF, and still have "conforming" ODF documents, there is much truth to the statement that ODF has zero interoperabiltiy.

      It's also true that OOXML has optional implementation areas.  With ODF we call these "optional" implementation areas "interoperabiltiy break points" because this is exactly where the document exchange  presentation fidelity breaks down, leaving the dominant market ODF applicaiton as the only means of sustaining interoperabiltiy.

      With OOXML, the entire Vista Stack - Win32 dependency layer is "optional".  No doubt, all MSOffice - Exchange/SharePoint Hub applications will implement the full sweep of proprietary dependencies.    This includes the legacy Win32 API dependencies (like VML, EMF, EMF ), and the emerging Vista Stack dependencies that include Smart Documents, XAML, .NET 3.0 Libraries, and DrawingML.

      MSOffice 2007 i
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • Microsoft's backwards compatibility priority means the company made XML-based format decisions that compromise the open objectives of XML. Open Office XML is neither open nor XML.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      True, but a tricky statement given that the proprietary OOXML implementation is "optional".  It is theoretically possible to implement Ecma 376 without the prorpietary dependencies of MSOffice - Exchange/SharePoint Hub - Vista Stack "OOXML".

      In fact, this was first demonstrated by the legendary document processing - plugin architecture expert, Florian Reuter.

      Florian has the unique distinction of being the primary architect for two major plugins: the da Vinci ODF plugin for MSOffice, and, the Novell OOXML Translator plugin for OpenOffice!

      It is the Novell OOXML Translator Plugin for OpenOffice that first demonstrated that Ecma 376 could be cleanly implemented without the MSOffice application-platform-vendor specific dependencies we find in every MSOffice OOXML document.

      So while Joe is technically correct here, that OOXML is neither open nor XML, there is a caveat.  For 95% of all desktops and near 100% of all desktops in a workgroup, Joe's statment holds true.  For all practical concerns, that's enough.  For Microsoft's vaunted marketing spin machine though, they will make it sound as though OOXML is actually open and application-platform-vendor independent.


  • Microsoft got there first to protect Office.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      No. I disagree. Microsoft needs to move to XML structured documents regardless of what others are doing. The binary document model is simply unable to be useful to any desktop- to server- to device- to the web- transport!

      Many wonder what Microsoft's SOA strategy is. Well, it's this: the Vista Stack based on OOXML-Smart Documents-.NET.

      The thing is, Microsoft could not afford to market a SOA solution until all the proprietary solutions of the Vista Stack were in place.

      The Vista Stack looks like this:

      ..... The core :: MSOffice <> OOXML <> IE <> The Exchange/SharePoint Hub

      ..... The services :: E/S HUb <> MS SQL Server <> MS Dynamics <> MS Live <> MS Active Directory Server <> MSOffice RC Front End

      The key to the stack is the OOXML-Smart Documents capture of EXISTING MSOffice bound business processes and documents.

      The trick for Microsoft is to migrate these existing business processes and documents to the E/S Hub where line of business developers can re engineer aging desktop LOB apps.

      The productivity gains that can be had through this migration to the E/S Hub are extraordinary.

      A little over a year ago an E/S Hub verticle market application called "Agent Achieve" came out for the real estate industry. AA competed against a legacy of twenty years of contact management based - MLS data connected desktop shrinkware applications. (MLS-Multiple Listing Service)

      These traditional desktop client/server productivity apps defined the real estate business process as far as it could be said to be "digital".  For the most part, the real estate transaction industry remains a paper driven process. The desktop stuff was only useful for managing clients and lead prospecting. No one could crack the electronic documents - electonic business transaction model.  This will no doubt change with the emer
  • By adapting XML
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      The requirements of these E/S Hub systems are XP, XP MSOffice 2003 Professional, Exchange Server with OWL (Outlook on the Web) , SharePoint Server, Active Directory Server, and at least four MS SQL Servers!

      In Arpil of 2006, Microsoft issued a harsh and sudden End-of-Life for all Windows 2000 - MSOffice 2000 systems in the real estate industry (although many industries were similarly impacted). What happened is that on a Friday afternoon, just prior to a big open house weekend, Microsoft issued a security patch for all Exchange systems. Once the patch was installed, end users needed IE 7.0 to connect to the Exchange Server Systems.

      Since there is no IE 7.0 made for Windows 2000, those users relying on E/S Hub applications, which was the entire industry, suddenly found themselves disconnected and near out of business.

      Amazingly, not a single user complained! Rather than getting pissed at Microsoft for the sudden and very disruptive EOL, the real estate users simply ran out to buy new XP-MSOffice 2003 systems. It was all done under the rational that to be competitive, you have to keep up with technology systems.

      Amazing. But it also goes to show how powerfully productive the E/S Hub applications can be. This wouldn't have happened if the E/S Hub applications didn't have a very high productivity value.

      When we visited Massachusetts in June of 2006, to demonstrate and test the da Vinci ODF plugin for MSOffice, we found them purchasing en mass E/S Hubs! These are ODF killers! Yet Microsoft sales people had convinced Massachusetts ITD that Exchange/SahrePoint was a simple to use eMail-calendar-portal system. Not a threat to anyone!

      The truth is that in the E/S Hub ecosystem, OOXML is THE TRANSPORT. ODF is a poor, second class attachment of no use at the application - document processing chain level.

      Even if Massachusetts had mandated ODF, they were only one E/S Hub Court Doc
  • Microsoft can offer businesses many of the informational sharing and mining benefits associated with the markup language while leveraging Office and supporting desktop and server products as the primary consumption conduit.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      Okay, now Joe has the Micrsoft SOA bull by the horns.  Why doesn't he wrestle the monster down?
  • Microsoft will vie for the whole business software stack, a strategy that I believe will be indisputable by early 2009 at the latest.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      Finally, someone who understands the grand strategy of levergaing the desktop monopoly into the converged space of server, device and web information systems.

      What Joe isn't watching is the way the Exchange/SharePoint Server connects to MS SQL Server, Active Directory Server, MS LIve and MS Dynamics.

      Also, Joe does not see the connection between OOXML as the portable XML document/data transport, and the insidiously proprietary Smart Documents metadata - data binding system that totally separates MSOOXML from Ecma 376 OOXML!
  • I'm convinced that Office as a platform is an eventual dead end. But Microsoft is going to lead lots of customers and partners down that platform path.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
       
      Yes, but the new platform for busines process development is that of MSOffice <> Exchange/SharePoint Hub.

      The OOXML-Smart Docs transport replaces the old binary document with OLE and VBA Scripts and Macros functionality.  Which, for the sake of brevity we can call the lead Win32 API dependencies.

      One substantial difference is that OOXML-Smart Docs is Vista Stack ready, while the Win32 API dependencies were desktop bound.

      Another way of looking at this is to see that the old MSOffice platform was great for desktop application integration.  As long as the complete Win32 API was available (Windows MSOffice VBA run times), this platform was great for workgroups.  The Line of Business integrated apps were among the most brittle of all client/server efforts, bu they were the best for that generation.

      The Internet offers everyone a new way of integrating data, content and streaming media.  Web applications are capable of loosly coupled serving and consuming of other application services.  Back end systems can serve up data in a number of ways: web services as SOAP, web services as AJAX/REST, or XML data streams as in HTTPXMLRequest or Jabber P2P model.

      On the web services consumption side, it looks like AJAX/REST will be the block buster choice, if the governance and security issues can be managed.

      Into this SOA mash Microsoft will push with a sweeping integrated stack model.  Since the Smart Docs part of the OOXML-Samrt Docs transport equation is totally proprietary, but used throughout the Vista Stack, it will provide Microsoft with an effective customer lockin - OSS lockout point.

  • Gary Edwards on 15 Jul 07
     
    Great article series from eWeek.  A must read.  But it all comes down to interoperability across two stack models:  The Microsoft Vista Stack, and an alternative Open Stack model that does not yet exist!

    Incompatible formats become a nightmare for the kind of integration any kind of SOA implementation depends on, let alone the Web 2.0 AJAX MashUps this article focuses on.

    I wonder why eWEEK didn't include the Joe Wilcox Micrsoft Watch Article, "Obla De OBA Da".  Joe hit hard on the connection between OOXML and the Vista Stack.  He missed the implications this will have on MS SOA solutions.  Open Source SOA solutions will be locked out of the Vista Stack.  And with 98% or more of existing desktop business processes bound to MSOffice, the transition of these business processes to the Vista Stack will no doubt have a dramatic impact on the marketplace.  Before the year is out, we'll see Redmond let loose with a torrent of MS SOA solutions.  The only reason they've held back is that they need to first have all the Vista Stack pieces in place.

    I don't think Microsoft is being held back by OOXML approval at ISO either.  ISO approval might have made a difference in Europe in 2006, but even there, the EU IDABC has dropped the ISO requirement.  For sure ISO approval means nothing in the US, as California and Massachusetts have demonstrated. 

    All that matters to State CIO's is that they can migrate exisiting docuemnts and business processes to XML.  The only question is, "Which XML?  OOXML, ODF or XHTML+".

    The high fidelity conversion ratio and non disruptive OOXML plugin for MSOffice has certainly provided OOXML with the edge in this process. <br
Gary Edwards

Is It Game Over? - ODF Advocate Andy UpDegrove is Worried. Very Worried - 0 views

www.consortiuminfo.org/...article.php

iso oasis odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Jun 07 - Cached
  • This seems to me to be a turning point for the creation of global standards.&nbsp;Microsoft was invited to be part of the original ODF Technical Committee in OASIS, and chose to stand aside.&nbsp;That committee tried to do its best to make the standard work well with Office, but was naturally limited in that endeavor by Microsoft's unwillingness to cooperate.&nbsp;This, of course, made it easier for Microsoft to later claim a need for OOXML to be adopted as a standard, in order to "better serve its customers."&nbsp;The refusal by an incumbent to participate in an open standards process is certainly its right, but it is hardly conduct that should be rewarded by a global standards body charged with watching out for the best interests of all.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Jun 07
     
    Andy UpDegrove takes on the issue of Microsoft submitting their proprietary "XML alternative to PDF" proposal to Ecma for consideration as an international standard.  MS XML-PDF will compliment ECMA 376 (OOXML - OfficeOpenXML) which is scheduled for ISO vote in September of 2007.  Just a bit over 60 days from today.

    Andy points out some interesting things; such as the "Charter" similarities between MS XML-PDF and MS OOXML submisssions to Ecma:

    MS XML-PDF Scope: The goal of the Technical Committee is to produce a formal standard for office productivity applications within the Ecma International standards process which is fully compatible with the Office Open XML Formats. The aim is to enable the implementation of the Office Open XML Formats by a wide set of tools and platforms in order to foster interoperability across office productivity applications and with line-of-business systems. The Technical Committee will also be responsible for the ongoing maintenance and evolution of the standard.   Programme of Work: Produce a formal standard for an XML-based electronic paper format and XML-based page description language which is consistent with existing implementations of the format called the XML Paper Specification,…[in each case, emphasis added]

    If that sounds familiar, it should, because it echoes the absolute directive of the original OOXML technical committee charter, wh
Gary Edwards

Microsoft Support for ODF - the Q&A - Google Docs & Spreadsheets - 0 views

docs.google.com/Doc

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Hi Gary,I am a technology journalist with Asia's ONLY Linux-focused magazine, LINUX For You. I am working on a story revolving the recent development of Microsoft supporting ODF Format. I want to understand the equation of the whole development, would you please help me understand: Q1. What do you think drove Microsoft to support the ODF format?
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 07
     
    This is the full response to Swapnil's seven questions.  It's long.  But we hold back nothing!  Thanks again to Marbux.  He is a peach!
Gary Edwards

The Interoperability Wars :: ODF vs. ... - Google Docs & Spreadsheets - 0 views

docs.google.com/Doc

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 07
     
    This discussion is part of a much larger response to a series of questions from a LiNUX magazine in India.  The mighty Marbux helped answer the questions, so please don't mistake his eloquence for my customary thundering.
Gary Edwards

Xandros, Inc. - Xandros to Provide Enhanced Interoperability Between Standardized XML D... - 0 views

www.marketwire.com/...release.do

quickd

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 07 - Cached
  • Xandros, the leading provider of intuitive Linux solutions and cross platform interoperability tools, today announced it will join Microsoft and other companies to build and ship open source translators between documents stored in Ecma Office Open XML and Open Document Formats. The translators, being developed through the Open XML/ODF Translator project, will be made available to Xandros users via the Xandros Networks update facility. Every Xandros product that includes OpenOffice.org will be equipped with the translators. This announcement underscores the shared view of Xandros and Microsoft that competing office productivity applications should make it easy for customers to exchange files with one another and allow them to use their operating system and office productivity applications of choice. "This is good news for customers. Xandros and Microsoft share the view that competing office productivity applications should make it easy for customers to exchange files with one another," said Tom Robertson, general manager for Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft. "Mixed system environments are becoming more common, and we believe in delivering interoperability by design for the benefit of our customers. Our ongoing collaborative relationships with commercial open source companies like Xandros help us achieve that goal." "We are delighted to join forces with Microsoft and others to provide interoperability between standardized XML document formats," said Andreas Typaldos, Xandros CEO. "The work of the world is done using various document formats as well as operating systems, so it is vital to provide our customers with the means interoperate with ease in this diverse environment."
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 07
     
    You have to read this!  Xandros is taking this interoperability garbage seriously!
Gary Edwards

Brian Jones: Open XML Formats : Mapping documents in the binary format (.doc; .xls; .pp... - 0 views

blogs.msdn.com/...pt-to-the-open-xml-format.aspx

burtongroup cdf css ibm iso microsoft odf okelly ooxml opendocument openxml sun w3c xhtml

shared by Gary Edwards on 20 Jan 08 - Cached
  • The second issue we had feedback on was an interest in the mapping from the binary formats into the Open XML formats. The thought here was that the most effective way to help people with this was to create an open source translation project to allow binary documents (.doc; .xls; .ppt) to be translated into Open XML. So we proposed the creation of a new open source project that would map a document written using the legacy binary formats to the Open XML formats. TC45 liked this suggestion, and here was the TC45 response to the national body comments: We believe that Interoperability between applications conforming to DIS 29500 is established at the Office Open XML-to- Office Open XML file construct level only.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 20 Jan 08
       
      And here i was betting that the blueprints to the secret binaries would be released the weekend before the September 2nd, 2007 ISO vote on OOXML! Looks like Microsoft saved the move for when they really had to use it; jus tweeks before the February ISO Ballot Resolution Meetings set to resolve the Sept 2nd issues. The truth is that years of reverse engineering have depleted the value of keeping the binary blueprints secret. It's true that interoperability with MSOffice in the past was near entirely dependent on understanding the secret binaries. Today however, with the rapid emergence of the Exchange/SharePoint juggernaught, interop with MSOffice is no longer the core issue. Now we have to compete with E/S, and it is the E/S interfaces, protocols and document API's and dependencies tha tmust be reverse engineered. The E/S juggernaught is now surging to 70% or more of the market. These near monopoly levels of market penetration is game changing. One must reverse engineer or license the .NET libraries to crack the interop problem. And this time it's not just MSOffice. Today one must crack into the MS Stack whose core is tha tof MSOffice <> E/S. So why not release the secret binary blueprints? If that's the cost of getting the application, platform and vendor specific OOXML through ISO, then it's a small price to pay for your own international standard.
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Jan 08
     
    Well well well. We knew that IBM had access to the secret binary blueprints back in 2006. Now we know that Sun ALSO had access!
    And why is this important? In June of 2006, Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez asked the OpenDocument Foundation's da Vinci Group to work with IBM on developing the da Vinci ODF plug-in clone of Microsoft's OOXML Compatibility Pack plug-in. When we met with IBM they were insistent that the only way OASIS ODF could establish sufficient compatibility with MSOffice and the billions of binary documents would be to have the secret blueprints open.
    Even after we explained to IBM that da Vinci uses the same internal conversion process that the OOXML plug-in used to convert binaries, IBM continued to insist that opening up the secret binaries was a primary objective of the OASIS ODF community.
    For sure this was important to IBM and Sun, but the secret binaries were of no use to us. da Vinci didn't need them. What da Vinci needed instead was a subset of ODF designed for the conversion of those billions of binary documents! A need opposed by Sun.
    Sun of course would spend the next year developing their own ODF plug-in for MSOffice. But here's the thing: it turns out that Sun had complete access to the secret binary blueprints dating back to 2006!!!!!!
    So even though IBM and Sun have had access to the blueprints since 2006, they have been unable to provide effective conversions to ODF!
    This validates a point the da Vinci group has been trying to make since June of 2006: the problem of perfecting a high fidelity conversion between the billions of binaries and ODF has nothing to do with access to the secret binary blueprints. The real issue is that ODF was NOT designed for the conversion of those binary documents.
    It is true that one could eXtend ODF to achieve the needed compatibility. But one has to be very careful before taking this ro
Gary Edwards

Is HTML in a Race to the Bottom? A Large-Scale Survey of Open Web Formats - 0 views

dsonline.computer.org/...index.jsp

cdf css html ooxml xaml xhtml

shared by Gary Edwards on 18 Apr 08 - Cached
  • The "race to the bottom" is a familiar phenomenon that occurs when multiple standards compete for acceptance. In this environment, the most lenient standard usually attracts the greatest support (acceptance, usage, and so on), leading to a competition among standards to be less stringent. This also tends to drive competing standards toward the minimum possible level of quality. One key prerequisite for a race to the bottom is an unregulated market because regulators mandate a minimum acceptable quality for standards and sanction those who don't comply.1,2 In examining current HTML standards, we've come to suspect that a race to the bottom could, in fact, be occurring because so many competing versions of HTML exist. At this time, some nine different versions of HTML (including its successor, XHTML) are supported as W3C standards, with the most up-to-date being XHTML 1.1. Although some versions are very old and lack some of the newer versions' capabilities, others are reasonably contemporaneous. In particular, HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.0 both have "transitional" and "strict" versions. Clearly, the W3C's intent is to provide a pathway to move from HTML 4.01 to XHTML 1.1, and the transitional versions are steps on that path. It also aims to develop XHTML standards that support device independence (everything from desktops to cell phones), accessibility, and internationalization. As part of this effort, HTML 4.01's presentational elements (used to adjust the appearance of a page for older browsers that don't support style sheets) are eliminated in XHTML 1.1. Our concern is that Web site designers might decline to follow the newer versions' more stringent formatting requirements and will instead keep using transitional versions. To determine if this is likely, we surveyed the top 100,000 most popular Web sites to discover what versions of HTML are in widespread use.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 18 Apr 08
       
      The summary statement glosses over the value of a highly structured portable XML document. A value that goes far beyond the strict separation of content and presentation. The portable document model is the essential means by which information is exchanged over the Web. It is the key to Web interop. Up till now, Web docuemnts have been very limited. With the advent of XHTML-2, CSS-3, SVG, XForms and CDF (Compound Document Framework for putting these pieces together), the W3C has provisioned the Web with the means of publishing and exchanging highly interactive but very complex docuemnts. The Web documents of the future will be every bit as complex as the publishing industry needs. The transition of complex and data rich desktop office suite documents to the Web has been non existent up till now. With ISO approval of MSOffice-OOXML, Microsoft is now ready to transition billions of business process rich "office" documents to the Web. This transition is accomplished by a very clever conversion component included in the MSOffice SDK. MS Developers can easily convert OOXML documents to Web ready XAML documents, adn back again, without loss of presentation fidelity, or data. No matter what the complexity! The problem here is that while MSOffice-OOXML is now an ISO/IEC International Standard, XAML "fixed/flow" is a proprietary format useful only to the IE-8 browser, the MS Web Stack (Exchange, SharePoint, MS SQL, and Windows Server), and the emerging MS Cloud. Apache, J2EE, Mozilla Firefox, Adobe and Open Source Servers in general will not be able to render these complex, business process rich, office suite documents. MSOffice-OOXML itself is far to complicated and filled with MS application-platform-vendor specific dependencies to be usefully converted to Open Web XHTML-CSS, ePUB or CDF. XAML itself is only the tip of the iceberg. The Microsoft Web Stack also implements Silverlight, Smart Tags and other WPF - .NET
  • Gary Edwards on 18 Apr 08
     
    What makes the Internet so extraordinary is the interoperability of web ready data, content, media and the incredible sprawl of web applications servicing the volumes of information. The network of networks has become the information system connecting and converging all information systems. The Web is the universal platform of access, exchange and now, collaborative computing. This survey exammines the key issue of future interoperability; Web Document Formats.
Gary Edwards

OOXML OPS and the GPL: A disappointing surprise from the SFLC | Gray Matter - 0 views

blogs.technet.com/...ng-surprise-from-the-sflc.aspx

gpl grey-matter iso microsoft ooxml ops

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Apr 08 - Cached
  • I view the spec as confusing, obtuse, error-ridden, x86-centric, incomplete, and redundant. &nbsp;Microsoft sat on the board of ODF for _years_ without offering any help on the minor items ODF didn't provide that they wanted. &nbsp;Now that governments start pressing for permanent standards on document storage, MS throws out this half-baked item and expects a reward for good behavior. &nbsp;Maybe somebody on the board of directors at our company likes it, but the technical folks having to add more work are less than happy about this beast. If they had to go with XML, couldn't they at least have allowed standard XML with attributes and the like instead of x86 specific, binary incompatible, past-version deprecating, standard-avoiding, crash on normal XML.. ... mess... that they have offered for consumption? &nbsp;Oh.. but wait, I'm sure the BRM fixed that in the week given. &nbsp;I'm sure the pretty version will show up any day now.
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Apr 08
     
    Scott B comment on the OOXML OPS and GPL controversy. Great comments from Bruce Perens also.
Gary Edwards

The Stockholm Syndrom at ISO | ODF Editor Says ODF Loses If OOXML Does | Slashdot - 0 views

slashdot.org/comments.pl

durusau iso microsoft odf ooxml slashdot w3c

shared by Gary Edwards on 28 Mar 08 - Cached
  • ISO is bound to the business of "interoperability", and has very strict guidelines for interoperability requirements, that are themselves tied to international trade agreements and legal conventions. In this context, it is beyond surprising that ISO allows the "OASIS PAS" and "Ecma Fast Track" channels to remain open, with specification work remaining under the controlling influence of the vendors.IMHO, the change in Patrick's position is entirely due to the realization that it is impossible to map between OOXML and ODF. I don't know this for sure, but when i read the German Standards Group (DIN) report on harmonization, authorized by the EU-IDABC and provided to ISO, i couldn't help but wonder how Patrick would react. The report definitively ends his OOXML ODF mapping dream.
  • Gary Edwards on 28 Mar 08
     
    Response to Yoon Kit's comments that Patrick Durusau is caught between a rock and hard place. His ISO JTC-1 group is now overwhelmed with MS OOXML supporters!
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