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Gary Edwards

Govt on ODF: Looks good, is bad « the spike - 0 views

ivo.co.za/...government-odf-standard

odf

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 07 - Cached
  • This strikes me as a very badly misguided definition. Not even Richard Stallman, founder of the Free Software Foundation, believes software must be “free” as in “free beer” (though if it is, all the better, of course). Yet the government’s specification is full of references to “non-commercial”, “free of cost” and “without any royalties”. It is, of course, perfectly within its rights to specify a functional requirement for an open standard. But demanding that it is free, that it is maintained by a non-commercial organisation, that all intellectual property is given away for free, is going way beyond any reasonable, functional definition of “open standard”. It excludes any supplier that provides software conforming to perfectly open, accessible, and functionally satisfactory standards, but does so for a fee. It might even end up excluding all those open source developers who spent their twenties toiling away for free in the vain hope that one day, they’d get to pay for their sports cars and luxury homes from support revenue.
  • Gary Edwards on 29 Oct 07
     
    Interesting observation about South Africa and their "free as in beer" software requirements.  This governement attitude towards open source is far more wide spread than commonly thought.  One would have hoped that interoperability and open standards were also part of the FOSS equation, but it looks like zero cost is the primary driver.
Gary Edwards

Joshua : Web is THE Platform? SRSLY? : MIX Online - Flock - 0 views

visitmix.com/...web-is-the-platform-srsly

cdf open-web xhtml

shared by Gary Edwards on 22 Oct 07 - Cached
  • The web is the platform upon which many different and incompatible data gardens will do battle.  There WILL be fights, winners and losers, and this will happen BECAUSE the web is the platform.  If anyone is really serious about reducing the bloodshed and adhering to the spirit of the web, they should put their money where their mouths are and let loose some of the control from their own walled gardens and incompatible schemas.
  • Gary Edwards on 22 Oct 07
     
    The W3C is the keeper of the Open Web Platform, and they are coming under assault from a number of initiatives.  Of course there is Microsoft and the emerging MS Stack that runs on proprietary alternatives and bastardized eXtensions of W3C Open Web technoloigies.  MS-OOXML is perhaps the most serious challenge to the W3C and HTML yet.  Adobe has weighed in with Flash, Flex, and AIR.  But Google as a threat? 

    Joshua focuses in on the Google Web 2.0 Presentation and finds that Google Gadgets are not W3C technologies available to all.  Then he has this great line summarizing that the war against the Open Web is really about different data gardens doing battle on the platform used by all and owned by none.

    I hope Joshua and the other Open Web defenders are paying close attention to MS-OOXML and the emerging MS Stack.  Certainly Microsoft is building a walled garden of applications, services and data.  The question is, will the MS Stack garner enough critical mass to break the Open Web?

Gary Edwards

GOSCON Goes Global with Open Document Controversy - 0 views

goscon.org/opendoc

cdf odf ooxml w3c

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Nov 07 - Cached
  • Open Document Format The panel discussion will focus on a single question: what should the user community do, what actions should they take in light of competing Open Document Formats? Each of our industry experts will be asked to present their practical response.
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Nov 07
     
    GOSCON panel moderator Andy Stein has decided to kick it open, and let the public question the five participants from IBM, Sun, Microsoft, Adobe and those guys without a garage, the OpenDocument Foundation. 
Gary Edwards

An Interop Nightmare: The Northwest Progressive Institute Advocate Review of OpenOffice... - 0 views

www.nwprogressive.org/...free-openofficeorg-writer.html

ooo odf ooxml interop marbux

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Feb 09
     
    Marbux at his best! Let's hope the OASIS ODF and OpenOffice.org groups get to work on real interop, and stop with the phony baloney. It can be done, bu tnothing is going to happen until people face up to the harsh reality that today there is zero interop between ODF compliant applications. This must change .... unless of course the world decides to move to the most interoperable but high performance format ever invented: HTML-CSS. And maybe from there the world can move onto the WebKit sugarplum document model, and truly set the future of the Open Web. One thing obviously missing for the Open Web is an office suite of high performance editors capable of natively producing high end WebKit documents (or basic HTML-CSS for that matter!!!!!!!) Good on marbux. Now, can you persuade OASIS and OpenOffice to change their application specific ways? Take on the desktop as well as the future of the Open Web?
Jesper Lund Stocholm

Publicly Available Standards - 0 views

standards.iso.org/...index.html

ISO

shared by Jesper Lund Stocholm on 27 May 08 - Cached
  • ISO/IEC 26300:2006 XHTML version 1st Information technology -- Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) v1.0 XHTML version
  • The following standards are made freely available for standardization purposes. They are protected by copyright and therefore and unless otherwise specified, no part of these publications may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, scanning, reproduction in whole or in part to another Internet site, without permission in writing from ISO. Requests should be addressed to the ISO Central Secretariat.
  • ISO/IEC 29500-1:2008 Electronic inserts 1st Information technology -- Document description and processing languages -- Office Open XML File Formats -- Part 1: Fundamentals and Markup Language Reference JTC1/SC34 ISO/IEC 29500-2:2008 Electronic inserts 1st Information technology -- Document description and processing languages -- Office Open XML File Formats -- Part 2: Open Packaging Conventions JTC1/SC34 ISO/IEC 29500-3:2008 1st Information technology -- Document description and processing languages -- Office Open XML File Formats -- Part 3: Markup Compatibility and Extensibility JTC1/SC34 ISO/IEC 29500-4:2008 Electronic inserts 1st Information technology -- Document description and processing languages -- Office Open XML File Formats -- Part 4: Transitional Migration Features JTC1/SC34
    • Jesper Lund Stocholm
      Jesper Lund Stocholm on 15 Jan 09
       
      Remenber also to download the electronic inserts containing e.g. reference schemas in electronic form.
  • Paul Merrell on 27 May 08
     
    Most ISO and IEC standards are only available for purchase. However, a few are publicly available at no charge. ISO/IEC:26300-2006 is one of the latter and can be downloaded from this page in XHTML format. Note that the standards listed on the page are arranged numerically and the OpenDocument standard is very near the bottom of the page. This version of ODF is the only version that has the legal status of an international standard, making it eligible as a government procurement specification throughout all Member nations of the Agreement on Government Procurement.
Gary Edwards

Can a file be ODF and Open XML at the same time? (and HTML? and a Java servlet? and a P... - 0 views

www.oreillynet.com/..._file_be_odf_and_open_xml.html

jellife odf ooxml pdf html OPC zip

shared by Gary Edwards on 14 Jan 09 - Cached
  • The recent bomb in the ODF world from Gary Edward’s claims that Sun successfully blocked the addition of features to ODF that would be needed for full interchange with Office are explosive not only because they demonstrate how ODF was (properly, in my view) developed to cope with the particular features of the participants, not really as a universal format, but also because the prop up Microsoft’s position that Open XML is required because it exposes particular features that ISO ODF is not capable of exposing. Both because ODF is still in progress and because sometimes the features are simply incompatible in the details.
  • Actually, ODF is about to get a new manifest along with the new metadata stuff. Because we base that on RDF, the manifest will also be RDF-based. It gives us the extensibility we want to provide (extension developers, for example, can add extra metadata they may need), without having to worry about breaking compatibility. The primary addition we've made is a mechanism to bind a stable URI to in-document content node ids and files. This is conceptually not all that different than what I see in OPC; it's just that the unique IDs are in fact URIs. Among other things, in the RDF context that allows further statements to be bound to those URIs. Bruce D'Arcus | July 29, 2007 01:02 PM
  • Gary Edwards on 14 Jan 09
     
    What Bruce doesn't explain in this highlighted clip is that Sun decided to limit the "extra metadata" developer might need to just a handful of elements Sun and IBM needed to use in OpenOffice. The original OpenDocument Foundation metadata proposal was to open up the use of metadata to the extent that metadata could be used for all aspects of presentation (formatting AND layout!).
  • Gary Edwards on 14 Jan 09
     
    This vendor specific - application specific limiting ended the last hope we had for ODF interoperability and backwards compatibility with the billions of "in-process" MSOffice documents known to be populating business processes the world over. In fact, the problem ODF adoption faces is primarily that of MSOffice bound business processes, reflected in these billions of workgroup-workflow documents.
  • Gary Edwards on 14 Jan 09
     
    Proposal to have a standard packaging for combining application specific XML formats, Open HTML, and PDF. Great comments. This July 2007 article links to a January 2009 article: http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2009/01/packaging-formats-of-famous-ap.html
Gary Edwards

Tim Anderson's ITWriting - Tech writing blog » Microsoft's Jean Paoli on the ... - 0 views

www.itwriting.com/blog

microsoft mooxml odf paoli

shared by Gary Edwards on 24 Apr 07 - Cached
  • What’s distinctive about the goals of OOXML? Primarily, to have full fidelity with pre-existing binary documents created in Microsoft Office. “What people want is to make sure that their billions of important documents can be saved in a format where they don’t lose any information. As a design goal, we said that those formats have to represent all the information that enables high-fidelity migration from the binary formats”, says Paoli. He mentions work with institutions including the British Library and the US Library of Congress, concerned to preserve the information in their electronic archive. I asked Paoli if such users could get equally good fidelity by converting their documents to ODF. “Absolutely not,” he says. “I am very clear on that. Those two formats are done for different reasons.” What can go wrong? Paoli gives as an example the myriad ways borders can be drawn round tables in Microsoft Office and all its legacy versions. “There are 100 ways to draw the lines around a table,” he says. “The Open XML format has them all, but ODF which has not been designed for backward compatibility, does not have them. It’s really the tip of the iceberg. So if someone translates a binary document with a table to ODF, you will lose the framing details. That is just a very small example.”
  • “Open Document Format and Office Open XML have very different goals”, says Paoli, responding to the claim that the world needs only one standard XML format for office documents. “Both of them are formats for documents … both are good.”
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 07
       
      The door should have been slammed shut on OOXML near five years ago when, on December 14th, 2006, at the very first OASIS ODF TC meeting, Stellent's Phil Boutros proposed that the charter include, "compatibility with existing file formats and interoperability with existing applications" as a priority objective.
  • Another benefit Paoli claims for OOXML is performance. “A lot of things are designed differently because we believe it will work faster. The spreadsheet format has been designed for very big spreadsheets because we know our users, especially in the finance industry, use very large spreadsheets.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 07
       
      Wrong. The da Vinci plug-in prototype we demonstrated to Massachusetts on June 19th, 2006 proved that there is little or no difference in spreadsheet performance between a OOXML file, and an ODF file.

      In fact, ODF version of the extremely large test file beat the OOXML load by 12 seconds.

      Where the performance difference comes in is at the application level. MS Excel can load a OOXML version of a large spreadsheet faster than OpenOffice can load an ODF version of that same spreadsheet.

      If you eliminate the application differential, and load the OOXML file and the ODF version of that same spreadsheet into a plug-in enabled Excel, the performance differences are negligible.

      The reason for this is that the OOXML plug-in for Excel has a conversion overhead identical to the da Vinci plug-in for Excel. It has nothing to do with the file format, and everythign to do with the application.

      ~ge~
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • Paoli points to the conversion errors as evidence of how poorly ODF can represent legacy Office documents. My hunch is that this has more to do with the poor quality of the converter.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 07
       
      Note that these OASIS ODF TC November 20th iX "interoperability enhancement" suggestions were submitted by Novell as part of their effort to perfect a OOXML plug-in for OpenOffice!!!!

      "Lists" were th first of these iX items to be submitted as formal proposal. And Sun fought that list proposal viciously for the next four months. The donnybrook resulted i a total breakdown of the ODF consensus process. But, it ensured that never again would anyone be stupid enough to challenge Sun's authority and control of the OASIS ODF TC.

      Sun made it clear that they would viciously oppose any other efforts to establish interoperability with existing Microsoft documents, applications, processes effort.

      Point taken.

      ~ge~
  • the idea that Sun is preparing a reference implementation of OOXML is laughable.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 07
       
      Sorry Tim. It's true. Sun and Novell are working together to develop native OOXML file support in OpenOffice. You can find this clearly stated in the Gullfoss Planet OpenOffice blogs.

      The funny thing is that Sun will have to implement and support the November 20th iX enhancements submitted by Novell!! (Or, the interoperability frameworks also submitted by Novell in February of 2007). There is simply no other way for OpenOffice to implement OOXML with the needed fidelity.

      ~ge~
  • One of new scenarios enabled by the “custom xml parts” (again, if you read their blogs, you must have heard of this stuff) is the ability to bind xml sources and a control+layout so that it enables the equivalent of data queries (we’ve had in Excel for many years already), just with a source which is part of the package, contrary to the typical external data source connection. Well this stuff, besides the declaration (which includes, big surprise, GUIDs and stuff like that) requires the actual Office 2007 run-time to work. So whenever MS says this stuff is interoperable, they cannot mean you can take this stuff away in another application. Because you can’t. This binding is more or less the same than the embedding of VBA macros. It’s all application-specific, and only Microsoft’s own suite knows how to instantiate this stuff.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 07
       
      Stephan whacks this one out of the park! Smart Documents will replace VBa scripts, macros and OLE functionality going forward. It's also the data binding - workflow and metadata model of the future. And it's all proprietary!

      It's the combination of OOXML plus the MSOffice- Vista Stack specific Smart Documents that will lock end users into the Vista Stack for years to come.

      Watch out Google!

      ~ge~
  • Has Microsoft published the .doc spec publicly? Then why should ODF worry about the past? It’s not ODF’s concern to worry about Microsoft’s past formats. (Understand that the .doc format alone changed six times in the last eight versions of Office!) That’s Microsoft’s legacy problem, not ODF’s.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 19 Aug 07
       
      There really is no need to access the secret binary blueprints. The ACME 376 plug-in demonstration proves this conclusively. The only thing the ACME 376 demo lacks is that we didn't throw the switch on the magic key to release all VBa scripts, macros and OLE bindings to ACME. But that can be done if someone is serious about converting the whole shebang of documents, applications and processes.

      The real problem is that although ACME 376 proves we can hit the high fidelity required, it is impossible to effectively capture that fidelity in ODF without the iX interoperability enhancements. The world expects ODF interoperability. But as long as Sun opposes iX, we can't pipe from ACME 376 to ODF.

      ~ge~
  • I put it to Paoli that OOXML is hard to implement because of all its legacy support, some of which is currently not well documented. “I don’t believe that at all. It’s actually the opposite,” he says. He make the point that third parties like Corel, which have previously implemented support for binary formats like .doc and .xls, should find it easy to transition to OOXML. “We believe Open XML adoption by vendors like Corel will be very easy because they have already been doing 90% of the work, doing the binary formats. The features are already there.”
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 20 Aug 07
       
      WordPerfect does an excellent import of MSWord .doc documents. But there is no conversion! It's a read only rendering. Once you start editing the document in WP, all kinds of funny things happen, and the perfect fidelity melts away like the wicked witch of west in a bucket full of water.
  • Gary Edwards on 24 Apr 07
     
    Tim Anderson interviews Microsoft's Jean Paoli about MOOXML and ODF.    Jean Paoli of course has the predictable set of answers.  But Tim anderson provides us with some interesting insights and comments of his own.  There is also a gem of a comment from Stephane Rodriquez, the reknown spreadsheet expert.

    The bottom line for Microsoft has not changed.  MOOXML exists because of the need for an XML file format compatible with the legacy of existing MSOffic ebinary documents.  He claims that ODF is not compatible, and offers the "page borders" issue as an example.

    Page borders?  What's that got to do with the ODF file format?   These are application specific, application bound proprietary graphics that can not be ported to any other application - like OpenOffice.  The reason has nothign whatsoever to do with ODF and everything to do with the fact that the page border library is bound to MSOffice and not available to other applications like OpenOffice. 

    So here is an application specific feature tha tJean Paoli claims can not be expressed in ODF, but can in MOOXML.  But when are running the da Vinci ODF plugin in MSWord, there is no problem whatsoever in capturing the page borders in ODF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  No problem!!!!!!!!!!

    The problem is opening up that same da Vinci MSWord document in OpenOffice.  That's where the page borders are dropped.  The issue is based entirely on the fact that OpenOffice is unable to render these MSWord specific graphics bound to an MSOffice only library.

    If however we take that same page border loaded da Vinci MSWord document, and send it half way across the world to another MSWord desktop running da Vinci, the da Vinci plugin easily loads the ODF document into MSWord where it is perfectly rendered, page borders and all!!!!!!!!

    Now i will admit that this is one very difficult issue to understand.  If not f
  • Gary Edwards on 20 Aug 07
     
    Great interview. Tim can obviously run circles around poor Jean Paoli.
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

Is Open Source Dying? - 0 views

www.eweek.com/...0,1895,2148866,00.asp

iso linux odf ooxml open-source xml

shared by Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 07 - Cached
  • But behind the scenes, things are not quite as rosy. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which lived up to its left-leaning credentials (didn't Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer famously upbraid open-source proponents for being Communists?) broke important ground by mandating that state agencies switch to open-source platforms. There's just one problem: They can't seem to manage the transition. Sources close to the situation tell me that former state CIO Peter Quinn's resignation happened at least in part because of delaying tactics by vendors who publicly support open source but do their best to scuttle it behind the scenes.
  • Gary Edwards on 21 Jun 07
     
    Interesting topic which i've covered more fully with the OpenStack Blog : Connecting the Dots
Gary Edwards

Word of recognition from an unexpected side: ODF editor Patrick Durusau supports OOXML... - 0 views

idippedut.dk/...n-from-an-unexpected-side.aspx

brm durusau iso oasis odf officeopenxml ooxml opendocument openxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Feb 08 - Cached
  • The OpenXML project has made a large amount of progress in terms of the openness of its evelopment. Objections that do not recognize that are focusing on what they want to see and not what is actually happening with OpenXML
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Feb 08
     
    Patrick Durusau, the OASIS ODF editor has written an open letter praising the OOXML standardization effort at Ecma and ISO. Patrick is a long time member of ISO JTCS1, currently serving as the ODF editor for both ISO and OASIS ODF efforts. That his endorsement of OOXML comes on the eve of the critically important February BRM is beyond incredible. Jesper offers this quote which i think adequately summarizes Patrick's endorsement: The OpenXML project has made a large amount of progress in terms of the openness of its evelopment. Objections that do not recognize that are focusing on what they want to see and not what is actually happening with OpenXML"
Gary Edwards

Microsoft's Open Source Strategy & The Yahoo bid to get back in the game - 0 views

opensource.org/245

internet microsoft opensource oss yahoo

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Feb 08 - Cached
  • On the morning of February 1st 2008, Microsoft announced an unsolicited bid of $44.6B hostile for Yahoo!, and by the end of the day, Microsoft had lost $20B in market capitalization. Where does this leave Microsoft's open source strategy and the analysis thereof? Yahoo! was a pioneering "internet company", one of the first to really create and capture value of a world newly web-enabled. And like many of these so-called internet companies (Google was another), Yahoo! built it infrastructure on open source technologies. Why? Better, faster, cheaper: Dave Filo and Jerry Yang were still poor college students back in the day, but smart. (As were Sergey Brin and Larry Page, but that's another story.)
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Feb 08
     
    Michael Tiemann picks up where Mary Jo Foley left off. he takes her prescient arguments concerning Microsot's Open Source Strategey and xtends them to Microsot's bid for Yahoo! This is a must read!
Gary Edwards

Microsoft legislatively TKO's open document formats. At least stateside. | ComputerWorl... - 0 views

talkback.zdnet.com/5208-10741-0.html

shared by Gary Edwards on 02 Feb 08 - Cached
  • The question we should be asking is why State CIO's and IT divisions are not backing the legislative proposals? It's not the lobbying that is killing ODF. It's the lack of support from those who would have been left with the challenge of implementing ODF solutions. The silence of the CIO's is deafening. There are three quotes i've seen batted about that pretty much say it all:
  • Gary Edwards on 02 Feb 08
     
    Since December 16th, 2002, or day one on the OASIS Open Office XML Technical Committee, now "ODF", the challenge has been to suceed in the marketplace as the best XML format for desktop productivity environments. Success was seen as a technical challenge. Could we make an XML format capable of universal interoperability? Capable of universal implementation across the domains of desktop, server, device and web platform usage?
    All that changed in May of 2005, when ODF 1.0 was approved by OASIS and sent on it's way to ISO for consideration as an international standard. Following that approval, IBM led a swarm of large corporate vendors who invaded the cozy confines of serious universal docuemnt format work. No longer was the goal to perfect the most useful and lasting structured format the world had ever seen. The IBM led wave of corporate invaders seized on a new use of ODF - the use of ODF as a government mandate to rip out and replace MSOffice!
    The politics of using standards to compete against Microsoft trumped the traditions of seeking market success through technical excellence.
    Sadly, ODF would never recover from the anti trust veiled politics of IBM. The one thing ODF absolutely had to have to technically succeed is ability to convert legacy MS binary documents. Something it was never designed to do. Somethign that clearly is not in IBM's game plan.
    As if the interoeprability problems of ODF wer not enough, IBM forged ahead with their interoeprability plan. Instead of movign interop to the forefront of ODF technical issues, IBM openned up an ODF Interoperability Sub Committee at the OASIS ODF Adoption TC. A group dedicated to the marketing and promotion of ODF.
    Incredibly IBM sees ODF interop as a marketing issue, and not the technical challenge that continues to defy application implementation efforts.
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

5 Things Microsoft Must Do To Reclaim Its Mojo In 2008 -- InformationWeek - 0 views

www.informationweek.com/...showArticle.jhtml

cdf ibm iso oasis odf ooxml opendocument openoffice sun symphony

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Jan 08 - Cached
  • Instead of fighting standards, Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) needs to get on board now more than ever. With open, Web-based office software backed by the likes of IBM (NYSE: IBM) (think Lotus Symphony) and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) now a viable option, users—especially businesses frustrated by Microsoft's format follies (many are discovering that OOXML is not even fully backwards-compatible with previous versions of Microsoft Word)--can now easily switch to an online product without having to rip and replace their entire desktop infrastructure.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 11 Jan 08
       
      This article discusses how Microsoft might change their ways and save the company. This particular quote concerns Microsoft support for standards, and their fight to push MS OOXML through ISO as an alternative to ISO approved ODF 1.0.
      The thing is, ODF was not designed for the conversion of MSOffice documents, of which there are billions. Nor was ODF designed to be implemented by MSOffice. ODF was designed exactly for OpenOffice, which has a differnet model for impementing basic docuemnt structures than MSOffice.
      So a couple of points regardign this highlight:
      The first is that IBM's Lotus Symphony is NOT Open Source. IBM ripped off the OpenOffice 1.1.4 code base back when it was dual licensed under both SSSL and LGPL. IBM then closed the source code adding a wealth of proprietary eXtensions (think XForms and Lotus Notes connections). Then IBM released the proprietary Symphony as a free alternative to the original Open Source Community "OpenOffice.org".
      If Microsoft had similarly ripped off an open source community, there would be hell to pay.
      Another point here is the mistaken assumption that users can easily switch from MSOffice to an on-line product like Google Docs or ZOHO "without having to rip our and replace their entire desktop infrastructure."
      This is a ridiculous assumption defied by the facts on the ground. Massqchusetts spent two years trying to migrate to ODF and couldn't do it. Every other pilot study known has experienced the same difficulties!
      The thing about Web 2.0 alternatives is that these services can not be integrated into existing business processes and MSOffice workgroup bound activities. The collaborative advantages of Web 2.0 alternatives are disruptive and outside existing workflows, greatly marginalizing their usefulness. IF, and that's a big IF, MSOffice plug-ins were successful in the high fidelity round trip conversion of wor
  • Microsoft in 2008 could make a bold statement in support of standards by admitting that its attempt to force OOXML on the industry was a mistake and that it will work to develop cross-platform compatibility between that format and the Open Document Format
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 11 Jan 08
       
      It's impossible to harmonize two application specific file formats. The only way to establish an effective compatibility between ODF and OOXML would be to establish a compatibility between OpenOffice and MSOffice.
      The problem is that neither ODF or OOXML were developed as generirc file formats. They are both application specific, directly reflecting the particular implementation models of OOo and MSOffice.
      Sun and the OASIS ODF TC are not about to compromise OpenOffice feature sets and implmentation methods to improve interop with MSOffice. Sun in particular will protect the innovative features of OpenOffice that are reflected in ODF and stubbornly incompatible with MSOffice and the billions of binary documents. This fact can easily be proven be any review of the infamous "List Enhancement Proposal" that dominated discussions at the OASIS ODF TC from November of 2006 through May of 2007.
      So if Sun and the OASIS ODF TC refuse to make any efforts towards compatibility and imporved interop with MSOffice and the billions of binary docuemnts seekign conversion to ODF, then it falls to Microsoft to alter MSOffice. With 550 million MSOffice desktops involved in workgroup bound business processes, any changes would be costly and disruptive. (Much to the glee of Sun and IBM).
      IBM in particular has committed a good amount of resources and money lobbying for government mandates establishing ODF as the accepted format. this would of course result in a massively disruptive and costly rip out and replace of MSOffice.
      Such are the politics of ODF.
Gary Edwards

Open Document Format: The sad truth | Scott Mace Information Manager Journal - 0 views

scottmace.typepad.com/...open-document-f.html

berlind cdf foundation mace odf ooxml opendocument

shared by Gary Edwards on 11 Dec 07 - Cached
  • Open Document Format: The sad truth David Berlind has posted a massive chronicle of who said what to whom about the supposed emergence of CDF as an alternative to Open Document Format (ODF) and OOXML. I played a minor role in this saga when I spoke with Gary Edwards for Opening Move, back in April. This was before Edwards proposed CDF in place of ODF. If you haven't listened to our conversation, please do so, because the concerns Edwards raised about ODF (and OOXML) remain just as valid today. While I'm sad to see Edwards' more recent direction and assertions debunked in the press and the blogosphere, the greater tragedy is of two competing document standards -- ODF and OOXML -- now on seemingly irreversible paths to immortality, meaning we'll have translation issues between them around for several lifetimes to come.
Paul Merrell

Where is there an end of it? | Real Conformance for ODF? - 0 views

www.adjb.net/...Real-Conformance-for-ODF.aspx

ODF conformance foreign elements ODF TC ODF politics

shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Feb 09 - Cached
  • There has been quite a lot of hubbub recently about ODF conformance, in particular about how conformance to the forthcoming ODF 1.2 specification should be defined.
  • The proposal caused much debate. In support of the new conformance clause, IBM's Rob Weir described foreign elements (formerly so welcome in ODF) as proprietary extensions that are “evil” and as a “nuclear death ray gun”. Questioning the proposal, KOffice's Thomas Zander wrote that he was “worried that we are trying to remove a core feature that I depend on in both KOffice and Qt”. Meanwhile Microsoft's Doug Mahugh made a counter-proposal suggesting that ODF might adopt the Markup Compatibility and Extensibility mechanisms from ISO/IEC 29500 (OOXML). Things came to a head in a 9-2-2 split vote last week which saw the new conformance text adopted in the new ODF committee specification by will of the majority. Following this there was some traffic in the blogosphere with IBM's Rob Weir commenting and Microsoft's Doug Mahugh counter-commenting on the vote and the circumstances surrounding it.
Gary Edwards

Microsoft, Google Search and the Future of the Open Web - Google Docs - 0 views

docs.google.com/Edit

webkit microsoft google search Cloud-Computing monopoly

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Feb 09 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Feb 09
     
    The InformationWeek series of articles outlining the challenges Microsoft faces does not cover the recent anti-trust actions by the EU - DG Competition group. Even so, the series does paint a pretty gloomy scenario. Especially if you're a Microsoft shareholder. No doubt the IW guys are shorting Microsoft. All in all, this series is an accurate assessment except for one thing; they don't credit the strength of Microsoft's monopoly position and their ability to leverage the desktop monopoly into a full fledged "business" Web monopoly. MOSS (Microsoft Office - SharePoint Server) system is kicking ass, and the world is worried that browsers like Opera are not getting a fair shake on the desktop. Microsoft is a platform player, and you can't fight that at the application level. Connecting the desktop platform to backend relational and transaction servers defines the 1995 monopoly. Connecting the desktop platform to the Web platform will define the next big monopoly play. The EU has got to get off the application layer and out of the open standards vendor consortia if they are to stop this juggernaut. The reason they need to get out of the standards consortia and write/demand their own "advanced recommendations" - like WebKit, is the cleverness of Microsoft's "duality" approach. The target has to be that of restoring competition at the high end of collaborative Web computing, where Microsoft's proprietary WPF-.NET technologies rule. Any format, protocol, or interface used to connect platforms, applications or services must be open and available to all - including the reverse engineering rights. So far the EU has left me less than hopeful. I do however believe that WebKit can get the job done. It would be nice if the EU could at the least slow the beast of Redmond down. ~ge~
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Feb 09
     
    Response to the InformationWeek article "Remaking Microsoft: Get Out of Web Search!". Covers "The Myth of Google Enterprise Search", and the refusal of Google to implement or recognize W3C Semantic Web technologies. This refusal protects Google's proprietary search and categorization algorithms, but it opens the door wide for Microsoft Office editors to totally exploit the end-user semantic interface opportunities. If Microsoft can pull this off, they will take "search" to the Enterprise and beyond into every high end discipline using MSOffice to edit Web ready documents (private and public use). Also a bit about WebKit as the most disruptive technology Microsoft has faced since the advent of the Web.
Gary Edwards

Document Interoperability Initiative: Appendix H - 0 views

www.documentinteropinitiative.org/...P1-9999.AppendixH.aspx

odf ooxml interoperability opendocment Open-Standards

shared by Gary Edwards on 16 Dec 08 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 16 Dec 08
     
    Microsoft recently released their blueprint for implementing ISO 26300 (ODF 1.0 - dated May 1, 2005), and referenced this Web site. Appendix H is interesting in that it lists 13 of the 28 contributors sponsored by The OpenDocument Foundation. This contributor list contradicts the determined liars (er, editors) at Wikipedia who insist that The OpenDocument Foundation was two guys without a garage. The OpenDocument Foundation was founded in 2005 (shortly after OASIS approval of ODF 1.0) for the express purpose of balancing out the rapidly growing participation in the ODF technical committee of corporate contributors. IBM, Oracle, Novel, Intel and Adobe led a corporate wave joining the ODF TC following the May 2005 OASIS approval of ODF 1.0 and subsequent submission to ISO. The Foundation was set up to fund the participation of expert individuals representing both open source communities and groups interested in an Open Web future.
Gary Edwards

Microsoft OOXML viewers, translators, SDK to help interop with Firefox and OpenOffice? - 0 views

blogs.zdnet.com/open-source

ooxml odf openoffice paula-rooney zdnet iso MSOffice

shared by Gary Edwards on 03 Dec 08 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards on 03 Dec 08
     
    On Dec 3, Microsoft officially announced the availability of its Open XML Document Viewer, Open XML/ODF Translators Version 2.5 and the Apache POI Java SDKfor OpenXML.
Gary Edwards

Malte Timmermann's Blog - 0 views

blogs.sun.com/malte

shared by Gary Edwards on 14 Jul 07 - Cached
  • Q: Why doesn't it support Office 2007?A: Well, basically, it does, but there is an issue in Word's 2007 Filter API handling. You can save to ODF, but when you try to open ODF, Word ignores the installed filters and tries to open with it's own filters. Of course Word can't, so you get an error message "The Office Open XML file <name> cannot be opened because there are problems with the content". This even happens if you explicitly select the ODF filter! I hope Microsoft will fix this issue with the next service pack. If not, we will work around this bug by doing the same kind of integration like in PowerPoint and Excel.
  • Gary Edwards on 14 Jul 07
     
    The reason da Vinci was broke in Office 2007
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