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Gary Edwards

Plan B: The NO ViSTA Mandates, and the failure of ISO/IEC - 0 views

  • Plan B: The "NO ViSTA" Mandates:  the failure of Anti Trust Laws and International Trade Agreements to Stop The Great Monopolist, Microsoft A series of surprising government mandate announcements rolled out in the immediate aftermath of the ISO/IEC decision to fast track Ecma 376 otherwise known as Microsoft Office Open XML (MOOX).  The three articles commented on here are all from Information Week, who has done yeoman work concerning the OpenDocument - MOOX controversy that has so upset Microsoft.  Now the mighty monopolist can taste victory, with fast track approval of MOOX certain, and ISO/IEC in the bag.  Incredibly the company that escaped a Court ordered death sentence by purchasing what amounts to a presidential pardon.  They even avoided the stink of their own lobbyist and henchman Jack Abramoff, and his motley crew of Ralph Reed and Grover Nyquist operatives.  Now they are well on their way towards purchasing an International Standard.  So much for Plan A.  Time for Plan B, the "NO ViSTA" mandate.
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    Okay.  I've combined my three comments into a single page.  Sadly Diigo does not offer spell checking.  My apologies to all.  Hoepfully this will be a better read.
Gary Edwards

Microsoft Watch - Business Applications - Convergence=Integration - 0 views

  • Microsoft significantly increases cross-integration of features with the company's other software. Microsoft acquired most of the products making up its Dynamics product line, and what a motley crew. New products and versions bring the Dynamics line more into the Microsoft family, in part by convergence—or increased integration with the company's other software.
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    Thanks for the insightful commentary Joe. I see things a bit differently. Maybe my tin foil hat is wearing a bit tight these days, but i see MSOffice XML (MOOXML and the MOOXML binary InfoSet) as a very important aspect of how Microsoft integrates and leverages their desktop office monopoly power into server side and device systems. It is the combination of MOOXML and .NET that creates the integration mesh between desktop, server systems, and devices. Imagine every application or service participating in either a loosely coupled or carefully crafted information processing chain, being fluent in MOOXML, and able to process internal data structures and processing instructions unique to .NET. Enterprise systems and services from ORACLE, IBM and SAP will not have this same integration fluency. The design of ISO MOOXML is such that it would be impossible for <b>non Microsoft server and device systems</b> to match the quality and depth of integration with the 500 million desktops running MSOffice bound business processes. Given that MOOXML will probably succeed at getting ISO/IEC approval, removing the last "legal" barrier for this MOOXML Stack, were looking at a massive migration of MSOffice bound workgroup - workflow business processes to a new lockin point; The Exchange/SharePoint Hub. With the real estate industry, this migration to to E/S hosted applications only took six months to completely replace years of desktop productivity shrinkware dominance. The leap in productivity was spectacular. The downside of this migration is that the real estate industry is now tied into Microsoft at the critically important business process level. A binding that will perhaps last through the next fifteen years.
Gary Edwards

Microsoft Hit By U.S. DOT Ban On Windows Vista, Explorer 7, and Office 2007 - Technology News by InformationWeek - 0 views

  • »&nbsp; E-Mail »&nbsp; Print »&nbsp; Discuss »&nbsp; Write To Editor late last year -- can be resolved. "We have more confidence in Microsoft than we would have 10 years ago," says Schmidt. "But it always makes sense to look at the security implications, the value back to the customer, and those kind of issues." The DOT's ban on Vista, Internet Explorer 7, and Office 2007 applies to 15,000 computer users at DOT proper who are currently running the Windows XP Professional operating system. The memo indicates that a similar ban is in effect at the Federal Aviation Administration, which has 45,000 desktop users. Compatibility with existing applications appears to be the Transportation Department's major concern. According to a separate memo, a number of key software applications and utilities in use in various branches of the department aren't Vista compatible. Among them are Aspen 2.8.1, ISS 2.11, ProVu 3.1.1, and Capri 6.5, according to a memo issued by staffers at the DOT's Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. Any prolonged ban on new Microsoft technologies by the federal government could have a significant impact on the software maker's bottom line, as Microsoft sells millions of dollars in software to the feds annually. http://as.cmpnet.com/event.ng/Type=count&amp;ClientType=2&amp;AdID=125682&amp;FlightID=75634&amp;TargetID=2625&amp;SiteID=222&amp;AffiliateID=283&amp;EntityDefResetFlag=0&amp;Segments=1411,3108,3448,11291,12119&amp;Targets=2625,2878,7904,8579&amp;Values=34,46,51,63,77,87,91,102,140,222,227,283,442,646,656,1184,1255,1311,1405,1431,1716,1767,1785,1798,1925,1945,1970,2217,2299,2310,2326,2352,2678,2727,2767,2862,2942,3140,3347,3632,3636,3638,3890,3904,4080,448
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    Whoa, those government desktops add up quickly.  This Vista ban will immediately effect over 50,000 desktops, with tens of thousands more possibly impacted by the IE 7.0 ban.  The MS Exchange/SharePoint Hub juggernaut is based on IE 7.0, which is not available for Windows 2000 - MSOffice 2000 desktops.

    Lack of Vista Stack compatibility with non Microsoft application is given as the reason for the ban.  But notice the "alternatives" to Vista mentioned; Novel SuSE and Apple Mac.  What kind of interop - compatibility do they offer?  My guess is ZERO!

    The reality is that the DOT is trapped.  My advice would be stay exactly where they are, keeping the current MSOffice desktop installs running.  Then, install the Foundation's daVinci ODF plugin for MSOffice. 

    This will insure that Windows OS and  MSOffice bound business processes can continue to function without disruption.  Win32 APi based applications like those mentioned in the article can continue.  Critical day to day business processes, workgroup and workflow related activities can continue without disruption or costly re engineering demanded by a cross platform port.

    What daVinci doe sdo is move the iron triangle that binds Windows-MSOffice applications to business processes and documents, to an ODF footing.  Once on a ODF footing, the government can push forward with the same kind of workgroup - workflow - intelligent docuemnt - collaborative computing advnaces that the Vista Stack was designed to deliver.  Only this push will involve the highly competitive "the customer is sovereign" environment of ODF ready desktop, server, device and Web 2.0 systems.  End of Redmond lock-in.  End of the costly iron triangle and the force march upgrade treadmill that so enriches Microsoft.

    So what's not to like?  We can do this.
    ~ge~

    http://docs.google.com/View?docID=dghfk5w9_20d2x6rf&amp;revi
Gary Edwards

California may join rush of states toward ODF - 0 views

  • Like the other two measures, the bill in the California Assembly doesn't list any specific document formats that could be used. But as in Minnesota and Texas, the introduction of such a bill appears to be another potential win for backers of the Open Document Format (ODF) for Office Applications.
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    Good article about the opening salvo in what promises to be a long, hard fought war with Microsoft.  Unlike what has happened in the EU and Massachusetts, this time our friends in Redmond are politically facing off on the home turf of their powerful enemies in Silicon Valley, which stretches from the south of market area (SOMA) all the way down the San Francisco peninsula to San Jose, arching around the entire Bay area.

    If you thought it was raining dollars from Redmond in Massachusetts as the great monopolist moved to successfully shut down the entire Information Technology budget, including HomeLand Security projects, the battle of California promises to be the el nino of perfect storms.  I'm confident though that California CIO Clark Kelso and five star brigadiere general Bill Welty will stand tall against the storm.  I can hardly wait for the forces to move into place and the action begin.  What a show this is going to be.

    Meanwhile, what's at stake here is all the marbles of our digital future.  Forcing Microsoft to accept and fully implement the OpenDcoument XML file format is something the great monopolist has shown they will fight to the bitter end.  Brace yourselves!

Gary Edwards

Vista and Office 2007 spin tales from the Underground | Channel Register - 0 views

  • Firstly it is a back end to what most people would traditionally think of as "Microsoft Office", i.e. the suite of desktop tools (Word, PowerPoint, Excel and so on). In this respect, it acts as a hub for collaboration, document storage/sharing, search and a range of other functions. However, SharePoint can also be used independently of the Office desktop components as a very respectable and capable portal environment for serving up either native .Net or composite applications to users through a browser.
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    Excellent article about Vista and MSOffice "System" 2007 as development platforms.  The author provides one of the better explanations of how MSOffice 2007 and SharePoint "Hub" are connected and joined at the hip.  Hey, i invented tha tterm "Hub"!  Or so i thought.  I guess some things are just obvious.

    My use of the term "Hub" to describe an XML turnstile where backend information meges with portal interfaces, email, messaging, and document storage/collaboration goes back to the 2003 "Sales and Inventory" management system prototype we built for Comcast.  Desktops connect to the hub through XML documents, XForms and Jabber XMPP data binding, and browsers.  Great stuff - the way SOA should be done!

Gary Edwards

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

  • 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.
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    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

Yahoo Adds Flash, HTML to Widgets Platform - Flock - 1 views

  • 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.
Gary Edwards

Open Document Foundation Gives Up | Linux Magazine - 0 views

  • 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.
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    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
Gary Edwards

War rages on over Microsoft's OOXML plans: Insight - Software - ZDNet Australia - 0 views

  • "We feel that the best standards are open standards," technology industry commentator Colin Jackson, a member of the Technical Advisory committee convened by StandardsNZ to consider OOXML, said at the event. "In that respect Microsoft is to be applauded, as previously this was a secret binary format." Microsoft's opponents suggest, among a host of other concerns, that making Open XML an ISO standard would lock the world's document future to Microsoft. They argue that a standard should only be necessary when there is a "market requirement" for it. IBM spokesperson Paul Robinson thus describes OOXML as a "redundant replacement for other standards". Quoting from the ISO guide, Robinson said that a standard "is a document by a recognised body established by consensus which is aimed at achieving an optimum degree of order and aimed at the promotion of optimum community benefits". It can be argued that rather than provide community benefit, supporting multiple standards actually comes at an economic cost to the user community. "We do not believe OOXML meets these objectives of an international standard," Robinson said.
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    "aimed at achieving an optimum degree of order .... and .... aimed at the promotion of optimum community benefits:. Uh, excuse me Mr. Robinson, tha tsecond part of your statement, the one concerning optimum community benefits - that would also disqualify ODF!! ODF was not designed to be compatible with the 550 million MSOffice desktops and their billions of binary docuemnts. Menaing, these 550 million users will suffer considerable loss of information if they try to convert their existing documents to ODF. It is also next to impossible for MSOffice applications to implement ODF as a fiel format due to this incompatbility. ODF was designed for OpenOffice, and directly reflects the way OpenOffice implements specific document structures. The problem areas involve large differences between how OpenOffice implments these structures and how MSOffice implements these same structures. The structures in question are lists, fields, tables, sections and page dynamics. It seems to me that "optimum community benefits" would include the conversion and exchange of docuemnts with some 550 million users!!!! And ODF was clearly not designed for that purpose!
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    I don't agree with this statement from Microsoft's Oliver Bell. As someone who served on the OASIS ODF Technical Committee from it's inception in November of 2002 through the next five years, i have to disagree. It's not that Microsoft wasn't welcome. They were. It's that the "welcome" came with some serious strings. Fo rMicrosoft to join OASIS would have meant strolling into the camp of their most erstwhile and determined competitors, and having to ammend an existing standard to accomodate the implementation needs of MSOffice. There is simply no way for the layout differences between OpenOffice and MSOffice to be negotiated short of putting both methodologies into the spec. Meaning, the spec would provide two ways of implementing lists, tables, fields, sections and page dynamics. A true welcome would have been for ODF to have been written to accomodate these diferences. Rather than writing ODF to meet the implementation model used by OepnOffice, it would have been infinitely better to wrtite ODF as a totally application independent file format using generic docuemnt structures tha tcould be adapted by any application. It turns out that this is exactly the way the W3C goes about the business of writing their fiel format specifications (HTML, XHTML, CSS, XFORMS, and CDF). The results are highly interoperable formats that any applciation can implement.
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    You can harmonize an application specific format with a generic, applicaiton independent format. But you can't harmonize two application specific formats!!!!
    The easy way to solve the document exchange problem is to leave the legacy applications alone, and work on the conversion of OOXML and ODF docuemnts to a single, application independent generic format. The best candidate for this role is that of the W3C's CDF.
    CDF is a desription of how to combine existing W3C format standards into a single container. It is meant to succeed HTML on the Web, but has been designed as a universal file format.
    The most exciting combination is that of XHTML 2.0 and CSS in that it is capable of handling the complete range of desktop productivity office suite documents. Even though it's slightly outside the W3C reach, the most popular CDF compound is that of XHTML, CSS and JavaScript. A combination otherwise known as "AJAX".
Gary Edwards

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

  • 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.
Gary Edwards

Inside PDF: CDF - 0 views

  • The real technical content of the CDF recommendations is in details of how to glue these various (XML markup) languages together once they all have been processed into their respective DOMs. It establishes conventions for how a script might reach across DOM boundaries, how events might get propagated across DOM boundaries and stuff like that. I won't go into this any deeper because you will get more accurate information by just reading the W3C documents. But the main idea of CDF is to bring these variously defined content types into a uniform "framework" so that scripts can operate more at a document level instead of being confined to their own document child.
Paul Merrell

Doug Mahugh : ODF Implementation Notes for Office 2007 SP2 - 0 views

  • Microsoft has today published our first set of document-format implementation notes, for the ODF implementation in Office 2007 SP2. These notes, which are available on the DII web site, provide detailed information about the design decisions that went into our implementation of ODF 1.1.
  • Doug, The list of elements and attributes "not supported in core Word/Excel/PowerPoint 2007" is quite long. Can you tell us what will happen, when Office 2007 encouters an unsupported element. Will it simply be ignored? When roundtripping - will it be deleted or preserved?
  • Doug, The list of elements and attributes "not supported in core Word/Excel/PowerPoint 2007" is quite long. Can you tell us what will happen, when Office 2007 encouters an unsupported element. Will it simply be ignored? When roundtripping - will it be deleted or preserved?
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Jesper, On load, Office 2007 SP2 will simply ignore the unsupported elements and attributes in ODF files. &nbsp;We do not attempt to round trip unsupported elements and attributes, they will be removed from the ODF file if you resave it using Office 2007 SP2. &nbsp;This is consistent with our implementation principles and our desire to provide predictable behavior. &nbsp; We considered trying to roundtrip elements and attributes that we do not understand or support, but we found if we did this that we could not be sure the resulting files were internally consistent and conformant ODF files. &nbsp; As an aside, there are some cases where we write elements or attributes on save that we do not support on load, for the sake of better interoperability with other applications that use ODF. &nbsp; Those cases are described in the implementer notes as well.
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    Jesper Lund Stocholm asks a right-on-the-mark question. Peter Amstein answers for Microsoft. What do you expect when a specification ends its conformance section with the statement, "There are no rules regarding the elements and attributes that actually have to be supported by conforming applications, except that applications should not use foreign elements and attributes for features defined in the OpenDocument schema?"
Jesper Lund Stocholm

The Forrester Blog For Information & Knowledge Management Professionals - 0 views

  • Wow. Microsoft opened up today, taking a nearly 180-degree turn to announce its intent to support ODF, PDF, and XPS. Overall, this is a great, positive move. While unexpected, it's not surprising. Microsoft has been moving towards more open standards, like with its recent DAISY XML initiative. But it's also a no-brainer. Sticking exclusively with its competing Open XML was divisive, complicating IT's efforts to leverage the benefits that open source XML provides.
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    Reading this I suddenly thought of the phrase "Internet tidal wave" from Bill Gates in the late 90's . I know the rest of the world don't give a damn about the document format war (as much as we do), but the move from Microsoft here is actually quite substantial.
Paul Merrell

Doug Mahugh : Office support for document format standards - 0 views

  • Third-party translators. We anticipate that some developers may want to take over the default ODF load and save paths, so that they can plug in their own translators for ODF, and we'll be providing an API in SP2 that enables this scenario. This means that if a developer disagrees with the details of our approach and would like to implement ODF for Office in a different way, they're free to do so and can set it up such that when a user opens an ODT attached to an email or from their desktop, it will be loaded through their ODF code path.
    • Paul Merrell
       
      The Third-party translators discussion of the forthcoming new API suggests that it is for ODF only, and thereby implicitly that it will not be a tool for accessing the full functionaolity of MS Word, i.e., that only the functionality specified in ODF 1.1 will be available. E.g., no control of Sharepoint functionality or manipulation of the Microsoft cloud through the API from OpenOffice.org via ODF. .
    • Jesper Lund Stocholm
       
      The Microsoft cloud depends heavily on OOXML, and that is likely not going to change. Are you saying that you'd prefer a plug-in mechanism in SharePoint as well? I believe the protocols used by SharePoint are included in the specs now provided. Won't that do (apart from the non-commercial usage of the specs)
  • If you're an Office 2007 user, the image above probably looks pretty familiar. But look close, and you'll see some Save-As options you've not seen before here: OpenDocument, and (unless you have the existing add-in) PDF &amp; XPS.
  • There is new information today about the planned release of v2.0 of the ODF translator on the ODF translator team blog. The SourceForge translator projects will continue to move forward, and Microsoft will continue to be an active participant in these projects.
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • This is a screen shot of a pre-release copy of SP2 (Service Pack 2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office System, showing the new document format standards that we'll be supporting starting with SP2.
    • Paul Merrell
       
      Hi, Jesper. according to another article I found later, the new APIs (I assume it should be plural rather than singlular) will allow addition of formats other than ODF, so I apparently got that part wrong. On the Sharepoint example, I wasn't sufficiently clear and apologize. Assume you create a document in MS Office that invokes Sharepoint functionality, then you save it as ODF and ship it off to a co-worker using OOo. The OOo user wants to send it back to you for further processing. But if saving to ODF in Office wipes the Sharepoint metadata, you've got data loss on the outbound trip. The path you suggest would work at least in theory (I haven't heard any reports yet of the documentation on the Sharepoint APIs) if Sharepoint were used as an intermediary hub. But the Sharepoiint document may not be accessible to the co-worker, e.g., because of page security settings. I anticipate that there would be many cases where only one end of the trip has access to the hub, so there's a need to keep the path open that bypasses the hub and for it to be non-lossy. There is an article on BetaNews by Scott Fulton that interviews a couple of the Softies. They said that there will be lots of Office functionality that won't be able to be saved in ODF, that they're not planning a compatability mode that would block use of features that can't be saved to ODF, and that they're not planning to go beyond the features specified in ODF 1.1. So if they carry through on what they said, the outbound trip to ODF implementations will be lossy. I think the real problem with the Sharepoint specs and other documentation Microsoft is releasing is that it isn't in a standard where a technical committee could say yea or nay on whether it is suffiiciently specific and where the specs can be made vendor-neutral. In other words, that Micrsooft is in control of the specifiation rather than a standards body. Microsoft got away so far with creating a de facto standard for the line of business functional
    • Paul Merrell
       
      Hi, Jesper. according to another article I found later, the new APIs (I assume it should be plural rather than singlular) will allow addition of formats other than ODF, so I apparently got that part wrong. On the Sharepoint example, I wasn't sufficiently clear and apologize. Assume you create a document in MS Office that invokes Sharepoint functionality, then you save it as ODF and ship it off to a co-worker using OOo. The OOo user wants to send it back to you for further processing. But if saving to ODF in Office wipes the Sharepoint metadata, you've got data loss on the outbound trip. The path you suggest would work at least in theory (I haven't heard any reports yet of the documentation on the Sharepoint APIs) if Sharepoint were used as an intermediary hub. But the Sharepoiint document may not be accessible to the co-worker, e.g., because of page security settings. I anticipate that there would be many cases where only one end of the trip has access to the hub, so there's a need to keep the path open that bypasses the hub and for it to be non-lossy. There is an article on BetaNews by Scott Fulton that interviews a couple of the Softies. They said that there will be lots of Office functionality that won't be able to be saved in ODF, that they're not planning a compatability mode that would block use of features that can't be saved to ODF, and that they're not planning to go beyond the features specified in ODF 1.1. So if they carry through on what they said, the outbound trip to ODF implementations will be lossy. I think the real problem with the Sharepoint specs and other documentation Microsoft is releasing is that it isn't in a standard where a technical committee could say yea or nay on whether it is suffiiciently specific and where the specs can be made vendor-neutral. In other words, that Micrsooft is in control of the specifiation rather than a standards body. Microsoft got away so far with creating a de facto standard for the line of business functional
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    "This is a screen shot of a pre-release copy of SP2 (Service Pack 2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office System, showing the new document format standards that we'll be supporting starting with SP2."
  •  
    "This is a screen shot of a pre-release copy of SP2 (Service Pack 2) for the 2007 Microsoft Office System, showing the new document format standards that we'll be supporting starting with SP2."
Jesper Lund Stocholm

Open Malaysia: ISO 26300 Published - 0 views

  • The OpenDocument Format (ISO 26300) has been officially published by ISO . More information is available here. This should put to rest any objections that ISO 26300 is not available in its official form for the reference of technologists.
    • Jesper Lund Stocholm
       
      The ISO-page lists the date of publication as November 30th 2006.
Paul Merrell

BetaNews | Microsoft's Matusow and Mahugh on Office's move to open format support - 0 views

  • One of the most intriguing parts of today's development, especially for open source developers and ODF proponents, concerns Microsoft's upcoming release of its API's for document format plug-ins for the forthcoming "Office 14:"
  • A second scenario is, perhaps there's a format that we have not implemented or supported in Office, but for whatever reason, a particular organization wants to support that format. They can write their own support and integrate it into Office, so that it's very seamless; and from the user experience point of view, it just looks like yet another format Office supports.
    • Paul Merrell
       
      But will developers be able to set compatibility modes so that functionality in MS Office that can not be saved to another document format is not available? If not, there can be no ireliable nterchange of documents between different IT systems without loss of fidelity.
  • The APIs, BetaNews learned, will be released under the auspices of the interoperability initiatives the company launched in February. Those apply to documentation and information (note, not programs) that Microsoft says it will freely release to developers without them having to obtain a license; and those initiatives apply to Microsoft's "high-volume software" -- and certainly Office qualifies as that. A careful read of these initiatives' wording would indicate that Microsoft leaves itself no option for using intellectual property leverage against anyone who should make a format plug-in for Office 14 -- even a "better Open XML than Open XML," since that's no longer Microsoft's property either.
Paul Merrell

BetaNews | Microsoft's Matusow and Mahugh on Office's move to open format support - 0 views

  • DOUG MAHUGH, program manager for ISO 29500-based products, Microsoft: One thing to be very clear about here is this: When we say, "support for ODF in [Office] SP2," we intend to write very compliant ODF documents when you save a document. However, it's not a given that everything you can do in the Office UI is savable under ODF. As you're alluding to, there are things -- SmartArt, conditional formatting, things like that -- that we have in Office and that are popular features, where there is no way to save those in ODF, currently.The way we're approaching that, I can share a little bit with you: We're not throttling the UI, as you describe, where certain things are disabled. Rather, at the time you save, we're telling you, "Hey, you're saving in this other format; some information in this document may be lost." That sort of thing. And let me tell you why we made the decision to do it in that particular way: There are situations where some of that functionality may be very useful to the user, even though it can't be serialized out to the format that they're saving in.
    • Paul Merrell
       
      One might suppose that the new API discussed on the following page will similarly not allow developers to set a compatability mode in Office apps. Note that the existing APIs do allow that, so one might suspect that disabling the ability to set a compatibility mode is one of the reasons for the new API.
  • The engineering decisions that were made in the original creation of ODF represent the engineering pathway and the innovations that were happening in the OpenOffice space. The engineering decisions and development pathway for Open XML represents that which was happening in [Microsoft] Office, and the feature sets are not in parity. In fact, there's a superset of features within the Microsoft Office set, but there are certainly features that are exclusive to OpenOffice that do not get covered in Microsoft Office.
  • We really hope to see ODF move to JTC 1 / SC 34 maintenance
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