This week, Microsoft announced that, with the next version of Office, it will support saving files to Adobe’s Portable Document Format, or PDF. While logical, the move raises questions about how the PDF support will coexist with Windows Vista’s move to its own page description format, known as Metro. Sinofsky [Microsoft Senior Vice President] also addressed how Microsoft views the controversy surrounding Massachusetts’ mandate for the OpenDocument standard.
the move raises questions about how the PDF support will coexist with Windows Vista’s move to its own page description format
Its simple – have very crappy exporting quality for PDF and stellar quality for Metro, then people will want Metro files as the PDFs always look bad.
Damien
Its simple – have very crappy exporting quality for PDF and stellar quality for Metro, then people will want Metro files as the PDFs always look bad.
You’re right, this is Microsoft’s standard operating procedure. They avoid supporting anyone else’s standards, and when forced to by customer demand, present it as a non-default option that doesn’t work properly.
PDF Support will be high quality. One of the driving customer requests for this feature comes from the Publisher team, whose customers need to use PDF files as the medium to transfer to commercial printers. It is absolutely critical that these be high quality, or the scenario just doesn’t work.
I guess for a change it will not be so. The PDF output will be of good quality and MS will make sure of that.
The will however have more feature reservered for Metro (or XPS) like reading from it, better compression, versioning, better support on PDA’s etc… and so people may begin to prefer metro over PDF.
I believe PDF is also supported in the new Expression suite and somethings making me sure that they will not play the same old game this time…
My 2c…
And this has WHAT to do with operating systems?
It has just as much to do with operating systems as most of the news posts on here do!
As one online site said: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=26631 , PDF wasn’t a glimmer in the eye of MS weeks ago, now all the sudden they are touting it. Why, given MS’s antagonitic attitude towards Adobe, and it’s refusal for over 10 years to support PDF generation?
I think the Inq. gets it right. They can’t loose Mass. to the Open Format people. The Mass. arguments about lock in make a great deal of sense to many CIO’s. It really gives states and federal agencies the ability to twist MS’s arm. It’s even funnier given that MS is releasing the ‘PDF killer’ Metro with Visa.
Dave
This won’t keep them from losing Massachussets.For one thing it’s an Office 12 feature. Mass. doesn’t have Office 12, no one but beta testers does yet. Additionally it won’t run on the W2k systems that Mass. has now, so this isn’t a fix for anything but the PR black eye that they got from FUD backlash hitting them in the face.
It is also a “publishing” feature, meaning that it isn’t designed to be a PDF reader. It’s designed to be a converter/publisher used for creating PDFs from other content or from scratch.
{{this isn’t a fix for anything but the PR black eye that they got from FUD backlash hitting them in the face. }}
It isn’t even a fix for that. If anything, because they have said “we will support PDF, but not OpenDocument” – and OpenDocument is unarguably the more open – then their attempt to keep their customer lock-in is even more transparent than before.
This is now an even bigger PR black eye than before the PDF support announcement.
So PDF suppotr is going to be write only, which is logical.
And apparently MS doesn’t consider Massachusetts a customer anymore : “Wouldn’t it be fairly easy to support the OpenDocument format?
Sinofsky: […] Frankly, we’ve had no demand from our customers for this feature.” I’d say willing to make it (one of) the official standard is a pretty big hint from a customer.
Mr Sinofsky on OpenDocument:
“I certainly wouldn’t say it would be fairly easy. In fact it would be a very substantial undertaking. Frankly, we’ve had no demand from our customers for this feature.”
It seems, Mr Sinofsky is not very well informed. Maybe somebody can help him.
“I certainly wouldn’t say it would be fairly easy. In fact it would be a very substantial undertaking.”
Why? There are many implementations out there already. Some of them are open source. Easy peasy.
“Frankly, we’ve had no demand from our customers for this feature.”
Can I have please have a version of MS Office that allows me to use OpenDocument as the default file format, Mr Sinofsky?
I am pretty certain there are some people in Massachusetts government (who speak for a great many desktops) who have also asked you very publically for this very feature.
Easy peasy yadi yadi. You might say whatever you want abotu Microsoft and how they wanna use their monopoly situation but I partially do believe him here. It’s not just supporting every format in the world and it works you know. There are more things to it. Especially if you want some quality in there (and if there’s one product has quality in, it sure is Office).
Surely I’d be glad if they would open up their format and let others adopt to them or the other way around, but I figure it might not be that easy. OOo is a standalone suite. MS Office is so much more (check Sharepoint for instance). I’m sure they wanna put all the time they can into making Office the best tool out there (which it already is if you ask me), and not debate with the small players about formats….
BTW, if it’s so easy making some sort of OASIS out of this, why can’t someone write a plugin which allows you to save your Word document in Oasis then? I mean this was piece of cake doing to PDF so then it should be easy to do Oasis too right? Isn’t that what you’re saying?
BTW, if it’s so easy making some sort of OASIS out of this, why can’t someone write a plugin which allows you to save your Word document in Oasis then?
How many non-Microsoft created file conversion plugins are there for MS Office?
Are they widely used?
I mean this was piece of cake doing to PDF so then it should be easy to do Oasis too right? Isn’t that what you’re saying?
* PDF as print drivers exist for most operating systems.
* The OASIS OpenDocument specification is supported by applications already, and more are comming around.
* Microsoft owns Office. Why can’t they write the converters for a product they have created? These groups and companies seem to have no problem with OpenDocument;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Applications_supporting_O…
Read up on their open XML format, it’s open, you can do what you want with it.
Read up on their open XML format, it’s open, you can do what you want with it.
No you can’t – you must license it! The royalty free license is restricive effectively blocking opensource applications and more. It is not like PDF an openly published specification or even less like ODF which is controlled by an industry standards body OASIS and is soon to become an ISO standard. Futher more the Office XML format explicitly allows you to embed any kind of proprietary binary inside it, which effectively lets MS completely close the format again.
Some proof please other than just idle speculation?
>>>Read up on their open XML format, it’s open, you can do what you want with it.
>No you can’t – you must license it! The royalty free license is restricive effectively blocking opensource applications and more. It is not like PDF an openly published specification or even less like ODF which is controlled by an industry standards body OASIS and is soon to become an ISO standard. Futher more the Office XML format explicitly allows you to embed any kind of proprietary binary inside it, which effectively lets MS completely close the format again.
>Some proof please other than just idle speculation?
Plenty. Read here;
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=12075&comment_id=39557
http://osnews.com/permalink.php?news_id=12075&comment_id=39662
BEFORE you go off and nit pick this one, read the entire thread. Most of your questions are likely answered there or in the source material linked from these posts.
Feel free to post your comments here if you still disagree.
{{Feel free to post your comments here if you still disagree.}}
Sure, I will comply with that. I disagree, strongly.
Microsoft have a patent, and they have applicable licenses for their formats, and those licenses have clause in them that begin with “You are not permitted to …”.
Therefore, the licenses and the formats are not open. They have encumberances.
One of the encumberances in particular that is a real problem is the clause that says “Tou may not sublicense …”. This clause is clearly aimed at preventing any other party from making a useful alternative product to Office 12 implementing MS Office 12 XML schemas.
Therefore the MS formats are not open.
Fell free to disagree if you like, but go ahead and make a product using Office 12 XML schemas and get sued for millions by Microsoft, if that sort of thing makes your day.
Me, I’d far rather just use the superior and open OpenDocument format.
Sorry for any confusion. One of the > were missing in the quoted areas, making it look like there were only two messages quoted, not 3 (as I intended). My mistake…
We’re actually on the same side of this issue.
I agree with you that writing a *usable* save/load to a foreign format that preserves syntax is nontrivial.
That being said, you’re forgetting one thing — OpenOffice has already done the work of converting MSOffice to OpenDocument and back again. All Microsoft will have to do it take the code, turn it into a plugin, and tweak it a bit. They could even use the pre-LGPLed version if they wanted to keep it closed.
That excuse just doesn’t hold any water.
That being said, you’re forgetting one thing — OpenOffice has already done the work of converting MSOffice to OpenDocument and back again. All Microsoft will have to do it take the code, turn it into a plugin, and tweak it a bit. They could even use the pre-LGPLed version if they wanted to keep it closed.
Yes, and if you’ve tried their import filter you can see that it isn’t working very well. Try making any background in your word document for instance and you’ll see how OOo demolishes it. Delivering something is not the same as delivering quality
“I certainly wouldn’t say it would be fairly easy. In fact it would be a very substantial undertaking. Frankly, we’ve had no demand from our customers for this feature.”
What i really don’t understand is, this answer comes RIGHT AFTER the question about Massachusetts and the OpenDocument format. How the hell can he say that he hasn’t heard of any demands from customers directly following a question about a customer that has made the news for dumping Microsoft for not supporting any open formats?
How the hell can he say that he hasn’t heard of any demands from customers directly following a question about a customer that has made the news for dumping Microsoft for not supporting any open formats?
Simple. Because he is a liar.
Simple. Because he is a liar.
I do believe him on this. Besides nerds, nobody gave a damn about OpenDocument (let’s be real about this, please), or even knew about it. Only recently did this issue arise, with Mass.’ switch and all.
In the coming years, MS may see a demand. But before now, I believe him when he says his customers aren’t asking for it. Nobody is using OpenDocument, people. Yet, that is.
I do believe him on this. Besides nerds, nobody gave a damn about OpenDocument
Listen and get this into your head the state of Mass. asked them for Open Document suport and they are an MS customer (a large one at that).
Furthermore the European Commission a much larger customer has explicitly asked MS for Open Document support.
It is simple the man is a liar.
Besides nerds, nobody gave a damn about OpenDocument (let’s be real about this, please), or even knew about it. Only recently did this issue arise, with Mass.’ switch and all.
Nobody gives a damn about file formats in general. All that they ask is that they can save a doument and open it, preferably in any situation that they’re in. Open Document gives people a better and much more reliable way of doing that. They don’t know it, but that’s the benefit – albeit a large indirect one.
In the coming years, MS may see a demand. But before now, I believe him when he says his customers aren’t asking for it.
That’s standard Microsoft speak. When they don’t like something and they won’t implement it then customers aren’t asking for it, and when they implement something they want to do customers are asking for it.
How much demand is there for Microsoft new XML file formats (probably loaded with binary data)? None, that’s how much, but Office users are going to get it anyway.
I’ve been using OpenDocument format for some time; actually. In case you were curious.
You are completely wrong. Common folk don’t know what file formats are, but you can guarantee that when Grandma Average sends a WordPerfect document over to Aunt Layman, who only uses Word, she wants to be able to read the document. OpenDocument addresses that. Just because somebody doesn’t know how to articulate a problem (or has been brainwashed into thinking there isn’t a solution) it doesn’t mean there isn’t demand.
Also, as others have so keenly pointed out, some rather large customers have been asking for it explicitly. By name. So, for Sinofsky to say, “gee, we haven’t really had any customers request that” is an out and out lie.
“Besides nerds, nobody gave a damn about OpenDocument”
Right, because average Joe user hasn’t a clue about file formats etc, doesn’t understand the terms future proof, interoperability etc.
Are you saying that because people without an understanding of technology don’t care, it isn’t important? Are you advocating that those without a clue should set the agenda? If they did, we would not have alternative OSs at all, because only nerds care about them. Great argument. I would think you are a closet Microsoftie, except you don’t appear to be in the closet anymore.
By talking about nerds, are you trying to paint yourself as something other than one? You’re a big jock or what? Way to get in good with your audience. “You are all nerds! I am not! I don’t care about open document. You do, because you are nerds! Not me, I am cool!” Take a running leap.
“Sinofsky [Microsoft Senior Vice President] also addressed how Microsoft views the controversy surrounding Massachusetts’ mandate for the OpenDocument standard.”
There is no controversy.
Massachusetts’ wanted an open format for office files, and they chose one. In fact they chose the only one offered to them, and the only one supported in an existing product.
What could possibly be controversial about that?
If it took 120000 questions/week to get PDF into Office, why won’t we try to submit them 120000 requests or more on one day through /.
Perhaps such a way helps.
Do you think this might open some doors in Massachusetts and other states that might be considering some kind of OpenDocument mandate?
Sinofsky: I can’t speak specifically for any particular location. We’re very excited about the investments we’ve made in opening up Office. This just speaks to our commitment for customers to have a choice in what types of open formats they want to work within the Office applications.
He sounds like a politician, avoiding the issue.
There are already print drivers that allow you to print directly from anywhere to pdf in windows. I can do it from anywhere in osx and I’m sure the same can be said for gnome and kde. Why is the inclusion of such a feature worth making any noise over?
Is there any extra value in limiting support to only Office? It seems like a late and underfeatured addition.
Why is the inclusion of such a feature worth making any noise over?
It isn’t.
OpenOffice and others have supported exporting to PDF for a long time, and as you said, there are already print drivers that allow you to print anything to a PDF file.
To me, this is nothing more than Microsoft saying, “See, we support open standards too! See! See!”
Political nonsense at its best. A bunch of blathering with no substance whatsoever.
Speaking as a member of the team that built this support, I can tell you that, at least for my product, PDF export is the #1 requested customer feature. It is true that you can buy a third party prodcut, like CutePDF to get the same kind of thing, but here are the reasons customers have given me directly for wanting PDF support in Access:
– Integrated; This means it is plumbed all the way through our object model and macro engines, all their existing code and macros can take advantage of the feature w/o writing against some external libraries. This is extremely important due to current security concerns related to code signing, application trust, etc… Also, it makes automation easy. In Access you can output a report to PDF in a one-line macro that gets clicked off when you click a button on a form.
– Deployment & Maintinance Cost; If it is a part of Office, then there is only one source for patches. It gets included in the standard IT maintinance routine.
– Avaliability; While it is true that we hobby-developers all have administrator or root on our machines, it is uncommon for corporate users to have this level of access. In many cases, installing extra software packages isn’t an option for them (they already have Office).
In short, we built this because customers asked us to. It is true that workarounds exist to solve this problem, but people don’t want workaounds. They expect support to just be baked in to the product.
I understand the reasons for corporate entities to cut back on software (especially with a subpar method of updating, but I digress).
However, why is this functionality being included in Office rather than part of Windows as a system level printer?
Also, PDF isn’t really an “open” standard.
In short, we built this because customers asked us to. It is true that workarounds exist to solve this problem, but people don’t want workaounds. They expect support to just be baked in to the product.
Glad you posted. This is exactly why people would like native OpenDocument support in MS Office.
Well, of course customers want it. They’ve wanted it for a long time. What I don’t understand is a) why not announce it before all the news about Microsoft vs. MA (seeing as it’s such a demanded feature)? and b) why not integrate it into Windows? As is, it looks like nothing more than a political move.
Also, if the customer really is that important, why not support OpenDocument, which would go a lot further in acheiving the level of document sharing capabilities that people want than PDF will? The only reason people want PDF is because they don’t yet know that there is a better way.
Doesn’t Microsoft think it would be a much bigger step towards satisfying customer’s real needs by supporting an open format that is more robust than PDF?
Instead of trying to stick it to the competition all the time, why not listen to what your customers really want and then execute? It’s pretty sad if your product doesn’t have enough merit to stand up on its own without resorting to file format lock-in, don’t you think?
DISCLAIMER: This post is my personal opinion. It doesn’t in any way shape or form reflect any official Microsoft policy or viewpoints.
why not integrate it into Windows?
Integrating PDF support into Windows doesn’t do anything for Office. Office “12” has to provide this functionality in WindowsXP, not just Vista.
Also, if the customer really is that important, why not support OpenDocument, which would go a lot further in acheiving the level of document sharing capabilities that people want than PDF will?
The scenario for PDF support in Access is not solved by the ODF AFAIK. Our PDF export story is primarily a mechanism by which users can produce fixed format documents that can be reprinted at any time with full print-fidelity. Most of these documents should never be modified after export, because they contain data that changes over time, and the intention of the report is to provide an overview/analysis of the data at a given point in time. These are electronic paper, for all intents and purposes. People design Access reports to the pixel. If they are reflowed or re-laid out post-export, then many would be completely broken (ex: report reproductions of government forms which automatically fill in data from some back-end database).
The other thing that PDF has that ODF doesn’t is a tremendous installed base for the reader application. This means users can just mail these documents around an make the assumption that all recipients will be able to open them witout installing any additional software. This is absolutely critical to most corporate environments, for which users typically don’t have the ability to install additional software on their machines.
Instead of trying to stick it to the competition all the time, why not listen to what your customers really want and then execute? It’s pretty sad if your product doesn’t have enough merit to stand up on its own without resorting to file format lock-in, don’t you think?
We actually do a very thorogh job of trying to learn what scenarios our customers want to have. We don’t just listen to active online users, and technologists, but focus on learning what everyone wants. The vast majority of feedback we’ve had so far on Office “12” from our customers (basically every large corporation and government agency in the world) has been very positive. There are always a few outliers, but they are the the exception and not the rule.
Okay, now I’m going to get religious for a moment… take this with a grain of salt:
Access is by far the most popular database program in the world. 70 million unique users boot it at least once each month, 40 million each week. It has no problem standing on its own with or without the file format. As a matter of fact, the Access ‘file format’ has been Jet for many years. Jet ships in Windows, and could have been used by any software vendor to build a better and more compelling application. It isn’t that the opportunity isn’t there, it is just that no one has built a competitor that rivals the feature set of Access.
DISCLAIMER: This post is my personal opinion. It doesn’t in any way shape or form reflect any official Microsoft policy or viewpoints.
why not integrate it into Windows?
Integrating PDF support into Windows doesn’t do anything for Office. Office “12” has to provide this functionality in WindowsXP, not just Vista.
Also, if the customer really is that important, why not support OpenDocument, which would go a lot further in acheiving the level of document sharing capabilities that people want than PDF will?
The scenario for PDF support in Access is not solved by the ODF AFAIK. Our PDF export story is primarily a mechanism by which users can produce fixed format documents that can be reprinted at any time with full print-fidelity. Most of these documents should never be modified after export, because they contain data that changes over time, and the intention of the report is to provide an overview/analysis of the data at a given point in time. These are electronic paper, for all intents and purposes. People design Access reports to the pixel. If they are reflowed or re-laid out post-export, then many would be completely broken (ex: report reproductions of government forms which automatically fill in data from some back-end database).
The other thing that PDF has that ODF doesn’t is a tremendous installed base for the reader application. This means users can just mail these documents around an make the assumption that all recipients will be able to open them witout installing any additional software. This is absolutely critical to most corporate environments, for which users typically don’t have the ability to install additional software on their machines.
Instead of trying to stick it to the competition all the time, why not listen to what your customers really want and then execute? It’s pretty sad if your product doesn’t have enough merit to stand up on its own without resorting to file format lock-in, don’t you think?
We actually do a very thorogh job of trying to learn what scenarios our customers want to have. We don’t just listen to active online users, and technologists, but focus on learning what everyone wants. The vast majority of feedback we’ve had so far on Office “12” from our customers (basically every large corporation and government agency in the world) has been very positive. There are always a few outliers, but they are the the exception and not the rule.
Okay, now I’m going to get religious for a moment… take this with a grain of salt:
Access is by far the most popular database program in the world. 70 million unique users boot it at least once each month, 40 million each week. It has no problem standing on its own with or without the file format. As a matter of fact, the Access ‘file format’ has been Jet for many years. Jet ships in Windows, and could have been used by any software vendor to build a better and more compelling application. It isn’t that the opportunity isn’t there, it is just that no one has built a competitor that rivals the feature set of Access.
DISCLAIMER: This post is my personal opinion. It doesn’t in any way shape or form reflect any official Microsoft policy or viewpoints.
why not integrate it into Windows?
Integrating PDF support into versioin of Windows that is currently under development instead of Office would limit Office “12” customers from getting this scenario unless they move to Vista. While it is true that there is a portion of our customer base who will upgrade both at the same time, there is also a large group of customers who will want to install Office “12” on their existing WindowsXP deployments.
Also, if the customer really is that important, why not support OpenDocument, which would go a lot further in acheiving the level of document sharing capabilities that people want than PDF will?
The scenario for PDF support in Access is not solved by the ODF AFAIK. Our PDF export story is primarily a mechanism by which users can produce ‘fixed format’ documents that are essentially print-time representations of the Form, Report, Table, Query, etc… These can then be reprinted at any time with full original print quality. Most of these documents should never be modified after export, because they contain data that changes over time, and the intention of the report is to provide an overview/analysis of the data at a given point in time. These are electronic paper, for all intents and purposes. Also, people design Access reports to the pixel. If they are reflowed or re-laid out post-export, then many would be completely broken (ex: report reproductions of government forms which automatically fill in data from some back-end database).
The other thing that PDF has that ODF doesn’t is a tremendous installed base for reader client applications. This means users can just mail these documents around an make the assumption that all recipients will be able to open them witout installing any additional software. This is absolutely critical to most corporate environments, for which users typically don’t have the ability to install additional software on their machines.
Instead of trying to stick it to the competition all the time, why not listen to what your customers really want and then execute? It’s pretty sad if your product doesn’t have enough merit to stand up on its own without resorting to file format lock-in, don’t you think?
So as I mentioned before, the reason we’re doing this work is because customers have asked us to, a lot of customers. In fact, they’ve been asking for it for a very long time. The reasons we’ve chosen not to implement this support in the past are largely to do with legal necessity. Because Microsoft is a legal monopoly, many decicisions which would simply be technology issues at other companies are instead subject to legal review. A good example of this is the recent Media Player suit in the EU.
Also, I don’t think I can agree with your assertion that we don’t execute on customer scenarios. The overwhelming majority of customer feedback we’ve recieved on this version of Office has been extremely positive. I personally have spent a lot of time talking to all sorts of MS customers, and I have never once been asked by one for ODF support. I’m not suggesting no customers want this, just that it is rare enough that in the hundreds of developer and corporate customers I’ve talked to, it has never come up. If we were getting a lot of feature requests for support of this format, I genuinely believe MS would try and find a way to support it legally.
[One interesting point about Office “12” file formats is that the reason they have been changed is so that we could add a swath of new features customers directly requested. If we were stuck to ODF, would we still be able to respond this way? I don’t know, but it is an interesting question to consider.]
This article seems to be completely siding with Microsoft from the start. The writer “Ina Fried” seems to have fried his/her brain on this one.
At the very start, we find a statement like this one…
“Microsoft has been gradually opening its Office formats for years, adding support for options such as Rich Text Format…”
Rich Text Format (RTF) is a Microsoft developed format, just like Excel’s XSL, so using it cannot indicate they are opening Office formats.
This is a little game Microsoft has been playing for a while now. When Microsoft talk about different platforms, they are really talking about different version of the Windows platform. When Microsoft talks about different formats, they most often are talking about their own formats. Its just a words game, but I would have been expecting Mr. Sinofsky to make this statement, not the interviewer.
And then the interviewer continues saying,
“But the pressure on Redmond to open things up further has continued…”
Again, to go further means in the real world that you already have moved forward a good amount, and yet you are moving further ahead again. This is certainly not the case. Once again, the interviewer is making statements I would expect from the interviewee.
Mr Thom_Holwerda your time scale is very short when you write..
Besides nerds, nobody gave a damn about OpenDocument…
surely companies behind produts like lotus 123 wordperfect and others would of cared once they started losing major parts of their markets to MS…
(((( a hell of a lot of industries cares when unable to open a new or old files ))))
just some weirdo in the corner gives a damn…. right??
Im sure MS will give a damn if a lot more compnaies / governments / states etc want open standards for something as simple as saving a text document…
Parts of Massachusetts have been switching for years, so Microsoft shouldn’t be surprised that now the entire state is switching. Check out anything semi-recent out of Saugus, MA like the TAHG project. Everything is provided in at least one open format, and often more.
http://town.saugus.ma.us/School/District/TAHG/
http://www.saugus.net/
Putting something online in an open format like PDF, OpenOffice, OpenDocument, or even Newton book is perhaps the loudest way a customer can say that something’s important.
What everyone seems to miss is this: if you want OO.org to succeed, you don’t want MS Office to support OpenDocument. Period.
Why?
If Office supported the OpenDocument format, then OO.org would have to compete on features alone. Here, MS Office wins hands down.
Oh yes, the cost isn’t really a big issue. Most induhviduals buy their version of Office when they buy a new PC (think, “Yes, I’ll pay an extra $50-100 to have the latest and greatest Office”). In addition, most corporations would rather shell out $400 per seat on a proven product than risk a switch to something free (CXO think, “If its free, how good can it really be?)
So, without the advantage of an open document format, OO.org is left competing with MS Office on features. Tell me, just who will win that fight?
So, without the advantage of an open document format, OO.org is left competing with MS Office on features. Tell me, just who will win that fight?
It doesn’t matter.
If Microsoft supports OpenDocument, we all win.
Personally, it’s my data. I want to be able to use it in the decades that follow this one. With OpenDocument, that’s possible. With Microsoft Office, there are serious limitations and products tied to my ability to read the documents or pass them along.
As far as features go, Microsoft should be competing on features. Competing by having a lockin on customer data is just wrong. Microsoft doesn’t own my work.
“So, without the advantage of an open document format, OO.org is left competing with MS Office on features. Tell me, just who will win that fight?”
The one that doesn’t require you to upgrade your OS, the one that have a familliar user interface. Most people have enough features to fill their needs in Office 97. The new stuff needed to get people to upgrade need to be quite innovative, or people won’t care.
More features will most likely not do the trick for Microsoft. Today OpenOffice have about the same market share as the latest offering from Microsoft meaning that people tend to stay with what they have. The heavy changes to file formats and gui in Office 12 is not going to do Microsoft any good. If they can stay with something that looks and feels like what they are used to they will go for that solution when Microsoft end of lifes their current product, especially if it is downloadable for free.
{{What everyone seems to miss is this: if you want OO.org to succeed, you don’t want MS Office to support OpenDocument. Period. }}
What you seem to miss is this: I want platform interoperability to win. I want the end customer to win. I want open standard formats to win. I want choice to win.
I couldn’t care less if people used MS Word, OO.org, KOffice, StarOffice, WordPerfect or whatever the hell they want – as long as their documents are saved in OpenDocument format. It is all about the ability to have free & open (and complete and reliable) document interchange between platforms.
Therefore, I do want MS Office to support OpenDocument. Period.
If you want MS to include Open Documents formats in MS office – Start posting files to the Internet in the ODT and ODS formats – and when someone complains to you tell them that the reader for this format is a free down load from OpenOffice.org. Better yet post a note with the files that tells people where to find the FREE Open Document read/edit program. Second is to complain to any web master about the fact that they have used the proprietary formats offer suggestions for PDF and Open Documents for replacements.
In reality this will cause a move away from MS office in home use. In that “borrowing” a copy form the office is getting harder and harder – Once home users have a Free copy of OO2 installed they will not be willing to spend $250.00 for a basic version of MS Office to do the light duty edits most do from home. So as age makes the version of MS Office less and less useful they will naturally move to OO rather than shell out the cost of a new copy of MS Office.
…for the Sun, Google, and the Web-based StarOffice/OpenOffice announcement!
Yes, I know there is an article already. It’s getting burried…this is ‘Apple moves to x86’ level news…it deserves to get a new article!
That Adobe doesn’t have the PDF as it’s main cash cow. Or else they would have been out of bussiness long ago with all the groups building PDF converters, readers and stuff like that. I mean, Adobe not only developed PDF but also made it open enough to be used by everyone, and that’s a good thing(tm). But I suppose their main apps are Photoshop and ilustrator.
From what I’ve read, Acrobat is Adobe’s main cash cow, and brings in more money than Photoshop.
here’s a link:
http://www.planetpdf.com/mainpage.asp?webpageid=2497
Arpan
<<<<<<<
If Office supported the OpenDocument format, then OO.org would have to compete on features alone. Here, MS Office wins hands down.
>>>>>>>
what feature is that, clippy the paperclip? imbedded video? HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!! maybe that way it keeps resetting my margins for no damn reason?
every office is so feature rich that they’ve all transcended into feature bloat. lotus smartsuite, wordperfect, gobe, koffice, openoffice, and even the individual apps like abiword…. they all have more than enough feature. the features that microsoft has to differentiate themselves from other office suites are next to worthless for 99.999% of users; things like imbedded video and audio. nobody cares except for those in cube culture whose primary interface is ms outlook and ie and the rest of the office suite … eventually they get around to tinkering with all those useless features. nobody else cares.
i use my programming editor for text processing … except for the last part where i import it into some word prcessor … where i choose fonts, bold, bullets … and that’s all. screw the rest … and most people don’t care any more than i do
I’d rather eat poop than use any software from MS.
Just so you’ll know, that’s not the only choice. You may also choose to do both or neither.
The word Metrosexual should NOT be copyrighted!
I can tell you exactly how this is going to play out, because it has all been started and done fifteen or twenty years ago – and Microsoft think they’re still there. This is an absolute, bona fide, 100% standard Microsoft business practice and tactic right out of the bottom drawer – never mind the top one.
Wiht this Massachusetts stuff happening Microsoft probably had a strategy meeting like they always do and asked “OK, what can we offer that is apparently more open but will kill two birds with one stone and help us get what we really want in the long run?” Support PDF. It might not sway Massachusetts, but who cares? They’re a piffling little state, and when Open Document is surrounded by Microsoft products, and PDF too ;-), and they are extinguished, the little rebels will be pushed back to Microsoft and Office. They’ll probably even end up buying some of Microsoft’s new products as a result! Every government needs to do publishing!
We all know Microsoft wants to replace PDF in the publishing industry with Metro, so let’s just stop talking crap on this subject. By supporting PDF they apparently look more open (but if they don’t who cares?), but they also get access to the PDF dominated world of publishing that they’ve never really been in before. That’s what they really want. You can see this with new products like Acryllic and Sparkle – there’s money and influence to be made in media and publishing, and they want to take it off Adobe and Macromedia because that’s where the money is. This was even mentioned as part of the interview:
http://beta.news.com.com/Microsoft+and+Adobe+to+square+off/2100-101…
Now, as Microsoft (as they always do) are able to use Windows and Office to strong-arm their new products into the fray (preferable OEM deals, preference in being able to set the technology agenda, direct support in Windows, Office etc.), at some point Microsoft will feel confident enough that the vast majority of PDFs produced in the publishing world are produced by Microsoft products. What you will then see is a standard deprecation of PDF as a format within Microsoft’s products. Extensions will be made to PDF to support Metro features, because of course, customers are screaming down the phone lines asking for it! PDF allows you to do this, and it was stated clearly by an Adobe employee in the Massachusetts meeting! These features will mean that Microsoft can no longer call their PDF format a PDF, because it isn’t, but that suits Microsoft absolutely fine because they will just rename the new format Metro. They will also probably claim they are respecting Adobe’s intellectual property by doing that as well.
It’s a standard, logical Microsoft business practice, performed many times before, and this decision to support PDF fits like a glove. The only place this hasn’t really worked was with HTML and the web, but rest assured, they will try again.
I’ll translate Steven Sinofsky for you all:
They’ve gone out of their way to tell people, “Please support this format.” We’re just supporting the format, which is the message that they’ve given to us….In fact, it is doing precisely what they have been telling the public, and evangelizing to (other software makers) to do.
Translation:
What we’re doing is implementing PDF, because Adobe have effectively told us to do it by opening it up. If they then somehow die by their own sword as a result of this it isn’t our fault. Stupid company. By all means have an apparently open format, but you shouldn’t make it that open if you’re trying to protect the market Adobe and others have!
Goodness. I think Microsoft should just push several million in share options my way……
They’re a piffling little state
Massachusetts may be the sixth smallest or so in geographical area, but it’s far from that in population and (especially) computer usage.
Even more importantly, they have more universities than any other state (60+ I think), plus one of the (if not the most) technical institute in the country…MIT (not to mention Harvard as well).
Even more importantly, they have more universities than any other state (60+ I think), plus one of the (if not the most) most important technical institutes in the country…MIT (not to mention Harvard as well).
Massachusetts may be the sixth smallest or so in geographical area, but it’s far from that in population and (especially) computer usage.
I was writing that from the point of view of how Microsoft sees them. Massachusetts is considered very small by Microsoft when compared with the rest of the world.
300,000 desktops !!! My, my.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200509220137.html
“…how Microsoft views the controversy…”
Exactly….to them (and I guess also Thom by including this language in the story here)…this is a massive and tragic ‘controversy’ that simply cannot stand. They must control the ball at all costs and defeat all possible competitors and opposing concepts.
Sad….very sad to see such arrogance….MS doesn’t own the USA or world….get over it Steve & Bill.
😉
Microsoft is claiming (through a spokesperson) that they don’t support OpenDocument, because there really isn’t enough demand.
But then they develop support for their proprietary XML format, while there is probably just as little, if not less, demand for that. And have I mentioned Metro, for which there is exactly 0 demand.
First of all…
XML is a standard that MS DID NOT invent! ANY hype from MS about “their” open XML format is bullshit!
XML IS AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN OPEN TO AND FOR EVERYONE BEFORE MS EVER TRIED TO RIDE THE BANDWAGON.
It’s not about an Open Document format, it’s about control… something Microsoft does not want anyone else to have but Microsoft!
People, start educating and protecting yourselves NOW because it’s going to get dirtier and dirtier with Microsoft in the days to come.