Office Archive

Massachusetts has proposed changing its standards policy to make room for Microsoft Office document formats. The state's Information Technology Division on Monday posted a draft proposal, part of a periodic revision to its overall technical architecture, to its Web site where it will be under review until July 20. If accepted, the policy update would list Office Open XML as acceptable 'open formats' for use by executive-branch state agencies. Office Open XML, also referred to as Ecma-376, are the XML-based file formats in Office 2007 that Microsoft standardized at Ecma International late last year.

A very early initial draft of this review was posted on OSNews many months ago. The final version just went live and is about three times as long, now including open source alternatives, as well as a review of the new online word processor solutions.

"The OpenOffice.org Community announce the release of OpenOffice.org 2.2, the latest version of the leading open-source office suite. With upgrades to its word processor, spreadsheet, presentations, and database software, the free software package provides a real alternative to Microsoft's recently-released Office 2007 product - and an easier upgrade path for existing Microsoft Office users. OpenOffice.org 2.2 also protects users from newly discovered vulnerabilities, where users' PCs could be open to attack if they opened documents from, or accessed web sites set up by, malicious individuals."

The OpenOffice Project has sent a letter to Michael Dell, showering praise on Dell's chairman and CEO and asking him to consider pre-loading OpenOffice onto PCs. The letter is the result of a flood of requests on Dell's online suggestion box, IdeaStorm, for Dell PCs pre-loaded with both Linux operating systems and the open-source suite of desktop productivity applications. John McCreesh, marketing project lead for OpenOffice.org, also asked Dell to consider making a financial contribution to the software's development.

Lyx is an open source, structured document creation system. Conceptually, it falls somewhere between a markup editor and a word processor. The creators of Lyx have coined the term WYSIWYM (what you see is what you mean) to summarise the approach that Lyx takes to document creation.

The Book of JavaScript (2nd edition) by "thau!" (Dave Thau, according to the book's companion website) is a new and comprehensive introduction to the JavaScript language presented in an entertaining, practical format. I was provided a review copy by the publisher, No Starch Press. I have significant practical experience with JavaScript, so I do not consider myself in the target audience for this book; however, I still found much of it useful so it will remain as a valuable reference on my bookshelf.

Minnesota and Texas may become the next US states to adopt the OpenDocument Format as the required standard for their agencies, thanks to two state bills currently up for vote. The Minnesota Preservation of State Documents Act, if passed, would require that all documents 'including text, spreadsheets and presentations' of the state be created in ODF. The XML-based document format is a rival to Microsoft's Office technology.

This is a long review of modern Word Processors. Part 1 published today covers Open Office (open source cross platform), as well as MS Word 2007, and WordPerfect X3.

"Quite some time ago I was searching for the possibility to have a server side storage for documents, and to work on them together with others. Sure, in principal you can realize that with KOffice and kparts where you access and store all data over ssh on a server. But first of all that is not supported by OpenOffice, and it would be cool to have this also with some kind of web interface to check the versions of the documents, etc. So I continued my search - and found PengYou."

"Before Vim 7.0 was released last May, I usually had six or seven xterms or Konsole windows open, each with a single Vim session in which I was editing a single file. This takes up a lot of screen space, and isn't very efficient. With Vim 7.0, users now have the option of using tabs within Vim. With Vim's tab features you can consolidate all your sessions into one window and move between files more easily."

"Next to the Web browser, Microsoft Office is probably the most-used computer software product in the world. Its three main components - Word, Excel, and PowerPoint - are the top business applications on computers. And the fourth pillar of Office, Microsoft Outlook, is the leading email, calendar and contacts program. So, when Microsoft makes significant changes to Office, it's a big deal. And the latest version of the software suite, called Office 2007, due out Jan. 30, is a radical revision, the most dramatic overhaul in a decade or more."

Adobe may already own the market for electronic documents thanks to PDF, but the company knows that Microsoft has a habit of showing up late to the party and stealing the crown. In turn, Adobe is beta testing a new project it calls 'Mars', which is an answer to Microsoft's new XPS format.

Microsoft has hit back at critics, including IBM, which voted against approving the company's Office OpenXML format as an Ecma standard, claiming it is nothing more than a vendor-dictated specification that documents proprietary products via XML. Ecma International announced the approval of the new standard Dec. 6 following a meeting of its general assembly and said it will begin the fast track process for adoption of the Office OpenXML formats as an ISO international standard in January 2007.

In an upcoming version of WordPerfect due in 2007, Corel announced this week, users will have the options of reading and writing in both Microsoft Office Open XML format (introduced in Office 2007) and OpenDocument Format. Will WordPerfect become the ODF word processor of record? Corel's answer was surprising.