“I’ve received several emails and seen several articles asking whether any eventual decision by Massachusetts to approve two different document standards (e.g., Microsoft’s XML Reference Schema (XMLRS) as well as the OASIS OpenDocument Format) would be a serious blow to the goal of achieving long-term access to documents. The quick answer is that this is not a binary situation, because there are different types of standards that serve different purposes, as well as different situations that have different dynamics.”
winning is always better than drawing
.. for themselves. So the others have to catch up, even if it is open and OO.o will work with it just fine.
But i hope there will be some kind of XSLT-Script that can translate from one format to the other just fine.
drawing is better than losing
who ever get is i dont care. as long as we can all agree on a funtional standard thats all that matters. who came up with it should not be the issue but instead will it be best for us all. at least thats what i think
The whole point was to achieve a STANDARD for storage, not a variety of choices. These are two fundamentally different things. One is good for society, one is good for the convicted monopoly that is Microsoft. It will quite literally be a travesty if Microsoft’s worthless hack is chosen instead of or even along with the well-established OpenDocument Format.
Article is a bit hard to read. It needs splitting up into paragraphs. This one covers the same ground and is fairly easy to read and concise. It was flagged up by Ian Murdock on Planet Debian:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=2296∂=rss&tag=feed&subj=zdblog
I guess the point is that two standards may suit Microsoft but not necessarily the rest of us. Microsoft will always try to own whatever the “standard” is in force. That’s their hook into the wonderful world of software licensing.
Edited 2005-12-18 22:57
I’ll never understand why they continue to link this guy.
PLEASE editors, stop linking to him until he learns how to write. It is painful to read through a 1000+ word paragraph.
There’s nothing wrong with the writer – there’s something wrong with your browser. None of the paragraphs are longer than a few sentences. Try this link: http://www.consortiuminfo.org/newsblog/
First of all, I highly doubt it’s my browser.
It looks like this “standards blog” has some big issues. For one, he has the beginning of another html document in the middle of his. In the middle of his HTML, he has…
<tr><td width=”100%” valign=”top” bgcolor=”#D9F0E7″>
<div align=”center”>
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd“>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″>
<title>Untitled Document</title>
<style type=”text/css”>
That’s a problem. Also, at the end of every paragraph he puts </p> but has no beginning <p>
Wow, a standards blog that doesn’t even follow standards properly.
Huh.. </P> but not <P> …. that’s a first for me. It’s usually the other way around…
Almost each country in Europe (and I guess this applies to the rest of the world as well) has their own “standard” for electricity sockets (though they all give you 220-240V) and for phone sockets (though a phone from one country DOES work in the other). Sucks for the consumers buying things, is great for people selling you necessary converters.
So much for two standards vs. one standard.
Almost each country in Europe (and I guess this applies to the rest of the world as well) has their own “standard” for electricity sockets (though they all give you 220-240V) and for phone sockets (though a phone from one country DOES work in the other). Sucks for the consumers buying things, is great for people selling you necessary converters.
So much for two standards vs. one standard.
Yes, but those standards were established well before people had to consider interoperability in global versus regional terms. They served their function at the time by ensuring consistency within their respective regions. If anything, it’s an argument that very careful thought needs to go into establishing and deploying a “standard” because you can never truly anticipate future requirements.
It’s an interesting analogy, because if every country, for some reason, had to rethink and develop a new standard for electrical outlets, what criteria would they use? Interoperability with devices from other countries? Patented designs from a conglomerate like General Electric claiming their design was superior and promising to allow others to use that standard for now? A proprietary regional standard designed to protect local electrical appliance manufacturers by making it inconvenient or difficult to use imported devices?
I understnand why we have these incompatibilities.
I only wanted to ilustrate, how bad it can get with multiple “standards”.
Similar thing could be said about how dates are written.
What day is 12-10-05?
What I don’t understand and this is a serious question of mine. Why is competition in the market always good when it comes to Operating Systems, but when it comes to competing document formats it such a bad thing. I personally like the idea of only one Operating System that is the same no matter where I am in the world. However I also like the idea of competition driving new technologies.
So I guess I am suck and wondering why competition is a good thing when it comes to Operating Systems but a bad thing when it comes to document formats? Is this Open Source people saying we only like the stuff if it is ours, and we will take any position that is dyametrically opposed to the other side? Because Microsoft has always stood in the same place, which is “use all of our products for everything and you won’t have problems with anything”.
You are far from the only one wondering…..
OSnews and Slashdot 101……
IF it favors OPEN SOURCE, competition is absolutely an incredible thing. IF it favors a proprietary commercial application, format, or operating system, it’s shit.
Y’all don’t get out much, do ya?
Some have turned the entire open source thing into religon. It was a serious mistake, but never attempt to explain it to those who don’t already understand.
You might want to ask your parents about the difference. You’ll probably laugh once you understand how simple yet important the difference is.
nberardi: Why is competition in the market always good when it comes to Operating Systems, but when it comes to competing document formats it such a bad thing.
The answer is fairly straight forward. An operating system is a “product” something that you (frequently) purchase. (Obviously there are exceptions.) As a result, having one operating system creates a monopoly and essentially a tax on the use of computers. (There are other issues involved even if the OS is free. But I want to keep this short, if possible.)
A document format is something you use to store YOUR data. If it is open (like these two formats) then there is no direct tax on the use of the formats. The problem arises from the fact that tools will be created to work with one format or the other natively. They will hence (generally) work better with their native format than with the other(s). In addition, sometimes converting between different formats can cause problems, particularly when converting back and forth. Also some tools may only support one of the formats.
It’s not that there can’t ever be a competing format, it’s that it makes the situation more complicated, particularly if there is no “real reason” for the two competing formats.
Think about it, if there is one standard for documents and everyone supports it, then you don’t need to be worried about sending documents to other people. If there is more than one, then the receiver may not be able to read your document or the program they use may not be as good at reading your document, since it may focus on a different standard.
Likewise, you don’t need to be worried about reading the documents that other people send you.
Competition is good for phones, not for phone sockets (or mobile technologies). Competition is good for screwdrivers, not for screws. Competition is good for fuel stations, not for what fuel is required for your car.
It all comes down to what is the “tool” – computer+OS, screw driver, fuel station and what is the “thing you are working on” – documents, screws, getting your car moving.
The same way it sucks to have to carry around too many screwdrivers just because somebody had a “bright” idea to come up with one more way to do it (Compaq’s special screws, which look likea flower from top come to mind), the same way it sucks to have to support too many document formats. Whether as a developer (import filters) or user (multiple editors, understanding the difference between the formats).
If you take the proprietary issues into the equations, it gets even worse. It is hard to make a screw proprietary, but it is very easy to make a document format proprietary. This might not be the case with these XML schemas, but in general it is an issue to be considered.
Two standards on the same functionality have the effect of dividing the market into two segments. Each segment is smaller than the whole. Therefore, less competition occures and conversion costs (for example reformating) have to be payed by customers who want to interchange documents between the two systems.
Therefore one standard format, which is as independant from one of the parties who implement it as possible, ensures that competition takes place on the largest possible scale.
The more different standards for the same functionality set get created, the more barriers are erected between customers which have to use the standards, therefore less competition takes place.
Most people in european and north-american countries are told that “competition is good” since they were kids, so explaining to them that “competing on a standard” ist good, but “competing standards” is bad is not so easy.
If you think about the 2 different systems of units (metric and US system) you will see why 2 competing standards are bad. A US deep space probe had the task to land on an asteroid. It used a laser distance measurement tool. This tool gave the distance in feet as floating point value to the main computer. This computer then adjusted the thrust to correctly decelerate the probe, so it would land softly. Unfortunately the programmers thought that the floating point number they got from the measurement tool was meters, so the algorithm started the thrust late and the probe crashed. This would not have happened if the metric OR the US system were the only standard.
Competing standards make sense when an industry is in development, and nobody knows where the journy will go, but we have had word processing for 15 years now, and know perfectly well where the journey goes.
ODF is here, is unencumbered, works well, and is completele vendor neutral.
Microsofts Office Open XML is far from being standardized, has so far only promises from MS of being unincumbered, nobody knows how it will work and it is currently definitely NOT vendor neutral.
I could live with MS OOXML if they would make it truly unencumbered and vendor neutral, but until today I did not see Microsoft being comfortable with truly opening that format, quite contrary, they fought tooth and nail to not having to open their formats and still being included in the MA format decision.
Watts are how much power a bulb consumes.
Lumens are how much light a bulb puts out.
An incandescent 100 watt (~1600 lumens) bulb is brighter than a 66 watt bulb because they use the same technology, a filament, to make light.
You can a 25 watt compact fluorescent light bulb that outputs 1475 lumens (about as much as a 100 watt regular) and used 1/4 the power.
In conclusion, please use a proper analogy.
Please increase the wattage.
The bulb is burning rather dim at the moment.
Uh, you said:
“Watts are how much power a bulb consumes. Lumens are how much light a bulb puts out.”
And he said:
“since the goal of the standard is simply to give certainty in the energy demands and output of what you’re buying,…”
Hmmm.
“comsumes” = “demands+
“puts out” = “output”
So your point would be, what, exactly?
Its fine to have two competing standards, but once you have an established dominance, aka 90% like Office, as free as people are to use another choice, they won’t. Its not a matter about being better or worse either.
So unless you force a free/open standard, you will have free choice.
Gnome VS KDE. GTK VS QT VS Motif VS etc…
“First of all, I highly doubt it’s my browser.
It looks like this “standards blog” has some big issues. For one, he has the beginning of another html document in the middle of his. In the middle of his HTML, he has…”
I would be curious what browser you are using actually….
After seeing your post I tried it with IE, Mozilla, Netscape, and Lynx. My normal browser is Firefox. In all browsers I used the page renders flawlessly. Also if you look at the source for the page he does have the <p> tags in there. So hence my curiosity on your browser.
I think Andy Updegrove actually mistakes what kind of a standard is being debated. He, roughly, makes a distinction between performance and interoperability standards. He then claims that the document storage format is an “accessibility” standard which is more akin to a performance standard than to an interoperability standard.
While the point he makes about long-term accessibility (as oppossed to accessibility understood as access for people with disabilities) is certainly one major aspect of the debate about which standard or whether one or two standards should be endorsed, it certainly is not the major aspect which led to the creation of these competing document formats.
Long-term acessibility is byproduct of the choice to use XML for document storage. The advantage of using XML for storage is the relative ease of accessing the data independently of application used to create it and the relative ease with which whole chains of document processing applications can be developed which transparently can access and exchange XML data. The real thrust of using XML is captured in the catch-all phrase “Web 2.0”.
For the simple end user the advances which the transition to XML mean are rather superfallous. Your average home user will not directly benefit from XML-based data storage. XML data storage is targeted at buisnesses and institutions which can use(purchase) and or independently develop value-adding processing chains (interoperable tools) to maixmize the value of data being stored.
The longetivity of storage is a function of the value of that which is being stored and that which by virtue of being stored in XML is transparently available in a service oriented archtiecture is inherently more valuable than simple bits and bytes of binary storage formats. In fact the transition to such XML-based data formats will force American legislators to address the social and legal issues concerning data retention-which on the whole is more adequately addressed in European governments.
Of coures the transition to XML will make it far easier to provide software which is accessible in the sense of people with disabilities. It is far easier to devlop screen-reading software if one doesent have to deconstruct(reverse-engineer) the format of the documents.
Microsoft made it abundanlty clear when first introducing their XML data format that they wanted 3rd party developers to produce value-added processing tools to facilitate the needs of buisnesses to manage and efficiently user their data. Moreover Microsoft did participate in OASIS- so they had their chance to make whatever input they deemed necessary for the particulaities of their needs. The issue is not so much about one document storage standard as it is about two entirely different competing chains of processing tools which will be incompatible and not interoperable.
Failure to see this may result in one thinking that two standards would lead to some kind of healthy competition from which both would beneift. But in all likelihood endorsing two standards means endorsing two incompatible 3rd party markets (after-market) for processing tools, of which most will be propietary further taxing our “access” to stored data.
a standard using either Opensource or the very least open file formats so everyone can play on a level playing field…
Hmmmm, how about you call us back when there really are to standards huh?
Right now we have:
1) ONE real, workable, totally open for anyone to use standard
2) AND a promise by a company shown to be willing to violate all sorts of anti-trust laws if they feel like it to create a standard.
Feel free to call us when this bogus argument of 2 standards is actually worth talking about.
I’m not going to sit by the phone because personaally, I don’t think that phone will ever ring.