OpenDocument

OpenDocument Format: The Standard for Office Documents

published in IEEE Internet Computing

introduction to ODF, what it is, where it came from and why it is important

A follow-up on Excel 2007 SP2's ODF support

conformance is neither necessary nor sufficient for to achieve interoperability

interoperability is most efficiently achieved by conformance to an open standard

five prioritized guiding principles for Office’s ODF implementation

When Will Office Support OpenFormula?

nobody knows yet when ODF 1.2 will be published as an OASIS or ISO standard

a calm look at some of the issues

Microsoft’s implementation decision

on the face of it

August 08

Guiding Principles

Adhere to the ODF 1.1 Standard

Microsoft’s ODF Support Falls Short

some of the so-called ‘plug-ins’ were revealed to provide better support for ODF than the recently released Microsoft Office 2007 SP2

plug-ins for Microsoft Office written by third parties were revealed to provide better support for ODF than the recently released Microsoft Office 2007 SP2

But at all relevant times you knew that you could not respond on the merits if Alex took the time to write the same analysis I did. I call foul. Foul 1: You accused Alex of ignorance and deceit. Foul 2: You had no informed basis for those insults.Foul 3: You knew you had no informed basis for your insults.Foul 4: You have put me to the work of repeating the conversation we already had. Shame on you, Rob Weir. The position you took was unprincipled. You are the one who has intentionally misled Alex's readers. You are caught. If you are a principled person, you will immediately retract your insults and apologize to Alex Brown for your deceit in as public a manner as you inflicted your deceit. If you do not do so, the undeniable record lies here of a man who is not man enough to take responsibility for his wrongs and apologize.

Ah, Marbux, what circus is complete without the clowns?

It seems you like to ignore requirements in order to defend Microsoft

The agreement is part of UNESCO’s ongoing effort to improve digital inclusion globally by partnering with the private sector. Under its terms, Sun Microsystems and UNESCO will promote the use of open source technologies, including OpenOffice.org and OpenDocument Format (ODF) standard, as a low-cost way to improve education with universal access to information and knowledge. They will also support the development of open and inclusive knowledge societies in developing and emerging economies.

Open source enterprise products are ready to support your mission critical applications, in the operating system area there's Solaris, Linux, in the middleware area there's Glassfish, JBoss, in the database area there's MySQL, PostgreSQL and even in the desktop area...which has been lagging behind in open source, but is starting to gain some ground with over 220 Million OpenOffice users.

But I fully understand and expect that a specification for document formats will be primarily created by those vendors who are most interested, by commercial motivation, in selling products that use that standard. This is a good thing, indeed an essential thing, since that in a single shot brings together the expertise and IP rights needed to create such a standard.

Whether this is something that Microsoft is supposed to fix, as in Jomar Silva's view, is not that obvious to me.