Office Archive

An hour or so ago Sun Microsystems made good on an earlier pledge to issue further 'non-assertion covenants' in support of open standards. This type of IPR tool facilitates easy implementation of new standards, and also makes open source implementations possible. The new NACs relate to the OASIS Security Assertion Markup Language v2.0 standard and two 'single sign-on' specifications co-developed with Microsoft.

"In the hubbub over the ODF and competing 'what you see is what you get' word processors, a long-standing alternative model of word processing systems has been mostly overlooked. The author of LyX, Matthias Ettrich, calls this approach 'what you see is what you mean'. However, it's a philosophy that you will find in many 'native' free software text-processing systems everywhere, from online 'content management systems' to book publishing. You write what you mean, then you use some type of formatter to create presentation layouts. LyX, with its integrated graphical environment, may be the friendliest place to learn it."

The developers behind Word 12 have added a blogging feature to Word 12. They have promised that the blogging feature wil output clean, unmangled HTML: "That's right. No more verbose Word HTML. The goal for this feature is not pure fidelity, but the right fidelity for your blog."

Version 7 of the editor VIM has been released. New features include spell checking, completion, tabs, intelligent undo, and much more. "Vim is a highly configurable text editor built to enable efficient text editing. It is an improved version of the vi editor distributed with most UNIX systems. Vim is often called a 'programmer's editor,' and so useful for programming that many consider it an entire IDE. It's not just for programmers, though. Vim is perfect for all kinds of text editing, from composing email to editing configuration files." Get it here.

"The National Archives of Australia has announced that it will move its digital archives program to software that supports the ODF. The significance of this example is that the NAA gathers in materials from multiple sources, in many different formats, which will need to be converted to ODF compliance for long term archival storage. The NAA's decision provides a new and distinct case study for those considering a move to ODF. Unlike Mass. or Bristol, the NAA will deal almost exclusively with documents created elsewhere. As a result, it provides a 'worst possible case' to test whether operating an ODF environment in a world that uses multiple non-ODF compliant formats is practical."

"Microsoft has lost a head-to-head competition with OpenDocument Format supporting software, with the decision of the Bristol, England City Council to convert its 5500 desktops from Office to Sun's ODF compliant StarOffice office suite. The City, after extensive study, concluded that it would save 60% of total costs of ownership over a five year period by making the switch. And, as an assist to cities, it has made the documentation of its analysis and other materials available at the Open Source Academy Website in the UK."

On Monday, Microsoft updated the four-month-old Beta 1 version of Microsoft Office 2007 with a "Technical Refresh" version. Office has shed the preliminary name "Microsoft Office 12" for its final name, Microsoft Office 2007, and sports an improved version of the new ribbon interface. This Technical Refresh represents the first version of Office 2007 to run under Windows Vista.

At CeBIT today, Microsoft unveiled an updated version of their 'ribbon' user interface, used in Office 2007. They even set up a special page for it. Jensen Harris of Microsoft explains more about it on his blog. On a related note, this article goes a little deeper into the OpenOffice.org vs. MS Office debate.

"In a well-orchestrated PR bliltz, 36 Companies, associations, and end-users today announced the formation of the ODF Alliance. The ODF Alliance was first proposed by IBM at meeting of key players and others held at an IBM facility in Armonk on November 4 of last year, and has now been brought into existence under the wing of the Software and Information Industry Association."

ActiveWin reviews Office 2007 beta 1, and concludes: "It's an innovative interface yes, but will the benefits outweigh the changes? That's for users to decide. Yes this early code does have glitches and performance issues left to be ironed out; right now the focus is on reliability and stability. The BETA 2 release should provide us with an early glimpse of what's in store in the final product. My personal say is getting used to interface should not be a problem for many since the familiar tools are organized in ways that makes it convenient for the user, and new tools make the interface more intelligent and more aware of what the user is doing, presenting the right tools for the task at hand."

"Assuming that 'because it's a Mac, it's safe' is no longer wise" is probably one of this book's most important themes. It has been my experience that too many Mac users "know" that OS X is secure and therefore they have nothing to worry about. This book shows just how wrong that attitude is.

"Over the last six months I've received email from all manner of folks from all over the world relating to ODF. In virtually all instances, the senders were ODF proponents, many asking how they can help, or offering their personal experiences or thoughts. I've also received email from, and gotten to know, many of the other journalists and bloggers following the issue, as well as the principal vendor advocates, and some of the community of the disabled that have voiced concern, as well. Early last week, I received an email from closer to home, with a 'subject' line that read, "Maybe it's time we talk..." I was happy to get the email, because the sender was none other than Alan Cote, the Massachusetts Supervisor of Records."

"In an important new development, the administration of Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney has not only appointed a permanent replacement to State CIO Peter Quinn, but also dedicated the press release announcing that appointment to reconfirming its steadfast commitment to the implementation of the OASIS OpenDocument Format. The announcement that Louis Gutierrez would replace Quinn was made today by State Secretary of Administration and Finance Thomas Trimarco, the immediate supervisor of the State CIO. The appointment of Gutierrez will be effective on February 6, 2006."

"I've been gathering information from a variety of knowledgeable sources on the critical issues and milestones affecting the continuing implementation by the Massachusetts IT Division of its OpenDocument Format policy. Here are the issues and milestones that I'll be watching, the state of play of each on as I understand it, and the approximate date to look for an announcement on each."