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Standard or Not, OOXML Has a Lot Going for It | Redmond Developer News - Desmond - 0 views

  • Ultimately, O'Kelly said it best in his report: "The relative success of ODF and OOXML, in any case, will be determined more by its utility and which community effectively exploits W3C standards than it will by one or the other more effectively navigating through ISO standards procedures."
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CIO Wakeup Call: Burton Group ODF/OOXML report | The CIO Weblog - 0 views

  • Although most of the ruckus over the paper has focused on the prediction that OOXML will beat out ODF, the more intriguing and meaningful conclusion is in fact that the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) model, built on open and broadly accepted web standards already in broad use, will in fact "...be more influential and pervasive than ODF and OOXML." This implicit acknowledgment that the SaaS delivery model will dominate productivity and document storage applications is less supportive of Microsoft's approaches than many of the documents detractors care to acknowledge and suggests the entire debate is essentially a sideshow.
  • CIOs who are truly concerned with data preservation and open standards need to take a hard look at Microsoft's historical business practices and the remaining questions hanging over OOXML and ask themselves if it's worth making such a major transition to a format that is fraught with the same potential for vendor (rather than consumer) control in the future. SaaS options, it's worth noting, hardly escape this issue, so regardless of the very real potential that SaaS will eclipse any of the stand-alone office applications that are currently involved in this debate, it's still going to be necessary to pick a format for long-term, corporate control of vital data and documents.
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Burton Group Responds to Ars Technica's Angry ODF/OOXML Rebuttal - 0 views

  • Five days ago Ars Technica issued its view of the Burton Group ODF/OOXML report and made it clear that they disagreed with its findings, going with the headline, "Analyst group slams ODF, downplays Microsoft ISO abuses." We've had some questions from Burton Group clients and others about the article, so I thought it would be worthwhile to go through where we agree, where we disagree, where Ars Technica mischaracterizes what we said, and where it's wrong.
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Bluster keeps the ODF / OOXML debate afloat | BetaNews - 0 views

  • the Group went one step further, if only that far: It advised clients to steer clear of the whole format superiority debate, in order to avoid getting dragged down into what could be called "Office politics.""ODF is insufficient for complex real-world enterprise requirements, and it is indirectly controlled by Sun Microsystems, despite also being an ISO standard," the Burton Group's Guy Creese and Peter O'Kelly wrote. "It's possible that IBM, Novell, and other vendors may be able to put ODF on a more customer-oriented trajectory in the future and more completely integrate it with the W3C content model, but for now ODF should be seen as more of an anti-Microsoft political statement than an objective technology selection."
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Brian Jones: Open XML Formats : Mapping documents in the binary format (.doc; .xls; .pp... - 0 views

  • The second issue we had feedback on was an interest in the mapping from the binary formats into the Open XML formats. The thought here was that the most effective way to help people with this was to create an open source translation project to allow binary documents (.doc; .xls; .ppt) to be translated into Open XML. So we proposed the creation of a new open source project that would map a document written using the legacy binary formats to the Open XML formats. TC45 liked this suggestion, and here was the TC45 response to the national body comments: We believe that Interoperability between applications conforming to DIS 29500 is established at the Office Open XML-to- Office Open XML file construct level only.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      And here i was betting that the blueprints to the secret binaries would be released the weekend before the September 2nd, 2007 ISO vote on OOXML! Looks like Microsoft saved the move for when they really had to use it; jus tweeks before the February ISO Ballot Resolution Meetings set to resolve the Sept 2nd issues. The truth is that years of reverse engineering have depleted the value of keeping the binary blueprints secret. It's true that interoperability with MSOffice in the past was near entirely dependent on understanding the secret binaries. Today however, with the rapid emergence of the Exchange/SharePoint juggernaught, interop with MSOffice is no longer the core issue. Now we have to compete with E/S, and it is the E/S interfaces, protocols and document API's and dependencies tha tmust be reverse engineered. The E/S juggernaught is now surging to 70% or more of the market. These near monopoly levels of market penetration is game changing. One must reverse engineer or license the .NET libraries to crack the interop problem. And this time it's not just MSOffice. Today one must crack into the MS Stack whose core is tha tof MSOffice <> E/S. So why not release the secret binary blueprints? If that's the cost of getting the application, platform and vendor specific OOXML through ISO, then it's a small price to pay for your own international standard.
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    Well well well. We knew that IBM had access to the secret binary blueprints back in 2006. Now we know that Sun ALSO had access!
    And why is this important? In June of 2006, Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez asked the OpenDocument Foundation's da Vinci Group to work with IBM on developing the da Vinci ODF plug-in clone of Microsoft's OOXML Compatibility Pack plug-in. When we met with IBM they were insistent that the only way OASIS ODF could establish sufficient compatibility with MSOffice and the billions of binary documents would be to have the secret blueprints open.
    Even after we explained to IBM that da Vinci uses the same internal conversion process that the OOXML plug-in used to convert binaries, IBM continued to insist that opening up the secret binaries was a primary objective of the OASIS ODF community.
    For sure this was important to IBM and Sun, but the secret binaries were of no use to us. da Vinci didn't need them. What da Vinci needed instead was a subset of ODF designed for the conversion of those billions of binary documents! A need opposed by Sun.
    Sun of course would spend the next year developing their own ODF plug-in for MSOffice. But here's the thing: it turns out that Sun had complete access to the secret binary blueprints dating back to 2006!!!!!!
    So even though IBM and Sun have had access to the blueprints since 2006, they have been unable to provide effective conversions to ODF!
    This validates a point the da Vinci group has been trying to make since June of 2006: the problem of perfecting a high fidelity conversion between the billions of binaries and ODF has nothing to do with access to the secret binary blueprints. The real issue is that ODF was NOT designed for the conversion of those binary documents.
    It is true that one could eXtend ODF to achieve the needed compatibility. But one has to be very careful before taking this ro
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CDI WICD 2.0 - 0 views

  • This document defines a generic language-independent processing model for combining arbitrary document formats. The Compound Document Framework is language-independent. While it is clearly meant to serve as the basis for integrating W3C's family of XML formats within its Interaction Domain (e.g., MathML, SMIL, SVG, VoiceXML, XForms, XHTML, XSL) with each other, together with CSS and the DOM; it can also be used to integrate non-W3C formats with W3C formats or integrate non-W3C formats with other non-W3C formats. 1.1. Conformance Everying in this specification is normative except for diagrams, examples, notes and sections marked non-normative. The key words must, must not, required, shall, shall not, should, should not, recommended, may and optional in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [RFC2119]. This specification defines the following classes of products: conforming implementation A user agent that implements all interfaces described in this specification and follows all must-, required- and shall-level of critera in this specification. conforming document A document that follows all must-, required- and shall-level of critera in this specification that apply to document authors. conforming authoring tool One that produces conforming documents.
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Microsoft's OOXML: The No vote | Computerworld - 0 views

  • The Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at the University of New South Wales recently hosted a symposium to discuss issues surrounding the proposed Microsoft OOXML document format standard. In attendance at a technical session were representatives from Microsoft, IBM, Google, the Open Source Industry Australia, Standards Australia, the National Archives of Australia, and the International Organisation for Standardisation.
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Interoperability Enhancement Proposal: Suggested ODF1.2 items - 0 views

  • Subject: Suggested ODF1.2 items From: "Florian Reuter" &lt;freuter@novell.com&gt; To: &lt;office@lists.oasis-open.org&gt; Date: Mon, 20 Nov 2006 17:03:24 +0100
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    This is the fifth of the six major iX - interoperability enhancement proposals submitted to the OASIS ODF TC - SC between July 2006 and February of 2007. This particular iX proposal lead to the "List Enhancement Proposal" donnybrook that consumed the OASIS ODF TC for the next six months, ending with the OpenDocument Foundation being booted out of OASIS in May of 2007. The six iX proposals were all different approaches to the same basic problem: ODF was not desinged to be interoperable with MSOffice documents, applications or bound processes. The proposals come out of the OpenDocument' Foundation's efforts to save ODF in Massachusetts. ODF iX repressents a subset of ODF designed to grealty improve compatibility with MS binary and XML formats. With the ODF iX subset, the da Vinci plug-in would be able to convert the billions of MSOffice binary and xml documents with a very high level of fidelity, and do so within the bounds of "round trip" business processes. The most basic iX approach was to add five generic elements to the existing ODF specification. The five generic elements would cover lists, tables, fields, sections, and page dynamics (breaks). It is a well known fact that these five areas of incompatibility between OpenOffice ODF and MSOffice binaries represent 95% of all conversion fidelity problems. MSOffice has one way of implementing lists, and, OpenOffice has another. These application specific implementation models are irreconcilably different. It's also true that the applicaiton specific implementation models are directly reflected in each file format. So applications implementing ODF must also implement the OpenOffice model for lists, fields, tables, sections and page dynamics-page positioning if they are to have any meaningful measure of exchange fidelity. Perhaps the best of the iX approaches was that based on the innovative use of metadata to describe presentation-layout attributes.
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Home - Berkman Center for Internet &amp; Society - 0 views

  • There were 5 successive Roundtables.  Each roundtable was led by 5 short presentations before the topic was opened to the floor for general discussion.  The first roundtable focused on "What is ODF, and why are open document standards important". There were many questions regarding how open standards affect competition and innovation, whether ODF is in fact the best standard, issues of archiving and interoperability with ODF as well as how ODF addresses/will address concerns of accessibility for disabled persons. The second Roundtable discussed how various software developers were responding to ODF and the third roundtable focused on whether governments or non-governmental and consumer organizations should systematically use procurement policy to promote ODF.  The following roundtable was a lively discussion on whether national or global "agreements" can play a role in promoting ODF and how.  During that roundtable as well as the last one on "Reflections and next steps", there were discussions of future work and strategies on ODF in a new international forum, the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to be held in Athens, Greece, October 30 - November 3, 2006.
    • Gary Edwards
       
      The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at the Harvard Law School held an Open Document Conference, October 23rd, 2006. Just a few weeks after the October 4th, 2006 resignation of Massachusetts CIO Louis Gutierrez. This is the summary report of organizer Manon Ress. Sam Hiser represented the OpenDocument Foundation. The ZERO Interop problems that plague ODF implementation were not discussed. Strangely :) Another point not discussed is the fact that ODF is not an Internet file format. It's a desktop office suite only format. This constraint is written into the ODF charter. Interestingly, one of the problems of making ODF Web ready is that of highjacked W3C standards. Highjacking occurs when a specification or application takes existing W3C standards and changes the namespace reference to it's own. This is what ODF does. The reason for doing this is to constrain and limit the W3C standard to just those aspects implemented by the ODF reference application, OpenOffice. XForms, SVG, SMiL, XHTML, RDF/XML and RDFa are problematic examples of W3C namespaces that have been highjacked by ODF to meet the specific implementation constraints of OpenOffice. This impacts developers who rely on standard libraires to do conversions and processing. The libraries are built to the proper W3C namespace, and unfortunately assume that ODF complies. It doesn't, So developers have to investigate how OpenOffic eimplements XForms and SVG, and build special ODF libraries before they can use ODF on the Web. It can be done, i think. But it's a train wreck of a mess guaranteed to destroy the high level of web interoperability users and developers expect.
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CDF: Computable Document Format for Interactive Content from Wolfram - 0 views

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    Introducing the Computable Document Format Today's online documents are like yesterday's paper-flat, lifeless, inactive. Instead, the Computable Document Format (CDF) puts easy-to-author interactivity at its core, empowering readers to drive content and generate results live. Launched by the Wolfram Group, the CDF standard is a computation-powered knowledge container-as everyday as a document, but as interactive as an app. Adopting CDF gives ideas a broad communication pipeline-accelerating research, education, technical development, and progress.
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Patrick Durusau on ODF and interoperability - 0 views

  • Interoperability is one of the primary reasons why I like XML in general and ODF in particular.
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New OASIS Discussion List: oiic-formation-discuss - 0 views

  • The proposed discussion list name is "oiic-formation". (2) A preliminary statement of scope for the TC whose formation the list is intended to discuss. It is the intent of the ODF Implementation, Interoperability and Conformance (IIC) TC to provide a means for software implementors and service providers to create applications which adhere to the ODF specification and are able to interoperate. As such, the purpose of the IIC TC includes the following:
  • It is the intent of the ODF Implementation, Interoperability and Conformance (IIC) TC to provide a means for software implementors and service providers to create applications which adhere to the ODF specification and are able to interoperate. As such, the purpose of the IIC TC includes the following: 1. To publish test suites of ODF for applications of ODF to check their conformance with the Standard and to confirm their interoperability; 2. To provide feedback, where necessary, to the ODF TC on ways in which the standard could improve interoperability; 3. To produce a set of implementation guidelines; 4. To define interoperability with related standards by the creation of profiles or technical reports; 5. To coordinate, in conjunction with the ODF Adoption TC, OASIS InterOp demos related to ODF; The IIC TC may also liaise with other standard bodies whose work is leveraged in present or future ODF specifications. These include, but are not limited to, the W3C and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34.
  • 1. To publish test suites of ODF for applications of ODF to check their conformance with the Standard and to confirm their interoperability; 2. To provide feedback, where necessary, to the ODF TC on ways in which the standard could improve interoperability; 3. To produce a set of implementation guidelines; 4. To define interoperability with related standards by the creation of profiles or technical reports; 5. To coordinate, in conjunction with the ODF Adoption TC, OASIS InterOp demos related to ODF; The IIC TC may also liaise with other standard bodies whose work is leveraged in present or future ODF specifications. These include, but are not limited to, the W3C and ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34.
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What to do now - Rick Jelliffe - 0 views

  • Now that ODF and OOXML are both set to be on the ISO/IEC books, it is useful to consider what the next productive steps are. For genuine ODF Supporters who are concerned that ODF has languished a little out of the limelight during 2007, there are a lot of useful things to be done. You don’t even need to join the OASIS groups or your local National Body or SC34 to begin. I suggest here are some things that will help the ODF effort coming into ODF 1.2.
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Detail Results ISO/IEC FDIS 24754 - 0 views

  • ISO International Organization for Standardization Document #: ISO/IEC FDIS 24754&nbsp; Title: Information technology -- Document description and processing languages -- Minimum requirements for specifying document rendering systems&nbsp; Scope: &nbsp; Keywords: IT applications in information, documentation and publishing&nbsp; Committee: ISO IEC JTC 1 SC 34 - Document description and processing languages&nbsp; SDO Approval Date: &nbsp; ANSI Approval Date: &nbsp; Date File Updated in Database May 13 2008 4:50PM&nbsp;
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    "FDIS" stands for "final draft international standard," which puts this standard at the final voting stage. I suspect that this document will be frequently cited in the efforts to harmonize ODF and OOXML at the presentation layer. Unfortunately, it looks like you have to be a member of a national standardization body to come up with a copy.
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Microsoft Office for 91 percent off! | Computerworld Blogs - 0 views

  • 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).
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Publicly Available Standards - 0 views

  • 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&nbsp;protected by copyright and&nbsp;therefore and unless otherwise specified, no part of&nbsp;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
       
      Remenber also to download the electronic inserts containing e.g. reference schemas in electronic form.
  •  
    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.
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ISO - News - ISO and IEC approve OpenDocument OASIS standard for data interoperability ... - 0 views

  • The OpenDocument Format OASIS standard that enables users of varying office suites to exchange documents freely with one another has just been approved for release as an ISO and IEC International Standard.
    • Jesper Lund Stocholm
       
      ODF approval in ISO
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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.
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Putting Andy Updegrove to Bed (without his supper) | Universal Interoperability Council - 0 views

  • by OASIS attorney Andy Updegrove claimed that W3C Compound Document Formats: [i] are non-editable formats; [ii] are not designed for conversions to other formats; and [iii] are therefore unsuitable as office formats. Updegrove could not have been more wrong.
  • Shorn to essentials, Updegrove in effect argues for the existence of some sort of immaculately conceived data, that data cannot be generated by software editing tools if a homo sapiens operating a keyboard is somehow involved.
  • Conversions — Updegrove hedged somewhat on this issue, attributing a statement to Lilly that the "CDF working group was not chartered to achieve conversion between formats." But one might as well argue that because claw hammers were designed to drive and pull nails they can not be used to hit anything else.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • To suggest that only W3C WICD profiles can be used with the Framework either flows from or is an appeal to ignorance. There is no wiggle room between those two conclusions.
  • While the Framework specification does require that markup languages combined to create conforming documents be profiled following strict rules, there is no requirement that the profiles thus used superset one or more of the WICD profiles. It may be preferable to do so for purposes of compatibility and interoperability with web applications, but to repeat, that is not required. In fact, virtually any plain text-based markup language that can be profiled can be used within the structure of the Framework. But more importantly, a combination of cutting edge W3C markup language versions such as XHTML 2.0, CSS 3.0, XForms, SVG, etc. can, with only trivial extensions, serve as the full-featured metalanguage superset every expert who has spoken to the subject agrees is necessary to convert between ODF and OOXML with high fidelity.
  • ODF and OOXML are designed for apps from the sneaker net era. Do we choose formats designed for the dinosaurs or formats designed for tomorrow's needs? ODF and OOXML are about the past; CDF is about the future. And yes, there are fully interoperable editors in that future.
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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.
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