Comments on: Massachusetts / Open Document Format Followup: Q&A

By: stephen o'grady

stephen o'grady — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 22:06:28 +0000

tough to tell if you’re being snarky or not, Jack, but if it’s a genuine request you’ll have to wait for the forthcoming beta. meantime, i suggest perusing Brian Jones blogs for examples.

http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/default.aspx

By: Jack Strangio

Jack Strangio — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 03:16:10 +0000

“I do believe, unlike many open source and ODF advocates, that Microsoft’s format is open in the sense that it’s documented and available - by my definition it’s an open format, but not an open standard.”

Thank you very much. Please email me a copy of the open formats for MSFT’s Word .DOC files.

By: Jaime Cardoso

Jaime Cardoso — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 19:31:46 +0000

Stephen. I could also take for Granted MS word and find myself a justification on why ODF can’t be used due to backwords compatibility but, truth is either Microsoft doesn’t care about an uniformization of Office File Formats and, so it should assume it’s position or they care and, they have to say exactlly what’s lacking in this format.
Those inuendos, partial truthes and generic claims may very well work out with people that don’t have the technical background to understand the issues involved but, it takes some nerve (IMO) to simply say “it can’t be done” and expect the all world to bow before them.
I just ask one little thing from Microsoft: Do what every 14 Year old student has to do in school (be specific and back your claims with facts). A valid answer would have been “it’s a corporate secret” but, repeating myself, “vagueness” isn’t a valid answer.

By: sogrady

sogrady — Thu, 08 Sep 2005 18:27:32 +0000

Mike: it may very well be that i’m being obtuse, but is the claim essentially that on the basis of the schema disparity between the two formats, that the outputting of ODF cannot be accomplished? because i just can’t see how there’s not a work around. if i’m mistaken, though, i’d love to be educated. i appreciate the difficulties involved, but surely where there’s a will there’s a way.

on the ODF front, you’re essentially claiming that it is in fact open, but not really a standard as yet given the lack of truly widespread adoption? i can see that argument; i don’t buy it myself, but i could probably make a case for it were i so inclined.

lastly, on the “endorsing a core set of XML technologies rather than a specific XML vocabulary” argument, what does that look like in practice. at some level, doesn’t an office productivity file format have to be chosen and agreed upon? what’s the alternative? permitting and handling both?

Jaime: given the difficulties we’ve had with OO.o and SO translating a limited set of our MS documents, i’m willing to buy the argument that the ODF will indeed have backwards compatability issues with older Office docs. the question of which documents and how many is one that would need to be answered individually. the next question is whether or not the document features (nested tables, etc) that ODF has trouble with are actually necessary.

as for it being better, again i think it’s a relative term, and we need to ask: better for what? better for Microsoft users, or better for everyone? i would not be surprised at all if the Office Open XML formats are indeed better for Office users, but that’s part of the problem, IMO.

By: Jaime Cardoso

Jaime Cardoso — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 23:01:48 +0000

Your notes about Alan’s words kind of remind me soem Portuguese Elections for Government. The (then) oposition party main message was that “The Government doesn’t Govern” with is a statement that get’s in the ear and is very hard to dismiss but, truth is that doesn’t really say anything.
The same way, Microsoft’s position on this subject lacks substance.
Mike your point of “legally recognized standards organizations” may be a very interesting one. I’ll call all the lawyers I know to see if they want to participate in that discussion.
What’s being discussed with this policy is if the documents I make should prevent me to change the tool I work with.
Yes, backwords compatibility is important but, let’s face it, acording to Balmer, Microsoft is really interested in stoping piracy so, is it expectable (or even right) to force people to pay for an MS Office licence (and windows, and an anti virus and all the stuff you need with Windows) just to be able to read the government’s published documents that should be freely accessible when there is another way to do it? I think not.
But, anyway, is that a real issue? We all know that old MS Office documents will have to be migrated to the new MS-XML format and, Microsoft tells us that ODF will not have all the requirements to ensure backwords compatibility but, they expect us to blindly trust them and that we don’t really need to know what exactly fails in ODF. As an OO.org user, I’d be interested in such a limitation of ODF. Is there some substance to that claim?
Also, now, Microsoft tells us that this new format will be much better than ODF. I’ll get back to this point but, what I haven’t saw yet was some assurances that MS would keep the same format in Office 13 and 14. It’s not like it’s unseen from MS to change formats in Office when they know the sales of the new product are below expectations (office 97 anyone?)
But, anyway, the assumption that the new format will be better than the ODF just makes me laugh. We’re talking about a company that, said the same thing about LDAP and came up with AD, that said the same thing about POP and IMAP and came up with MAPI, that said the same thing about an inode structure and came out with FAT and, then NTFS. Consistently, Microsoft atacked the Open things in the world and came up with proprietary solutions that were consistently inferior.
Stephen, I know I’m talking about your interpretation of Alan Yates’ words but, truth to tell, there’s nothing new in this. Same strategy of old, same choices of old, same lack of substance of old

By: Mike Champion

Mike Champion — Wed, 07 Sep 2005 00:15:38 +0000

“neither can I buy the argument that Office can’t be configured to output the ODF”

I was referring to the Office 2003 (Professional version’s) capability to be *configured* to output data that matches a particular W3C Schema. Since ODF is not, as I understand it anyway, defined in terms of W3C Schema but in terms of RELAX NG, that is not technically possible. No one disputes that some future version of (or service pack to, or plugin for) MS Office could be *programmed* to support ODF. It might even be possible to devise a W3C schema that is equivalent to the RELAX NG ODF schema so that Office 2003 could be “configured” to support ODF, but I don’t know about that.

“Q: What about the assertion that the ODF isn’t “open?”
A: I’m at a loss on that one”

It is certainly a openly published SPECIFCATION from an organization that calls it a “standard”. I think the assertion is that it is not a real industry standard, because it is not the basis for data interoperability in any real real industry today. It may become one, certainly, we shall see. If and when that happens, I for one would agree that MS Office should support it as an input/output format option.

OASIS not a legally recognized standards organization (neither is IETF or W3C); it is a place where parties wishing to create interoperable specs can come together to do so. It has produced a long list of “standards” (see http://www.oasis-open.org/specs/index.php), many of which are not widely supported or are not implemented in a way that provides real interoperability. The way one distinguishes those specs-which-OASIS-calls-standards from real-world industry standards is to look at what industries do, not what OASIS says. Let’s see what real industries do … they may adopt ODF, or they may ignore it.

My position (deep down in the bowels of MS and not associated with Office) is that Massachusetts could achieve its stated goals by endorsing a core set of XML technologies rather than a specific XML vocabulary. That would provide long-term usability of the documents, interoperability across a wide variety of platforms and applications, a pragmatic “right tool for the job” rather than “one size fits all” mindset [1], and most importantly would allow graceful evolution - let different tools and committees do their best to apply best practices as we learn them, not lock them into one set of experts’ opinions vintage 2004.

[1] For example, the OASIS DocBook format http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?wg_abbrev=docbook really is a well-established industry standard for complex technical documents in XML. Where does an “office” document leave off and a “technical document” begin?