Group items tagged

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.Many wonder why mapping is impossible. I had more than a few discussions with Patrick on this. His point was that a schema is a schema. As long as the syntax and semantics are fully documented, no problemo. My point is that both ODF and OOXML are application specific; and, both are woefully lacking in "semantic" documentation. Add to this problem that both ODF and OOXML lack an interoperability framework with any semblance of compliance teeth, and the whole mapping issue becomes an impossible solution. Especially if interop is the goal.

Microsoft has been less offensive to McNealy and Sun ever since it forked over about $2bn to settle disputes, agreed to an interoperability pact and helped chuck Windows on Sun servers. Now the companies plan to expand their mutual admiration society via an Interoperability Center. Sun will send a bunch of servers and storage boxes up to the Redmond-based center. Engineers from both companies will work on testing Microsoft's server software with the gear. We're told that such work could lead to breakthroughs in 64-bit database technology and amazing e-mail servers.

IMHO, the key to Microsoft's OOXML strategy can be seen in the recently released MSOffice SDK. The SDK provides a component for the fluid conversion of OOXML to something called fixed/flow. The fixed part of this interesting conjunction is also known as XPS, which is designed as a proprietary alternative to PDF. The flow part is a fascinating and highly proprietary replacement for (X)HTML - CSS. Reading further through the MSOffice SDK, one can't help but be amazed at the lack of W3C technologies; especially (X)HTML, CSS, XForms and SVG. What we have instead is an entangling cascade of stuff like OOXML, fixed/flow, silverlight, XAML, and WPF. And then there is that recent promise of other high volume API's probably delivered through future Exchange, SharePoint, and MS SQL Server SDK's. So, at the end of the day, what are we looking at here? IMHO, Microsoft has figured out that the smart thing to do is leverage and extend their existing desktop monopoly into the next generation of cloud computing where the Internet platform rules. To pull this off, they have a number of problems to overcome; not the least of which is that they need to catch a break on anti trust, and, get OOXML through ISO. And oh yeah, there's that little problem that Windows can't do cloud computing.

Fortunately for Microsoft, the DaVinci plugin is coming, which will enable Microsoft office applications to comply with ISO 26300. We all understand the financial issues that prompted the push to make OOXML a standard (see Tim's comment above and http://lnxwalt.wordpress.com/2007/01/21/whose-finances-are-on-the-line/ for more on this) and ensure continued vendor lock-in. However, OOXML is not the answer.

ODF can handle everything and anything Microsoft Office can throw at it. Including the legacy billions of binary documents, years of MSOffice bound business processes, and even tricky low level reaching add-ons represented by assistive technologies.

Yahoo Widgets Version 4.5, which delivers an updated widget platform for developers and a new Widget Gallery for consumers, said Scott Derringer, director of product management at Yahoo. Widgets are mini-applications that live on a desktop and deliver personalized, up-to-date information to help users.

Standards often are made by insiders, established players, vendors with something to sell and so something to lose. Web standards bodies organized as pay-to-play consortia thus leave out developers and users, although vendors of course claim to represent everyone fully and fairly. I've worked within such bodies and continue to try to make progress in them, but I've come to the conclusion that open standards need radically open standardization processes. They don't need too many cooks, of course; they need some great chefs who work well together as a small group. Beyond this, open standards need transparency. Transparency helps developers and other categories of "users" see what is going on, give corrective feedback early and often, and if necessary try errant vendors in the court of public opinion.

A while back the OpenDocument Foundation folded up, withdrawing its support for the ODF in favor of CDF. The reason for the switch is buried in the details of ODF community’s denial to be fully interoperable with Microsoft Office, which might have helped in migrating to ODF without affecting the processes. So, there was something bigger here playing it up. Matt Assay notes that Microsoft Sharepoint might kill ODF more than anything else. It is the process stupid! People want to move to ODF, but without having to re-engineer their business processes.

What is quite remarkable, if not a little confusing, is that an organization would not only put the brakes on a format it helped created - but do so publicly and authentically, as soon as they realized that the end result was not what they set out for it to be. Many organizations would just sweep such thoughts under the rug, and keep to their dead end strategy - afraid to admit the wrong turn they took at Albuquerque. I have to applaud the leadership body of the Open Document Foundation for having the courage to stand for what they believe. Bravo.

But we also oppose adoption of ODF 1.2 as an ISO standard in the form we expect it to emerge from OASIS.

As a result of the latest infighting, is Microsoft now all-but-guaranteed that OOXML will sail through the ISO standardization vote in Feburary 2008 because ODF — and its backers — will be in disarray? This has nothing to do with the outcome of the Ballot Resolution Meeting.

Matusow sounds reasonable only if you are not a file format congnoscenti. He uses an appeal to ignorance. A single universal set of formats is entirely feasible from a technical standpoint; e.g., the example of HTML. But the chances of getting there by opening application-specific formats are dim at best, as the ODF experience teaches. You might acquire an entirely different perspective if you spent some time viewing the short sets of slides from the IDABC Open Document Exchange Formats Workshop 2007, which laid down the market requirements for 21 European government IT national bodies. http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6474 (.) I particularly recommend Dr. Barbara Held's report to the plenary session linked from this page, http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6704/5935 and the four workshop reports linked from the bottom of this page, http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6702/5935 (.) Those slides reflect a lot of careful research into the issue you and Matusow discuss.

+1 gary.edwards - 11/16/07 Thanks for the consideration Anton. You might want to follow an emerging discussion now taking place at the OpenDocument Fellowship: Interop between multiple standards and multiple applications Check on the follow up post and understand that this is the same problem the da Vinci group tried to overcome in Massachusetts, when ODF hung by a thread in the summer of 2006; with the sole hope being a plug-in conversion process capable of very high "round trip" fidelity. To assist Massachusetts and the da Vinci Group, the OpenDocument Foundation introduced to the OASIS ODF TC a series of discussions and proposals collectively known as the ODF iX interoperability enhancements. A total of six comprehensive iX enhancements were introduced between July of 2006 and March of 2007. The first three sets of iX enhancements were signed off on by CIO Louis Gutierrez, with the full knowledge and awareness of IBM (they participated directly in those discussions and i do have the emails and conference schedules to verify this . Also, if you're interested in other issues surrounding the da Vinci groups use of CDF WICD Full as an in-process conversion target for MSOffice documents, there is a series of recent responses posted in the comments section of this blog, "Going to Bed (without my supper). One last note; I do have a response to AlphaDog sitting in the blog que, where i try to put the MSOffice to CDF WICD Full conversion, and the OpenOffice ODF to CDF WICD Full conversion into the larger context of the web platform and universal interoperability. This post will also briefly explain the events immediately preceding the decision to shut the Foundation down. Hope this helps, ~ge~

In e-mailed comments, Heintzman said his criticisms about the situation have been made openly. "We think that Open Office has quite a bit of potential and would love to see it move to the independent foundation that was promised in the press release back when Sun originally announced OpenOffice," he said. "We think that there are plenty of existing models of communities, [such as] Apache and Eclipse, that we can look to as models of open governance, copyright aggregation and licensing regimes that would make the code much more relevant to a much larger set of potential contributors and implementers of the technology.... "Obviously, by joining we do believe that the organization is important and has potential," he wrote. "I think that new voices at the table, including IBM's, will help the organization become more efficient and relevant to a greater audience.... Our primary reason for joining was to contribute to the community and leverage the work that the community produces.... I think it is true there are many areas worthy of improvement and I sincerely hope we can work on those.... I hope the story coming out of Barcelona isn't a dysfunctional community story, but rather a [story about a] potentially significant and meaningful community with considerable potential that has lots of room for improvement...."

But folks, as of 2008-05-13 mid afternoon Toowoomba time, that Wikipedia page is not much help to people who might want to, like you know work on real documents. GoogleDocs, for example will throw away your styles if you happen to care about them. And why would you? It’s a web two-dot-oh world now what do we need with styles?

Unless governments and other stakeholders can get beyond the narrow view of documents and interoperability as merely being exchanging data from one similar application to another, and move towards the view that documents and web resources need to be end points on the same interoperable spectrum, we are selling ourselves short. It is here that standards bodies should be more help: but I don't know that they can be unless there is a stronger commitment to supporting each others' visions better. W3C's mission statement is concerned with bringing the web to its full potential, and W3C have traditionally used this to justify shying away from old-fashioned compound file-based issues: the lack of standards for the *SP (JSP, ASP, PHP) class of documents is a symptom of this, and it is notable that much of XML's uptake came because it did take care of practical production issues (i.e. issues pertaining to the document as it existed before being made available as a resource —PIs and entities—and after it had been retrieved—character encodings.) The industry consortia such as ECMA and OASIS are organized around interest groups on particular standards, which makes it easy to fob off discussion of interoperability. And even ISO, where the availability are topic-based working groups with very broad interests should provide a more workable home for this kind of effort, have a strong disinclination to seek out work that involves liaison with other standards groups: satisfying two sets of procedures and fitting in with two sets of deadlines and timetables can be impractical and disenfranchising for volunteers and small-business/academic experts.

Now that ODF and OOXML are both set to be on the ISO/IEC books, it is useful to consider what the next productive steps are. For genuine ODF Supporters who are concerned that ODF has languished a little out of the limelight during 2007, there are a lot of useful things to be done. You don’t even need to join the OASIS groups or your local National Body or SC34 to begin. I suggest here are some things that will help the ODF effort coming into ODF 1.2.