Submitted by According to Andy Updegrove, Microsoft seems to be reconsidering support for OpenDocument. A quote from the blog: “So there is no line drawn in the sand, nor (to put it another way) has Microsoft painted itself into a corner. If OpenDocument picks up steam, a back door for support is ajar.”
in the end ms is in this world to make money for their shareholders. doing the “screw you, im going home” kinda move is not good for the share price.
therefor they most likely have a implementation of opendocument support sitting on a server ready to be put into a ms office SP the moment they see that they cant push the market around any more.
A fair point. They embraced the Internet when it became apparent that they had lost that particular battle.
people use office because everything is in office format.
that and it has less bugs and better support than staroffice/openoffice currently…It’s weird that they haven’t fixed the tiny things in staroffice that makes it less appealing than MS Office although they could easily…. i guess that’s what happens when you have programmers direct a project rather than a marketing guy
“people use office because everything is in office format. ”
…and becuase all of the competing products were put out of business by Microsoft’s illegal business practices.
So, Lotus died because of Microsoft’s illegal practices, or was it just that MS Office is better?
Corel has, effectively, died because of illegal practices, or was it just that MS Office is a lot better.
I don’t care how much of a troll (or some other kind of idiot) one is, you can not seriously deny that MS Office is by far the best Office suite.
Ask this question from the other side.
Do you believe that given the normal level playing field, a least a competitive alternative wouldn’t appear and grab at least 10% of the market though all these years?
Remember that MSO was severely lacking stabilitywise for a looong time.
Besides, the recuring theme among many users is that they pay for features they don’t aren’t even aware of. Do you believe that market wouldn’t fill that niche given chance.
The chance has been there. It is still there!
People can still go to the store and pick up WordPerfect, you can get Star Office, or even OOo.
How MS Office got into the position it is now is by one, making Word able to read Wordperfect files (which was the dominant of that time) and two, by simply making a better product. Hell, there is also MS Works, but nobody uses that either.
Microsoft hasn’t, nor could they, use any sort of illegal business practices to get Office ahead. At least, I can’t see how they could have. Maybe you can enlighten me.
Did they bundle it with their monopoly OS? Hmm… No. Did they force OEMs to install it on new computers? Hmmm… no. What exactly did they do?
I gues Corel must have “screwed” that and made its format easier to revese engineer (wasn’t it based on SGML?). Suckers!!!
I’m not stating that MSO wasn’t on the right place and time, with right features then.
I what I’m trying to say is that the current setup of the maket makes it virtually impossible to have nondominant players having decent share of it.
And that’s not right IMHO. An open format could hopefully change that.
Well, Microsoft used the same strategies against Corel as they did against Netscape.
CPUGuy, I know you are in love with Microsoft, but you have to admit, that Microsoft was and is behaving extremely unethical and very often also illegal.
Compare Office97 to PerfectOffice 8. PerfectOffice 8 is far superior, and I used it for some years. But somehow I lost my install cd and then I switched to OpenOffice.
I’ve had Office2000 and OfficeXP as well – and Office still suffers from the many small lame bugs which made me laugh at MSOffice in the mid-90’es.
Just to educate you on some facts:
Lotus died, because Microsoft made Windows 3.x and Windows 3.x for Workgroups deliberately fail to properly execute the Lotus binaries.
Microsoft also deliberately gave their huge rebates only to exclusive vendors, who didn’t sell Lotus.
That are the reasons why Lotus so suddenly vanished. Because at the times Lotus was a good competitor to MS Office on features and stability, sometimes Lotus was ahead, sometimes MS Office was ahead.
WordPerfect from Corel for a long time was the “better but more expensive” word processor. They did not lower their prices until it was too late. They did make the same mistake apple made. They did not recognize that being pirated is still better than not being installed at all.
So effectively, some competitors of Microsoft have been driven out by illegal practices, some vanished because they did not understand, that the software market with closed formats is a “winner takes all” scenario.
It is that “winner takes all” scenario we now try to overcome with open formats like odf.
Well, I’ve been using WordPerfect after version 8. And I don’t see MS Office as superior.
CPUGuy, you are trolling as usual.
Come up with a list on the spots where MS Office is superior, instead of your ordinary “Office rules!! The rest of you are f*cking n00bs!!” mantra.
Look at how Words handle pages. One little font change and it has to redo the layout and recounting all X number of pages in the document.
This doesn’t happen in other word applications. Only in MS Word. And it’s right out embarrasing for MS that their Word application cannot handle such a simple thing properly. WordPerfect and OpenOffice have never had such issues.
And it’s really annoying when using large documents! (My main reason not to use Word)
yes, lotus did die because of microsofts illegal practices. If you had actually tried Smartsuite 99 in comparison to either Office 2000 or Office XP, you would admit that the Lotus product was infinately a better one…..
wait no, you wouldn’t admit that, as you blindly defend Microsoft all the time on here. Same old story.
what bugs and stability problems?
what tiny things needs to be fixed?
either produce a list or this is pure flamebait/fud…
I Have founf bugs in Office XP that never happened in Office 2000 or 97 (or whatever MS called them). I don’t know if the latest versions are any better but Office seems to be getting buggier with time. Ususally OOo can correct the errors in damaged documents Word produces.
Give me one good reason why people would part with there hardearned cash to pay for something (MSOffice), instead of a free alternative, (OpenOffice).
And don’t give the usual excuse, that OpenOffice is not 100% compatible, if you are going to say this, give specific examples.
Because OpenOffice is not 100% compatible in reading/writing Microsoft Office documents. Until there are more OpenDocument users out there, you cannot get away from this.
In my experience, OOo is good at opening basic documents, but it chokes once it have to process complex layouts, macros, equations or embedded stuff. Considering the OOo team doesn’t have many specs to play with, it’s doing quite a good job. Now, these annoyances are not that bad for personal documents but they are unacceptable when you have to collaborate with people. Example: my girlfriend is writing team reports and essays with her friends and I don’t think her friends will get OOo just because she uses it. Unfortunately, I believe that is the sad reality that many people have to cope with, including myself.
Furthermore, MSO is more than just MS-Word. OOo Writer is getting good, but the other parts (Calc, Impress) are still lacking some polish. I have used OOo Calc for a while and MS Excel was just better. Note that the Calc tryout was with OOo 1.1.3; things might have changed since.
Last, but not the least: there are many OEM bundles including MSO and the academic version is pretty cheap. For many people, cost isn’t a factor. For some others, time is money so access to support is a must.
Anyway, the adoption of OpenDocument would be a great news and I am definitely looking for it. I don’t think EEE would be a danger since the press (what PHBs are reading) would probably get medieval on them.
In my experience, OOo is good at opening basic documents, but it chokes once it have to process complex layouts, macros, equations or embedded stuff.
Yup, however: Most people don’t use Word for anything bigger than what Wordpad could almost do.
Embedded objects like images are usually not a problem – but it depends. The more complex document, the more problematic. But ordinary users will not see any problems. At the highest things will move around a bit. Annoying, but not a showstopper.
However – in companies, using the more advanced functionality in the Office-suite incl. VB-macros, transition to OpenOffice is a real killer. It’s not impossible; it just requires a lot of manual work.
But the normal user of MS Office can easily be moved to OpenOffice.
Well, last time I have tried the OOo converter, it couldn’t parse my CV correctly. It got nothing that is really fancy: just two pages of text, bullet points and tables… I am no secretary, just the average Office user you are talking about. OK, I do receive fairly complicated documents, but that’s another story.
Don’t get me wrong, I am looking for alternatives since I am slowly migrating the machines I can to Linux, but when I need to get some work done… and why I wouldn’t use a copy of a software that I legitimately own? I believe that is something to consider.
That said, I am pro-OpenDocument, not pro-OOo. The user should use the tool which he prefer and/or in which he is the most productive. The important thing is that his colleagues/audience can view/use his work without any problem and that he could still open a document that he made today in the future, be it 2 or 20 years. I am happy of alternatives like KOffice and I would definitely like to see OD in MSO.
How bad was the result for that CV?
Was it utterly destroyed, or was it a few elements placed a bit different?
I’ve never had major issues when writing reports, and switching to and from OpenOffice and MS-Office. The only thing has been slightly different spacing, nothing that couldn’t be fixed with one click. But perhaps I’ve learned to transparently work around the issues, and therefore not seeing them?
Bad enough for having to rewrite it. That said, I have to blame MSO as he doesn’t always handle the structure of a document gracefully (e.g. it seems to include hacks here and there). I will try OOo 2.0, but the tryout is not as important as somebody that doesn’t have a MSO licence (or got a pirated one).
>>in the end ms is in this world to make money for their shareholders. doing the “screw you, im going home” kinda move is not good for the share price.
That’s the way they usually operate though hobgoblin. The difference this time though is their monopoly is finally cracking.
Looks like they’re feeling the pressure of recent moves like the Massachusetts decision.
The only reason to *not* support OpenDocument is to keep their vendor-lockin practice going strong.
I got a news submittion accepted :p
Anyway, it’s not really surprising. And one might claim that it doesn’t even qualify as news, because MS has claimed that they wouldn’t support it, since there was no custumer claim for such support, while they said PDF was support in Office12 due to customer claims. This would hint that support was forthcoming if needed.
And it seems it might be coming after all. Perhaps in a SP to Office 12? Anyway… that’s pure speculation. I’ll stick to OOo 2 RC3 for the moment. And Visio2K3 for my domain models and stuff like that.
On this surface, this appears to be good news.
However, not to burst anyone’s bubble, but there could be some clouds to this silver lining so to speak.
First of all this is only a maybe. Unfortunately, OpenDocument does not yet have the steam to make Microsoft change their ways. There is an extremely good chance this will change in the future, but it is not a certainty at the present time. We need more organizations to be like the state of Massachusetts.
Secondly, this could actually be a very bad thing for OpenDocument if Microsoft plays their classic embrace, extend, and extinguish trick. Microsoft could very well nominally support OpenDocument, but leave out support for some widely used features, or add additional features to it that are only supported by MS Office. We could be seeing a repeat of the browser wars where all office suites can generally support the OpenDocument format, but be lacking when it comes to a few details.
However, all and all, I think this is great news. It shows that Microsoft is finally being forced to be accountable to what their customers want instead of how they crammed things down consumers throats throughout the late 90s and early 2000s.
“…if Microsoft plays their classic embrace, extend, and extinguish trick.”
Spot on. It never ceases to amaze me how many times over some people are willing to give MS another chance. Either that or some posters to these forums have only been involved in IT for a few years.
“Won’t Get Fooled Again” – The Who
“It shows that Microsoft is finally being forced to be accountable to what their customers…[snip]”
Don’t agree with that bit. Seems like the same old MS double talk to me.
Indeed, there does appear to be a lot of people around here who have only started with computers, and a lot more whos first exposure was with windows 2000.
And these people are very vocal in defending Microsoft at every attempt.
These people also do not want to try alternatives, because they will not know how to use a different system, they are also the same people who think Linux security model is as broken as Windows, and that Linux will get the same amount of malware as Windows currently has, if Linux gets the same amount of users.
These people accept that they need to run a firewall/virus scanner at all times, because that is how things are done in the computer world.
I used to feel sorry for them, but not any more…. stupid people are stupid for a reason, but uneducated are like that by their own choice.
I’m not sure embrace, extend and extinguish works for them this time. The reason people are switching to OpenDocument is because it is a standard. Something extended and nonstandard would not be interesting to entities like governments and such.
Doesn’t work for a fully defined standard.
In a fully defined standard document format – if I set a particular word to be bold – that formatting will show up in the document in a fully defined way. If Microsoft come up with something similar but different – then it is not “OpenDocument”.
I believe there are a fair number of people working on a validation suite of tools right now.
if Microsoft plays their classic embrace, extend, and extinguish trick
There’s no ‘if’ about it in my opinion. If there’s a format that they don’t have full control over (like opendocument, HTML, Java, RSS, etc.), they are guaranteed to do the embrace, extend, extiguish.
Microsoft won’t try that again (I hope) – give that they did that with Java and Sun won. They do it again, and Sun are going to win again.
The judge will think – hey – didn’t you already try this with Java?
The point of Open Document is not to “make Microsoft change their ways”, it’s to have an open document format so that anybody can implement a parser for the future, preserving access and archivability. To this end, it is widely known and documented that even Microsoft Office itself has trouble opening documents from previous versions of MSOffice. They don’t have a leg to stand on here.
This is the line many people speculated MS was going to tread. Microsoft badmouthed the Massachussetts decision with talk of black clouds and insane ramblings of some exclusionary force of the Open Document format (a standards body of which MS themselves is a founding member). When they saw that this stance was openly and widely ridiculed for the double-speak that it was, and their announcement of native PDF export received a lukewarm reception, they have come around to floating the possiblity of support as a trial balloon to see if it gets a better response than their “Open Document is the end of the world and will plunge everyone into poverty” angle.
If Microsoft feels that there’s big enough customer demand then they’ll release an exporter.
If Microsoft feels that there’s big enough customer demand then they’ll release an exporter.
I am not so sure about that. Microsoft has ignored significant customer demand in the past. Just look at the Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic.net
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1777527,00.asp
I am not so sure about that. Microsoft has ignored significant customer demand in the past. Just look at the Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic.net
And Microsoft responded with new features in upcoming release of VB.NET
It all came down to VB people being stuck in old VB world and not wanting to get with the program and move on to .NET. They were told years and years ago that they would have to move on eventually.
And Microsoft responded with new features in upcoming release of VB.NET
…which was not what the customers asked for.
It all came down to VB people being stuck in old VB world and not wanting to get with the program
Just like Massachusets not getting with the program and accepting MS Office XML.
Just some points:
1) The changes in VB were necessary; and for most people, those who took on the advisements of Microsoft, would have found that the move to VB.NET pretty much a painless migration – as painless as say the move from GCC 3.3 to 3.4 in regards to making sure code compiles.
2) The considerations between the two situations are these; the changes in VB were purely technical; they were changes needed to allow it to fit into the CLI (Common Language Infrastructure) – it wasn’t the result of Bill Gates rubbing his hands together with a big evil grin on his face.
The issue with MS Office XML is the fact that the format is under a restrictive licence that doesn’t allow others to embrace it when using other licences; if Microsoft wished for people to adopt their format, why not release it under a BSD licence, which is a non-offensive licence that everyone can handle?
3) The customers have been demanding a better API setup as to allow quicker development, deployment and maintainance of in house written applications – Microsoft decided that hacking around the edges of Win32 wasn’t the solution, what was required was a giant kick up the ass, resulting in a whole new API to be written that was available not only to C++ developers but VB and C# as well.
Couple that with the perks of a managed environment, the only thing they’ve failed to do is market is appropriately to the business community; not just as a webservice solution but one as a replacement for having to rely on a spaghetti code of troubles when it comes to creating inhouse applications.
It all came down to VB people being stuck in old VB world and not wanting to get with the program and move on to .NET. They were told years and years ago that they would have to move on eventually.
*LOL*
Customers being stuck? How elitist and arrogant is that!?
Customer: I want support for this and I’ll pay!
Seller: Too bad, I don’t care. But you can get this one instead, for thrice the price… and maybe a bit of support here and there…
Now, that’s what I’m calling good treatment of customer… or NOT!
Now, that’s what I’m calling good treatment of customer… or NOT!
It might not be good customer treatment but they haven’t had much choice.
The need to get rid of as much of their legacy as long as they have still the power to force upgrades.
They have to support tons of old APIs for applications whose developers where to stupid to good work.
My guess is that their initial goal was to get all developer off their legacy APIs onto CLI managed ones, but saw that they couldn’t and now they are at least repairing the most needed things, like getting rid of old VB
I am not so sure about that. Microsoft has ignored significant customer demand in the past. Just look at the Visual Basic 6 to Visual Basic.net
Significant ? 2500 users and 200 MVPs is ‘significant’ ?
well I guess we can forget the millions of other users.
I’ve been using VB since the ‘thunder’ betas and I use vb.net today. The ONLY valid complaint I can come up with in regards to vb6 is that vb.net does not have a native code compiler.
Other than that vb.net has almost everything that these same ‘2500’users were likely complaining they wanted from vb6, that being free threading, true object oriented design methodologies and better support for techniques more commonly associated with C++ development on windows.
VB6 will have full runtime support in longhorn. It can still be used.
I loved vb6 but I’ve seen the light. .net is a far more robust and powerfull development system.
vb6 can rest in peace.
vb6 can rest in peace.
So can VB.Net…
It’s not even a real programming language
Well, there has to be a programming language for those who cannot create real code (don’t take this too literally – please), but I’d recommend using C, ObjC, C++, C#, Delphi .Net and mono – rather than something as antiquated as VB.Net (and it is antiquated – technically it’s nothing but a corpse with a lot of makeup
Well, there has to be a programming language for those who cannot create real code (don’t take this too literally – please), but I’d recommend using C, ObjC, C++, C#, Delphi .Net and mono – rather than something as antiquated as VB.Net (and it is antiquated – technically it’s nothing but a corpse with a lot of makeup
I never said it was the only language used so no I won’t take anything say as negative, hell I won’t even take anything you have to say seriously!
Delphi ? Great language. Pascal was my first language and I still love Delphi to this day. I have not updated since version 7, but I like what I see in the latest release.
C# is great and I find that I am using it more and more, I may even dump vb.net over it one of these days.
c++ is always there if I need just raw speed, usually with some select routines in DLL form. Can’t say I like doing UI boilerplate code with it though.
ObjC I have no interest in at this time. I don’t do mac development (although I do own a mac mini) but until someone starts asking for mac specific stuff my days are spent on windows.
Mono I have high hopes for as the future comes rolling in.
C# is great and I find that I am using it more and more, I may even dump vb.net over it one of these days.
IMO VB.net is a better language than C#.
The fact is everything you can do in C# can be done in VB.net with exactly the same performance. However the VB.Net code will be a lot more readable whilst C# is a mess of curly braces.
Well that’s a matter of opinion. For someonw like me, I find that VB.NET is a lot of extra typing(why type begin when you can just type { ?) I usually can follow along better with C# code but I can also follow along with VB.NET. So it’s more a matter of preference..
Well, there has to be a programming language for those who cannot create real code (don’t take this too literally – please), but I’d recommend using C, ObjC, C++, C#, Delphi .Net and mono – rather than something as antiquated as VB.Net (and it is antiquated – technically it’s nothing but a corpse with a lot of makeup
Recommending C#, or any other .NET language over VB.NET to create “real code” is ludicrous. All compile to IL and ultimately native code. And, all use the same class libraries/runtime. There are some differences such as C#’s unsafe code block support, but for managed code, the differences are minimal.
Who cares if is antiquated or not!
It works… bad or not… it just works well enought for the users.
Significant ? 2500 users and 200 MVPs is ‘significant’ ?
How many MVPs are there in total? Regardless, this is 2500 of Microsoft customers that were so fed up with Micorsoft ignoring them and dragging their feet on this issue that they signed a petition. That is a very significant costomer voice on the issue.
You may prefer VB.net, but these customers were asking for a continuation of support for this product. The original post was that Microsoft listens to its customers and gives them what they want. This is a major example of Microsoft deliberately not doing so.
The ONLY valid complaint I can come up with in regards to vb6 is that vb.net does not have a native code compiler.
Can you elaborate on this? All .NET code is compiled to native before execution. If you want to pre-compile it so it’s tied to a specific architecture, you can use NGen.
It’s not native code…it’s MSIL. I’m guessing he meant native machine code (though I had the same initial reaction as you did). That being said, NGen’ing should yield similar performance to native code, if not quicker in some cases.
MSIL is the default distribution format. The IL is always compiled to native machine code before execution. It’s just a matter of when. By default, it’s JIT-compiled to native just before execution so you don’t have to distribute multiple binaries for each architecture such as with C++ code. If you NGen, you’re pre-compiling to native like C++ and binding to a specific architecture like C++. Though you can NGen at install time so you still get the distribution benefits of IL.
One small step for freedom… One giant kick in the butt for MS!
—people use office because everything is in office format.
Everything? Really? All those .txt .rtf .html .pdf, etc. files out there are just our collective imaginations playing us false?
Wow.
I tend to receive files of all kinds of formats.
Good ol’ OpenOffice.org documents (.sxw) , OpenDocument Format (.odf), MS Office in several versions (anything from ’97-2003), old WordPerfect 6.0, .txt, .rtf, .pdf, .html, .xml, zipped .xml, GNU zipped .xml and whatever.. Some are even using IBM Text Assistant (because they’re still using a rather old XT) – this really makes converting “interesting”
I tend to receive files of all kinds of formats.
Not to mention alleged MS word documents that are really RTF documents with a .doc extension from Abiword and Koffice.
Hehe… When you save documents in Word in slightly older Doc-formats, they’re saved as a sort of extended RTF – this is especially true for MS-Word 97 (the first time this bug showed up).
Microsoft will support the file formats that a significant share of their customers request and to the extent that meets their customers’ requirements. It is the same with any feature. This is the way Microsoft built and keeps the popularity of Microsoft Office. This is ultimately free, fair and just.
All of your conspiracy theories and dubious victories are nothing more than a fantasy played out over the discussion forums.
All of your conspiracy theories and dubious victories are nothing more than a fantasy played out over the discussion forums.
Ho Ho Ho My side is splitting from hilarious mirth! You don’t really believe that do you?
As they used to say in England pull the other one its got bells on
“Microsoft won’t try that again (I hope) – give that they did that with Java and Sun won. They do it again, and Sun are going to win again.
The judge will think – hey – didn’t you already try this with Java?”
Not the same at all. Java is proprietary, and Sun was (is) the owner, so they had legal standing to sue.
A better comparison is with W3C web standards, which MS finally reluctantly embraced, extended, and mangled into their own IE compliant de-facto “standard”. I use a W3C-compliant browser (FireFox), and it’s amazing how many corporate web sites will not display correctly, because they are “optimized” for IE, not the W3C standard.
Both IE and MS Office command about 95% of their respective market shares. Expect that if MS “adopts” the OpenDocument format, they will embrace, extend, and mangle it the same way they did with IE, and there will be no one with legal standing to sue, as was the case with proprietary Java. OpenDocument is a voluntary standard, unlike Java, which is owned outright by Sun.
Only good if you go out and buy the next version of Ms Office. It may be just me but that is kind of silly.
Those who own an older version of Ms Office have little need to buy something new. Ms Office is “good enough” for most needs.
Rather than buying a new Ms Office, it would be smarter to just download OpenOffice.
Unfortunately, most will get Office with new PC purchases and continue the Ms product lock-in.
Microsoft is a funny company. They tried spreading FUD about linux for a while and not much resulted. They really don’t want to support any open file formats in their office products so they can tie you in to upgrades for life and live off you like a deer tick burried under your skin. The funny thing is the moment they get the word that large companies or state governments are using the opendocument format their ‘threat meter’ goes up and they spring in to action. Just wait in a year or two if they lose more business by the end of that time they will spin the opendocument format until it looks like they created the format. They really are the company you love to hate. They are so profit driven and community empty.
I suspect that if they do embrace the OpenDocument format, it will be available as an additional document convertor that doesn’t install by default. NOTHING says that they would have to make OpenDocument the default file format to comply with Mass. ruling.. just have it available. They probably could implement an OpenDocument patch for MSOffice including “save as” conversions etc that would not be in the box sets.. only as an “update” on the web..
This would make the Commonwealth happy, and would still encourage vendor lock-in for the remaining States.
No one says MS has to make it available at all. If they want Massachusetts business, however, they will have to include it in their Office package, not as an optional download. Why would the state of Massachusetts buy a product that does not support OpenDocument out of the box?
The MA CTO, by going to the OpenDoc format, is obviously not that dumb.
Some smart 3rd Party company will prob make a little bit of change if they make an office add on for cheap and sell it to office 12 users (And older versions of office) that will read, write and convert (etc) Open Document docs. The person to do this quick will make some nice money!
The money will not last but it would be good for a while!
MS Office is still the best office suite in the world, even if it supported opendocument i still would use MS Office over OOo which is slow and doesn’t have cutting edge features like Microsoft does.
Can someone please tell me where I can find a good comparison of OpenDocument versus DOC (or other file formats)?
*Can OpenDocument do all DOC does – and do it better?
*Does it produce smaller file sizes? Or is that down to the Office Suite?
*Are there other companies making OpenDocument-compatible office suites now besides http://www.openoffice.org ?
*Does this mean the SXW file format used in OpenOffice.org is going to die and/or be incompatible?
*Does OpenDocument just mean Word-processor files or presentation and spreadsheets as well?
*Is OpenDocument actually technically better – and why is Microsoft behind the group that is behind it?
I need the basics. Thanks for any info.
Not a professional analysis and all as far a I know and infer from existing facts:
*Can OpenDocument do all DOC does – and do it better?
Not sure about MSO 2003 but given the fact that oo.org does pretty good job eating doc documents now I could safely state “most of”. The remaining problem remains of course the existance of OLE embedding from various windows apps. The other thing are macros. Apparently sun released a converter for macros but I have no information about its efectiveness. For me it’s definately good enough.
*Does it produce smaller file sizes? Or is that down to the Office Suite?
OO produces compressed files which happen to be smaller that old binary doc. As ms will also swith to zip in office 12 their sizes should equate.
*Are there other companies making OpenDocument-compatible office suites now besides http://www.openoffice.org ?
As mentioned in previous post.
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/Applications/HomePage
Once in a while (around the first stable vesion supporting OO) I probbed quality of koffice importer and it was unsuable. I don’t know what progress they made since then. Given the fact that ODF is at least as complicated as HTML4 family, and it somehow imposes layout concepts (based on XSL-FO’n’ svg) onto suites willing to support it, it will be awhile before all interoperability issues are going to be ironed out IMO. Given the opennes of the format, fact that TC haven’t been disbanded yet and eagerness of the supporters (seeing a chance to bring normal competitive rules back to office market) it should take signifivantly less effort than e.g. adopting doc format from scratch.
*Does this mean the SXW file format used in OpenOffice.org is going to die and/or be incompatible?
Yes, SXW have been obsoleted but is similar enough to odf to expect that the convertion will be seamless.
*Does OpenDocument just mean Word-processor files or presentation and spreadsheets as well?
-Word-processor, spreadsheet, presentation, database, vector drawing. I expect that level of support for those different domains will be (at least temporairly) uneven.
*Is OpenDocument actually technically better – and why is Microsoft behind the group that is behind it?
Hard to say. Christian Einfeldt http://madpenguin.org/cms/html/62/5304.html says that at least in case of form data submission it is supperior. Also in the interoperability department it’s gonna be hard to beat. It has more sensible style breackdown, better sections support (makes writing multipart documents a pleasure). My fellow graphician sad OOorg is closer to DTP feel than Word (this can have disadvantages of course).
I didn’t read the specs, but as it is based of 5-10 years old w3c standards which are well specified makes its developement quite futureproof.
Of course there some cons. XML is a little bit bloated which makes it slower to read/write than doc. Besides, it’s hard to state if it’ll will provide a way to nicely fall back on suites that for some reasons (e.g. resource constrains) can’t support the spec in its entriety (doc doesn’t provide this to however).
Oh, and one more thing :and why is Microsoft behind the group that is behind it?
They were pretty passive member, afaik. I gues they just wanted to monitor it’s developement and found participating in TC a good way to learn about its weakneses to strike it early.
Thank you all for your info.
There are also some other word processing programs and office suites going to support :
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/Applications/HomePage
also some more documentation on that site
i think they take their time developing smart strategies how to cripple and EEE it.
I’m not so sure. It’s not unlikely, but Microsoft’s star is falling fast. Very few persons trust Microsoft these days.
An attempt to EEE OpenDocument would probably be a fatal blow to Microsoft. It would prove that we couldn’t rely on any company for our data, and therefore make people leave Microsoft even faster.
I think it’s more likely that they will create some sort of converter, which does the job while still being slightly annoying for the user.
The point is that they had proven this already many years ago still nobody (besides MAS
) seems to care. I hope things are changing now, and for good…
They won’t do anything more to support OD than absolutely forced by market pressure.
One strategy I can envision: develop good import filter and a crappy export filter, or strip some new features (like DRM, forms and so) once you start using odf.
They will add extensions and excuse themselves that they want to support their clients demands.
Oh, but we do care. A lot is going on in Europe.
Don’t forget there are also people living OUTSIDE USA.
We won’t lose this battle. Our rights to our data beats Microsoft’s right to the format. Legally as well as morally
Nobody has mentoined anything about ISO. OASIS is in the process of registering ODF with ISO, and if that happens, MSFT can kick and scream until they are blue in the face, but they will not be able to EEE.
Wait a minute. Microsoft said they had no plans to support OpenDocument. Could market pressure actually be driving Microsoft for a change? I suppose they don’t want another high-profile repeat of the Massachusetts snub.
“Wait a minute. Microsoft said they had no plans to support OpenDocument.”
In gambling, this is called a bluff. And Massachusetts called them on it.
To stay in the game, MS will have to ante up with OpenDoc.
Why is the Massachusetts snub such a big deal around here, when in essence, the only thing they did was announce that they will no longer use proprietary formats?
This does not just mean no more Microsoft Office files, it means ALL proprietary formats.
Also, why does everyone around here never mention when an Asian or European government drops Windows in favour of Linux ? Is this because the vast majority of OSNews users are from the US ? and is this because US citizens are too polarized with their view of world events ?
Whole countries dropping a system is more important and newsworthy than one state in one country stopping using one suite.
I say ‘talk to the hand’ to BorgSoft
Just ignore the beast
This message will be modded down by borgsoft lovers