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+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~

The decision to go with CDF has left some industry commentators scratching their heads, with arstechnica.com’s Ryan Paul noting that the decision is curious as CDF doesn't support “the full range of functionality required for office compatibility”. Paul does add, however, that the formats broad use of formats such as XHTML and SVG does give it a compelling edge.

Here's what Chris Lilley had to say, reconstructed from my notes (in other words, this is not a direct quote): So we were in a meeting when these articles about the Foundation and CDF started to appear, and we were really puzzled.  CDF isn't anything like ODF at all – it's an "interoperability agreement," mainly focused on two other specifications - XHTML and SVG.  You'd need to use another W3C specification, called Web Interactive Compound Document (WICD, pronounced "wicked"), for exporting, and even then you could only view, and not edit the output.  The one thing I'd really want your readers to know is that CDF (even together with WICD) was not created to be, and isn't suitable for use, as an office format.  Here are some other takeaways from my conversation with Chris: Although they would be welcome to become members, Neither Gary, Sam nor Marbux are members of W3C or the CDF working group The W3C has never been contacted by anyone from the Foundation about CDF.  After the articles began appearing, the W3C sent an inquiry to the Foundation, and received only a general reply in response The CDF working group was not chartered to achieve conversion between formats Although he hasn't spent a lot of time trying to unravel what Gary has written on the subject, he can't make any sense out of why the Foundation thinks that CDF makes sense as a substitute for ODF

The OpenDocument Foundation, founded five years ago by Gary Edwards, Sam Hiser, and Paul "Buck" Martin (marbux) with the express purpose of representing the OpenDocument format in the "open standards process," has reversed course. It now supports the W3C's Compound Document Format instead of its namesake ODF. Yet why this change of course has occurred is something of a mystery.

Five years after it was formed specifically to promote OpenDocument Format as an alternative to Microsoft Office formats, those behind the Open Document Foundation are abandoning the OASIS- and ISO-approved document standard in favor of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Compound Document Format.

"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.

Title: Why XHTML and CSS? Simply put, XHTML and CSS has an indefinate bond together, they work together perfectly and they shape everything for the prospect of the future Internet.

The OpenDocument Foundation has announced its plans to sever itself from participation in or further advocacy of its namesake office document format in favor of the World Wide Web Consortium's XHTML (Extensible HTML)-based Compound Document Format. Although the OpenDocument Foundation is a fairly small organization, the group sports a certain cachet that stems from the ODF-to-MS Office plug-in that the group announced--but did not release publicly--about a year and a half ago. At the heart of the rift between the Foundation and the rest of the ODF backers--led by Sun and IBM--lies a dispute over the proper strategy for achieving round-trip document fidelity between Microsoft Office and ODF-consuming applications, such as Sun's OpenOffice.org or IBM's Lotus Symphony.

A presentation made two weeks ago by two members of OASIS' OpenDocument technical committee, and founding members of the OpenDocument Foundation, made it clear that the foundation would be turning its attention away from developing the ODF format and translators for it. Instead, in a course change instigated as far back as last May, the Foundation is steering back toward a project launched in 1995 by the World Wide Web Consortium, in hopes of recapturing the momentum toward document interoperability for all existing word processor users.

The OpenDocument Foundation has decided to end its support for OASIS's OpenDocument Format (ODF) and instead support W3C's Compound Document Format (CDF), which is currently described in the Web Integration Compound Document Core 1.0 draft. This move reflects growing concerns within the interoperability advocacy community about the long-term viability of both ODF and Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML).

Standardization by Corporation Maybe i spoke to soon. This just came in from ISO, the resignation letter of the SC34WG1 Chairman who has completed his three year term. There is a fascinating statement at the end of the Martin Bryan letter. "The disparity of rules for PAS, Fast-Track and ISO committee generated standards is fast making ISO a laughing stock in IT circles. The days of open standards development are fast disappearing. Instead we are getting “standardization by corporation”, something I have been fighting against for the 20 years I have served on ISO committees. I am glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible..." When corporations join open standards or open source efforts, they arrive with substantial but most welcome financial and expert resources. They also bring marketshare and presence. And, they bring business objectives. They have a plan. As long as the corporate plan is aligned with the open standards - open source community work, all is fine. In fact it's great. For sure though there will come a time when the corporate plan asserts it's direction, and there is possible conflict. At this point, the very same wealth of resources that were cause for celebration can become cause for disappointment and disaster. One of the more troubling things i've noticed is that corporations treat everything as a corporate asset to be traded, bartered and dealt for shareholder advantage and value. This includes patents and interoperability issues which not surprisingly are wrapped into open standards and open source efforts. Rather than embrace the humanitarian – community of shared interest drivers of open standards and open source, corporations naturally plot to get maximum value out of the resources they commit. A primary example of this is Sun's use of OpenOffice, ODF, and an anti trust settlement disaster that left them at the mercy of Microsoft.

Sorry Shish, you're wrong about ODF 1.2 Try ODF 1.5 or ODF 2.0, maybe. The metadata requirements for ODF 1.2 actually did include two way lossless translation capability. Unfortunately these features did not survive the final cut, and were not included in the April 2007 submission. You might also want to check the February 23, 2007 metadata proposal from Florian Reuter. That also would have delivered the goods and perhaps put ODF that grand convergence category of usefulness across desktops, servers, devices and web systems currently the exclusive domains of MS-OOXML and CDF+. Florian had devised a means of using metadata to describe the presentation aspects of content and structural objects. Very revolutionary. And based on the simple notion that bold, font, margins etc. are simply metadata about content and style objects. Where the train came off the track had to do with the concept of an XML ID means of linking metadata to content. Not that there was anything wrong with this mechanism. It's actually quite clever. What went wrong was that Sun insisted that only those elements approved and supported by OpenOffice would be allowed to make use of XML ID metadata. For independent developers, this is a serious constraint. Because of this constraint, the metatdata sub committee started off with six elements supported by OOo that metadata could be appied to. IBM then came in and asked for eleven more elements having to do with charts and graphs. The OpenOffice crew decided they could support this, so in they went. Then an interesting question was posed, "How are independent developers supposed to submit elements for metadata consideration?"

Sorry Shish, you're wrong about ODF 1.2 Try ODF 1.5 or ODF 2.0, maybe. The metadata requirements for ODF 1.2 actually did include two way lossless translation capability. Unfortunately these features did not survive the final cut, and were not included in the April 2007 submission. You might also want to check the February 23, 2007 metadata proposal from Florian Reuter. That also would have delivered the goods and perhaps put ODF that grand convergence category of usefulness across desktops, servers, devices and web systems currently the exclusive domains of MS-OOXML and CDF+. Florian had devised a means of using metadata to describe the presentation aspects of content and structural objects. Very revolutionary. And based on the simple notion that bold, font, margins etc. are simply metadata about content and style objects. Where the train came off the track had to do with the concept of an XML ID means of linking metadata to content. Not that there was anything wrong with this mechanism. It's actually quite clever. What went wrong was that Sun insisted that only those elements approved and supported by OpenOffice would be allowed to make use of XML ID metadata. For independent developers, this is a serious constraint. Because of this constraint, the metatdata sub committee started off with six elements supported by OOo that metadata could be appied to. IBM then came in and asked for eleven more elements having to do with charts and graphs. The OpenOffice crew decided they could support this, so in they went. Then an interesting question was posed, "How are independent developers supposed to submit elements for metadata consideration?"

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?

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?

Most folks see data formats as an inside-baseball issue, because they work in all-Microsoft organizations where incompatibilities are rare. The only hangup, in that case, comes when Microsoft releases new software (Office 2007 being the latest example). Invariably, the data format's been upgraded as well.

The data format wars have been going on for years and have provoked a substantial backlash. The anti-Microsoft crowd has an alternate data format, OpenDocument, that anyone can freely incorporate into any program, just as everyone uses the same old free, non-proprietary HTML to build Web sites.

Is Open XML an open standard? The arguments are pretty technical but boil down to this: Microsoft says OpenDocument is not good and that anyone will be able to implement its far more enlightened Open Office XML. Opponents say Microsoft has built into Open XML all manner of snares, deadfalls and booby traps to defend its monopoly.

In a surprise move, the company also announced that it intends to participate in the OASIS ODF working group and the corresponding ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 Subcommittee 34 working groups for ODF, as well as the ISO Technical Committee 171 working group for PDF, said Doug Mahugh, senior product manager for Microsoft Office.He added that Microsoft would also introduce an API to allow developers to plug their own converters for formats, such as ODF, into Office to make it the default conversion path. ODF 1.1 was chosen over the ISO-standard ODF 1.0 as a practical decision based upon interoperability with existing implementations, Mahugh explained.

“Customers that are expecting true document fidelity from XML-based, ISO-standard document formats will continue to be disappointed,” said Michael Silver, a Gartner Research vice president. Silver observed that the most compatible formats to use today are Microsoft’s legacy binaries, and he believes that Microsoft will be unlikely to convince customers to move to OOXML in the foreseeable future.

The New York Times' Bits tech blog is reporting that anyone with a .edu e-mail address, whether they are a current student or not, can buy Microsoft Office Ultimate for $60, or 91% off until May 16.

1) The Web site to purchase Office Ultimate at a discount is called "The Ultimate Steal." 2) Microsoft's senior VP in charge of Office Chris Capossela confirmed to the Times that anyone with a .edu e-mail address is eligible for the discount. Most colleges and universities grant their alumni graduates .edu e-mail addresses.

I ordered just before it was supposed to end the first time at the end of April. I had not problem except that it took forever for the DVD to arrive. I was never asked to show any other proof of enrollment except giving them my .edu address. I also downloaded the exe and had no problems with it (got the DVD just in case though).