Skip to main content

Home/ Groups/ OpenDocument
Rss Feed
Sort By: Most Recent | Popular Filter: All | Bookmarks | Topics Simple Middle
Gary Edwards

Wizard of ODF: The Foundation on Interop and the List Proposal Vote Deadline - 0 views

www.oasis-open.org/...msg00040.html

anti-trust ecis foundation odf ooxml opendocument openxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Feb 08 - Cached
  • Oh, my. Both IBM and Sun voted for the proposal that broke the Foundation's plugin that was going to add full-fidelity native ODF file support to Microsoft Office. So it's sounding to me like at least two of the TC members who voted for the Sun/KOffice proposal didn't check in with the ECIS lawyer before they broke interoperability with Microsoft Office. Do you think Microsoft won't use this evidence in the DG Competition antitrust proceeding, Michael? Let's see, you guys are prosecuting Microsoft for not supporting ODF in Microsoft Office while you block Microsoft Office from supporting ODF. Yeah, I think DG Competition is going to hear about this one from Microsoft. They'll probably hear about what you said about compatibility being a trade off too. Oh, yeah. Microsoft's lawyers are going to love this. Look at the ECIS public statement about interoperability's importance.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Feb 08
     
    If ever there was a discussion thread of consequence at the OASIS ODF TC, this is it. This is where the ODF interoperability nightmare burst into the daylight of a showdown vote. The interop issues were clear. OpenDocument TC members voted between interoperability and/or application specific innovation. Application specific innovation trumped interoperability. Again. And wha ta sad day it was. The thing is, the recent ECIS antit trust action against Microsoft comes at the request of IBM and Sun. They allege that Microsoft is violating standards requirements for interoeprability, and has launched a series of corrupt activities to push through a non interoperable standard. They are right. Microsoft is guilty. The problem is that Microsof tcan easily point to Sun and IBM activities at OASIS ODF, and make the same allegation! Using this thread as evidence! Furthermore, this thread is evidence that if Microsoft had tried to implement ODF, their efforts to establish interop would have been met with the same response from IBM and Sun that the OpenDocument Foundation recieved. Or so they could argue. Houston, we have a problem. IBM and Sun could have fixed the ODF interop problems at any time during the past five years. Yet, the world is waiting. Meanwhile, this willfull negligence and lack of desire to address pressing market needs for full interop has served to hold the door open for OOXML. And now these negligent acts llook to be the basis of a Microsoft counter claim. Oh well ..
Gary Edwards

Wizard of ODF: Proposal to amend TC charter, re interoperability with non-conformant ap - 0 views

www.oasis-open.org/...msg00022.html

harmonization interop interoperability oasis odf ooxml opendocument

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Mar 08 - Cached
  • 7. it must provide all feasible functionality required to suppport full fidelity conversions from and to existing office document binary file formats.
Gary Edwards

A Fresh Cup » About - 0 views

afreshcup.com/?page_id=2

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Mar 08 - Cached
  • Then I got fed up with Microsoft. It took about fifteen years, but I finally reached the point where, no matter how good some of their software was, or how well-meaning some of the rank and file employees were, I could no longer stomach the corporate policies. You can read more about that in my posts What’s Going On Here?,  The Rest of the Story, and The Examined Software Life. Certainly, reasonable people can disagree on these things, but for me, working with Microsoft tools and technologies is no longer an option. So I quit.
Gary Edwards

Harmonizing ODF and OOXML using NameSpaces | Tim Bray's Thought Experiment - 0 views

www.tbray.org/...Office-XML

bray florian-reuter namespaces odf ooxml opendocument openxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Feb 08 - Cached
  • First, what if Microsoft really is doing the right thing? Second, how can we avoid having two incompatible file formats? [Update: There’s been a lot of reaction to this piece, and I addressed some of those points here.]
  • On the technology side, the two formats are really more alike than they are different. But, there are differences: O12X’s design center, Microsoft has said repeatedly, is capturing the exact semantics of the billions of existing Microsoft Office documents. ODF’s design center is general-purpose reusability, and leveraging existing standards like SVG and MathML and so on.
  • The capabilities of ODF and O12X are essentially identical for all this basic stuff. So why in the flaming hell does the world need two incompatible formats to express it? The answer, obviously, is, “it doesn’t”.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The ideal outcome would be a common shared office-XML dialect for the basics—and it should be ODF (or a subset), since that’s been designed and debugged—then another extended vocabulary to support Microsoft features , whether they’re cool new whizzy features or mouldy old legacy features (XML Namespaces are designed to support exactly this kind of thing). That way, if you stayed with the basic stuff you’d never need to worry about software lock-in; the difference between portable and proprietary would be crystal-clear. And, for the basic stuff that everybody uses, there’d be only one set of tags. This outcome is technically feasible. Who could possibly be against it?
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Feb 08
     
    Tim Bray suggests using namespaces to brdige the comatibility gap between ODF and OOXML.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Feb 08
     
    This log is connected to a recent post from Florian Reuter, XML Namespaces are designed to support exactly this kind of thing ...
Gary Edwards

Compound Document Formats Group Charter - 0 views

www.w3.org/...charter.html

cdf da-vinci foundation opendocument w3c

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Mar 08 - Cached
  • be widely implementable in browsers and authoring tools
Gary Edwards

Open Malaysia: Geneva, Day Five - 0 views

www.openmalaysiablog.com/...geneva-day-five.html

brm geneva iso odf ooxml opendocument openxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Mar 08 - Cached
  • We eventually found out that if any changes affected current implementations it would certainly be rejected. This seriously compromised any elegant solutions, and it forced us to be mindful of the "existing corpus of documents" in the wild. I personally don't believe that that should be our problem, but there was a large and vocal voting bloc which would oppose any changes to the spec which would 'break' Ecma 376. This was why appeasing Ecma had to happen. Even though they rushed their Ecma International Standard, and Microsoft took the risk in shipping Microsoft Office 2007 last year, we now have to bear the burden of having to support its limitations. This also means that future maintenance changes would get harder and harder.
Gary Edwards

Microsoft's OOXML limps through ISO meeting - ZDNet UK - 0 views

news.zdnet.co.uk/...0,1000000121,39362112-2,00.htm

brm ecma geneva iso oasis odf ooxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 05 Mar 08 - Cached
  • Gary Edwards, former president of the Open Document Foundation, an industry group that promoted ODF but then rejected both approaches and closed itself down in November 2007, said: "Ecma and Oasis are vendor consortia where the rules governing standards specification work favour vendor innovation over the open and transparent interoperability consumers, governments and FLOSS efforts demand... Shutting that door on Ecma OOXML is proving very difficult exactly because the primary and fundamental rule of ISO interoperability requirements has been breached."
Gary Edwards

Unbreaking the Web: IE 8 passes ACID 2 Test | John Resig - 0 views

ejohn.org/unbreaking-the-web

cdf css iso microsoft odf ooxml w3c xhtml

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Mar 08 - Cached
  • IMHO, the key to Microsoft's OOXML strategy can be seen in the recently released MSOffice SDK. The SDK provides a component for the fluid conversion of OOXML to something called fixed/flow. The fixed part of this interesting conjunction is also known as XPS, which is designed as a proprietary alternative to PDF. The flow part is a fascinating and highly proprietary replacement for (X)HTML - CSS. Reading further through the MSOffice SDK, one can't help but be amazed at the lack of W3C technologies; especially (X)HTML, CSS, XForms and SVG. What we have instead is an entangling cascade of stuff like OOXML, fixed/flow, silverlight, XAML, and WPF. And then there is that recent promise of other high volume API's probably delivered through future Exchange, SharePoint, and MS SQL Server SDK's. So, at the end of the day, what are we looking at here? IMHO, Microsoft has figured out that the smart thing to do is leverage and extend their existing desktop monopoly into the next generation of cloud computing where the Internet platform rules. To pull this off, they have a number of problems to overcome; not the least of which is that they need to catch a break on anti trust, and, get OOXML through ISO. And oh yeah, there's that little problem that Windows can't do cloud computing.
Gary Edwards

XML-Empowered Documents Extend SOA's Connection to People and Processes | BriefingsDire... - 0 views

briefingsdirect.blogspot.com/...red-documents-extend-soas.html

cloud-computing collaborative-computing paas saas soa woa

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Apr 08 - Cached
  • We're going to talk about dynamic documents. That is to say, documents that have form and structure and that are things end-users are very familiar with and have been using for generations, but with a twist. That's the ability to bring content and data, on a dynamic lifecycle basis, in and out of these documents in a managed way. That’s one area.The second area is service-oriented architecture (SOA), the means to automate and reuse assets across multiple application sets and data sets in a large complex organization.We're seeing these two areas come together. Structured documents and the lifecycle around structured authoring tools come together to provide an end-point for the assets and resources managed through an SOA, but also providing a two-way street, where the information and data that comes in through end-users can be reused back in the SOA to combine with other assets for business process benefits.
  • Thus far we’ve been talking about the notion of unstructured content as a target source to SOA-based applications, but you can also think about this from the perspective of the end application itself -- the document as the endpoint, providing a framework for bringing together structured data, transactional data, relational data, as well as unstructured content, into a single document that comes to life.Let me back up and give you a little context on this. You mentioned the various documents that line workers, for example, need to utilize and consume as the basis for their jobs. Documents have unique value. Documents are portable. You can download a document locally, attach it to an email, associate it with a workflow, and share it into a team room. Documents are persistent. They exist over a period of time, and they provide very rich context. They're how you bring together disparate pieces of information into a cohesive context that people can understand.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Apr 08
       
      "various line of business applications and composite applications" is exactly where ODF failed in Massachusetts! Think of client/server, with many business processes bound to MSOffice on the client side. The big ODF vendors tried to convince Massachusetts to "rip out and replace" MSOffice. Which proved to be terribly disruptive and costly. These bound "client side" processes would have to be rewritten, and none of the ODF applications were the equivalent of MSOffice as a developers platform (even if the cost was something MASS was willing to pay for - which they were not!). MASS came up with an alternative idea to save ODF, the idea of cloning the OOXML plug-in for MSOffice to create an ODF plug-in. The problem was that MASS did not have an IT budget thanks to Microsoft's political mucking. So MASS CIO Louis Gutierrez turned to the big vendors askign them to support something they seriously opposed. An ODF plug-in would leave MSOffice in place.
  • ...8 more annotations...
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Apr 08
       
      This paragraph says it all. The portable document is an essential frame for moving information thoughout the emerging client/ Web Stack /server information infrastructure model. The key is that the portable docuemnts are interactive and "live". The data and media streams bound to objects within the documents are attached to their original sources using XML connecting streams like XMLHTTPRequest or P2P Jabber XML routers. In 2003 we used Jabber to hot wire Comcast documents (docs, spreadsheet cells and presentations) to backend transactional blackboxes and web service rich data resources. The productivity gain from this approach is that end users are no longer required to verify and manage data. The "system" manages the data, freeing the end user to concentrate on the task of presentation, analysis and explanation.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Apr 08
       
      What? The key to client/ Web Stack /server design (advanced SOA) is to have a desktop "editor" that writes highly strucutred XML docuemnts that are universally portable across a wide range of Web Stacks. The W3C provides CDF as a very advanced docuemnt container for the purpose of porting complex documents across a wide range of "editors", servers, and devices. (X)HTML 2.0 - CSS3, SVG, XForms and RDF are the core components of the open web future where complex documents and business processes will move to client/ Web Stack /server models. The problem is that there are NO desktop "editors" capable of producing CDF. ISO approval of MS-OOXML stamps MSOffice as a standards compliant "editor". The problem is that it is very difficult to convert MS-OOXML documents to CDF - XHTML-CDF-SVG-RDF!!! The MSOffice SDK does provide an easy to implement MS-OOXML <> XAML conversion component. XAML itself is part of the proprietary WPF set of technologies, joining Silverlight, Smart Tags, and WinForms as a complete MS-Web ready alternative to advanced W3C technolgoies: XHTML, CSS, SVG, XForms, and RDF. XAML "fixed/flow" replaces XHTML-CSS. Silverlight replaces SVG and SWF (Flash). Smart Tags is a porprietary alternative to RDF-RDFa. And WinForms is of course an alternative to XForms. The MS Web STack core s comprised of Exchange, SharePoint and MS SQL Server. The core is joined by Windows Server, MS Dynamics, and MS Live (among so many). ISO approval of MS-OOXML provides the MS Cloud with a standards compliant "editor" that currently ownes OVER 95% of the desktop marketshare when it comes to bound business processes. With ISO approval, an entire generation of client/server processes can now transition to client/ Web Stack /server models, where they can take full advantage of the advanced SOA model where portable XML documents move structured data and media through a highly distributed but end user controlled web model.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Apr 08
       
      OK. Nice summary!
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Apr 08
       
      Uh oh. Does Mr. Sorofman understand the importance of MSOffice-OOXML-XAML-Smart Tags as an alternative to W3C RDF? This split in the Web will result in a nightmare for Google. Think of it as though Google owns the consumer side of the web, and Microsoft owns the business process side. Such is the importance of ISO approval of MS-OOXML! Google will be unable to match the search advantages of either RDF or Smart Tags. With Smart Tagged docuemnts though, Google won't even get the chance to compete. They will be locked out of the document processing chain that begins with MSOffice-OOXML and extends through a proprietary MS Web STack rich with XAML, Silverlight, WinForms and Smart Tag semantics! Although hindsight is 20-20, we can look back at 2006 in Massachusetts and see that the failure of ODF there is going to result in huge losses to Google and Oracle. Google will find themselves locked into a consumer web box, unable to branch out to business. Oracle will find themselves on the wrong side of a Microsoft dominated client/ Web Stack /server based transition of legacy client/server systems.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Apr 08
       
      Great idea Mr. Sorofman, but Microsoft owns the "editor" in this equation.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Apr 08
       
      Another good summary statement. Convergence however is very much tied to interoperability across the emerging client/ Web-Stack /server model that represents advanced SOA, SaaS, Web 2.0 and emerging Cloud Computing models.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Apr 08
       
      What we found at Comcast in 2002-2003 was many spreadsheet "templates" that the sales staff used to keep track of inventory, pricing, and client accounts. By P2P enabling the cells in these templates, we were able to connect in transactional database information in real time ( or web connect time :). Every template, whether it was a writer document,-form, spreadsheet template, or presentation deck was P2P Jabber wired at the object level wherever an external information source was invloved. Which seemed to be everywhere! The hard work is getting the XML connectors in place, setting up an information stream between the Web Stack (Apache Tomcat - MySQL-XUL Server), and the backend transational black boxes. With Comcast this was done through a 24 hour dump cycle with each black box dumping and uploading from the Web Stack. For sales, marketing and management, the Web Stack did the heavy business of serving up Jabber data and resolving order conflicts. The "system" took over the management and verification of data, releasing the sales force to concentrate on their primary task.
    • Gary Edwards
      Gary Edwards on 15 Apr 08
       
      In Massachusetts, they were using eMail to shuttle spreadsheet templates around. This is about as brittle and unproductive a method as there is, but it was all they had. Rather than focusing on keeping their client side business processes operating, MASS might have been better off focusing on building a client/ Web-Stack /server model they could gradually transition these desktop bound processes to. Establish an open Web-Stack design, and work back towards the desktop client. Instead, MASS fell into the trap of trying to replace MSOffice on the desktop with ODF OpenOffice based alternatives, while simultaneously purchasing Exchange-SharePoint Web-Stack components! The MS Web-Stack is designed for MSOffice-OOXML business processes, not ODF!!!!!
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Apr 08
     
    Dana Gardner transcript of podcast interview with JustSystems and Phil Wainwright. Covers the convergence of the portable XML document model with SOA. It's about time someone out there got it. You know the portable XML document has arrived when analyst finally get it.
Gary Edwards

Has Microsoft lost its way on desktop computing? | The Apple Core | ZDNet.com - 0 views

blogs.zdnet.com/Apple

msoffice ooxml saas soa xaml

shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Apr 08 - Cached
  • OM MALIK: You outlined Microsoft’s software-plus-services strategy, but what I want to know about is the changing role of the desktop in this service’s future. RAY OZZIE: I think the real question is (that) if you were going to design an OS today, what would it look like? The OS that we’re using today is kind of in the model of a ’70s or ’80s vintage workstation. It was designed for a LAN, it’s got this great display, and a mouse, and all this stuff, but it’s not inherently designed for the Internet. The Internet is this resource in the back end that you can design things to take advantage of. You can use it to synchronize stuff, and communicate stuff amongst these devices at the edge. A student today or a web startup, they don’t actually start at the desktop. They start at the web, they start building web solutions, and immediately deploy that to a browser. So from that perspective, what programming models can I give these folks that they can extend that functionality out to the edge? In the cases where they want mobility, where they want a rich dynamic experience as a piece of their solution, how can I make it incremental for them to extend those things, as opposed to learning the desktop world from scratch?
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Apr 08
     
    ZDNet's David Morgenstern must have missed ISO approval of OOXML! MS has a desktop strategy, but involves proprietary protocols, formats and API's as the protective barrier for transitioning desktop bound client/server business processes to MS Web Stack bound SaaS-SOA business processes. Welcome to the Microsoft Cloud!
Gary Edwards

OOXML: MSOffice Open XML - Where The Rubber Meets The Road | Matusow's Blog - 0 views

blogs.msdn.com/...the-rubber-meets-the-road.aspx

iso matusow msoffice ooxml open-standards

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Apr 08 - Cached
  • There can be no doubt that OOXML, as a standard, has severe flaws. &nbsp; It is incomplete, platform specific, application specific, full of contradictions, fails to adhere to existing standards, untestable, and presents a moving target for any IT worker. &nbsp;There is not an organization in existence, including Microsoft, that promises to actually implement the full standard. &nbsp;Much of this is due to the fact the final version doesn't actually exist on paper yet, but a large fraction is also do to the patchwork nature of the product. The reason governments and companies wanted a 'office apps' standard in the first place was to release an avalanche of data from aging applications. &nbsp;OOXML shows every appearance of being created to prevent this escape, not enable it. &nbsp; The immaturity of the standard means that it remains a gamble to see if older documents will remain readable or not. &nbsp;The lack of testing means there is no way to determine what docs actually adhere to it or not. &nbsp;The ignoring of existing standards guarantees compatibility problems. &nbsp;All of these factors are handy for the owner of the biggest share of existing documents, as it forces users to continue to use only _their_ application or risk danger from every other quarter.
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Apr 08
     
    Perhaps the single best comment i've ever read concerning OOXML and the value of standards. Very concise and too the point. Thanks you Scott B!
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Apr 08
     
    ISO NB's approved MS-OOXML not because it meets ISO Interoperability Requirements. It doesn't. OOXML doesn't even come close. They approved OOXML because it's the best deal they can get given the MSOffice predicament their governments are caught in. Governments got the binary blueprints they have been insisting on, but didn't get the mapping of those binaries to OOXML. Governemnts also took control of OOXML, with Patrick Durusau and the JTC-1 now in copmplete control of the specifications future. Sadly though, Durusau and company will not be able to make the interop changes they know are required by ISO and related World Trade Agreements. The OOXML charter prevents any changes that would degrade in any way compatibility with MSOffice! This charter lock was on full display in the Microsoft - Ecma response to Geneva BRM comment resolutions, with Microsoft refusing to address any comments that would alter compliance with MSOffice. Durusau has always believed that a one to one mapping between OOXML and ODF is possible. Just prior to the Geneva BRM though, the EU DIN Workgroup released their preliminary report on harmonization, which they found to be a next to impossible task given the applicaiton specific nature of both ODF and OOXML. The DIN Report no doubt left the mapping-harmonization crowd (lead by Durusau) with few choices other than to take control of OOXML and figure out the binary to OOXML mappings for themselves, wih the hope that somewhere down the road OpenOffice will provide OOXML documents. Meaning, governments are not looking at open standards for XML documents as much as they are looking to crack the economic hammer lock Microsoft has on the desktop.
Gary Edwards

OOXML and ISO: The Process Challenge - A Predictable Path | Matusow's Blog - 0 views

blogs.msdn.com/...llenge-a-predictable-path.aspx

iso jtc-1 ooxml open-standards

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Where can we expect challenges?
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Apr 08
     
    Scott B responds to Matusow blathering with a list of ISO changes that should be made given the OOXML fiasco, but won't.
Gary Edwards

OOXML OPS and the GPL: A disappointing surprise from the SFLC | Gray Matter - 0 views

blogs.technet.com/...ng-surprise-from-the-sflc.aspx

gpl grey-matter iso microsoft ooxml ops

shared by Gary Edwards on 08 Apr 08 - Cached
  • I view the spec as confusing, obtuse, error-ridden, x86-centric, incomplete, and redundant. &nbsp;Microsoft sat on the board of ODF for _years_ without offering any help on the minor items ODF didn't provide that they wanted. &nbsp;Now that governments start pressing for permanent standards on document storage, MS throws out this half-baked item and expects a reward for good behavior. &nbsp;Maybe somebody on the board of directors at our company likes it, but the technical folks having to add more work are less than happy about this beast. If they had to go with XML, couldn't they at least have allowed standard XML with attributes and the like instead of x86 specific, binary incompatible, past-version deprecating, standard-avoiding, crash on normal XML.. ... mess... that they have offered for consumption? &nbsp;Oh.. but wait, I'm sure the BRM fixed that in the week given. &nbsp;I'm sure the pretty version will show up any day now.
  • Gary Edwards on 08 Apr 08
     
    Scott B comment on the OOXML OPS and GPL controversy. Great comments from Bruce Perens also.
Gary Edwards

OOXML and ODF: The next step | [odf-discuss] Marbux Responds! - 0 views

lists.opendocumentfellowship.com/...007308.html

interop interoperability iso marbux odf ooxml opendocument-fellowship

shared by Gary Edwards on 09 Apr 08 - Cached
  • The issue we were discussing -- and what I believe the ODEF conference was very much concerned with -- was whether ODF plus vendor-specific extensions will be classified as conformant ODF. The market requirement is for "Exchange Formats" and document-level interoperability. I could repose my question as whether ODF v. 1.2 will "clearly and unambiguously specify interoperability requirements essential to achieve the interoperability," as required by JTC 1 Directives. As you noted in an earlier post in this thread, you can't do interoperability if you use vendor extensions. &gt; I see a standard as providing a shared vocabulary for buyers and sellers &gt; to express their requirements. You are in error. This is a matter controlled by law rather than by personal opinion. Standards are all about the substitutability of goods, weights, and measures. A standard specifies all characteristics of a product, weight, or measure in mandatory terms so there is uniformity. Standards are the antithesis of product differentiation. Their very purpose is to eliminate product differentiation.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Apr 08
     
    Excellent legal argument by the legendary marbux concerning OOXML and ODF itneroperability. Covers ISO Interop Requirements and the demands of International Trade Agreements. Key to this thread is ODF v 1.2 and what must be done to bring ODF into legal compliance with International demands.
  • Gary Edwards on 09 Apr 08
     
    Outstanding analysis and research by the legendary marbux
Gary Edwards

OOXML: The next step - Interop at the International Standards legal level | Marbux - We... - 0 views

lists.opendocumentfellowship.com/...007359.html

interop iso odf ooxml wto

shared by Gary Edwards on 14 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Both ODF and OOXML are only one WTO Dispute Resolution Process complaint away from losing their international standard, national technical regulation, and government procurement specification status. They do not meet the minimum requirements of international law. Both are unnecessary obstacles to international trade; neither specify a uniform and substitutable product. That does not sound like a sound business plan to me. So I return to my question posed in an earlier post: Will ODF v. 1.2 under your leadership attempt to "clearly and unambiguously specify that conformance requirements essential to achieve the interoperability" and will the standards-based interoperability between *different* IT systems be "demonstrable," as required by JTC 1 Directives? That is not a complicated question and it requires no deep dive into international law to answer. International law requires what the quoted JTC 1 Directives require in this regard, but for purposes of the point under discussion we need go no further than the Directives' plain language. One either adheres to the rules or one forfeits the moral high ground to complain when others ignore the rules. Where does Rob Weir stand on complying with the rules?
  • Gary Edwards on 14 Apr 08
     
    Marbux at his best! Here he responds to Rob Weir's ODF v 1.2 arguments with a legal dissertation on International Standards, ISO, the WTO, and the key issue of interoperability and what it must mean. Excellent!
Paul Merrell

GullFOSS - 0 views

blogs.sun.com/...office_open_xml_ooxml_filters

interop myth sources michael brauer odf ooxml sun

shared by Paul Merrell on 29 May 08 - Cached
  • ODF is the only file format that provides the level of interoperability and choice of products that our customers want.
    • Paul Merrell
      Paul Merrell on 29 May 08
       
      Brauer well knows that he speaks of "the level of interoperability and choice of products" that Sun wants, not what Sun customers want. See e.g., the IDABC ODEF Conference proceedings. ODF is not designed for interoperability and interoperability may only be achieved by all persons involved in the interchange of ODF documents standardizing on a particular editing implementation and version. In practical terms, that means everyone uses a particular version of OpenOffice.org or a clone of that version's code base.
  • OOXML? Isn't that Office Open XML? That file format, that Microsoft Office 2007 is using, that has been approved by ECMA as ECMA-376, and that is currently in a fast track process to become an ISO standard like ODF? That file format, that although its name is very similar to Open Office XML, has nothing to do with OpenOffice.org or ODF? And you may have wondered: What are Sun's OpenOffice.org developers doing with OOXML, and why? And when will we have an OOXML filter in OpenOffice.org?
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

Microsoft's Great Besmirching | Linux Journal - 0 views

www.linuxjournal.com/...microsofts-great-besmirching

approval corruption iso ooxml open-standards

shared by Gary Edwards on 01 Apr 08 - Cached
  • Of course, all companies try to bend the rules in the their favour, and it would be unfair to pick on Microsoft for doing the same. But what has happened over the last year and a half goes so far beyond the accepted rough and tumble of the standards game that cumulatively it can only be considered as an all-out attack on the machinery of standards-making. Consider the evidence.
  • Gary Edwards on 01 Apr 08
     
    Glyn Moody provides a summary of the destruction of ISO
Gary Edwards

Microsoft OOXML standardization bid: The clock is ticking | All about Microsoft | ZDNet... - 0 views

blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft

approval iso mary-jo odf ooxml

shared by Gary Edwards on 29 Mar 08 - Cached
  • The battle over OOXML standarization is all about money and marketshare. Microsoft wants OOXML to qualify as an “open standard” so that the company can continue to sell Office into governments that see ISO as the gold standard bearer. Many of the companies&nbsp; that have fought publicly against OOXML gaining ISO standardization approval are hoping that failure of OOXML to get the ISO nod will give them a chance to gain more marketshare in a world where Office still runs on more than 90 percent of Windows desktops.
Gary Edwards

IE aims to embrace the web again | Technology | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...microsoft.internet

css hachamovitch html ie microsoft silverlight w3c wpf xaml xhtml

shared by Gary Edwards on 15 Mar 08 - Cached
  • I asked Hachamovitch, who has led the Explorer team since 2003, why it has taken Microsoft so long to address these deficiencies. "It comes down to what we were doing with our time," he said. "Between 2001 and 2003 we were building what you experience now as Windows Presentation Foundation and Silverlight."These technologies display not HTML, the language of web pages, but XAML, Microsoft's proprietary code for creating rich visual content.
  • It sounds good, but Hachamovitch's warmth begins to fade when I broach the vexed subject of browser scripting. The context is important. Hachamovitch had already stated that Microsoft spent three years neglecting IE for the sake of a more proprietary technology, which is now appearing on the web as a browser plug-in called Silverlight. This is similar in some ways to Adobe's Flash, and supports rich multimedia effects within web pages, as well as the ability to run applications written in Microsoft's .NET Framework.
  • Is it possible that Microsoft is stifling the advancement of JavaScript in order to promote programming within Silverlight instead?
« First ‹ Previous 161 - 180 Next › Last »
Showing 20▼ items per page