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OK, forgive the random Sneaker Pimps reference and I promise we will move off this topic of ODF politics we've had the past week or two, but I wanted to call out something that Stephen McGibbon pointed out to me today. He mentioned this blog post he made on Monday entitled Spinning out of Control. Stephen pointed out that in the press release for the ISO approval of ODF, the following statement was made:

Billions of existing office documents will be able to be converted to the XML standard format with no loss of data, formatting, properties, or capabilities. This will facilitate document contents access, search, use, integration and development in new and innovative ways.

Now, I'm not sure if this was just an exaggeration, or if they meant that ideally in future versions of ODF it will be the case. It's clear though that as the spec stands now, it's not the case. There are clearly a number of areas either left unspecified, or specified to a more limited level than what people are already doing today in their documents. I'm not talking about future innovations, but basics that have been around for years. I know that pushers of ODF like to say this is just FUD, but really it's just a fact. Look at the spec. If the goal is to guarantee perfect fidelity with the existing base of Microsoft Office documents (which would be implied by the "billions of documents" statement), then there is still a long way to go.

Now, maybe fidelity with the existing base of Microsoft Office documents was a non goal. In reading through the newsgroups, it's pretty clear that the initial goal of ODF was mainly targeted around fidelity with the existing OpenOffice 1.1 format that was created by Sun. This is stated pretty clearly by David Faure who is a voting member on the OASIS Open Document Technical Committee:

The format is heavily based on the requirements, constraints, and experiences of *Sun* customers and KOffice users and developers though, and nothing says that those requirements are totally different. But for sure we didn't target *Microsoft*'s customers. The art of implying something without actually saying so...

"Almost no material changes" is certainly exaggerated, but yes, ODT is mostly bsaed on OO-1.1, it wasn't completely redesigned;

I think the key here is for everyone to just be clear on the goals. The ODF format is based on Sun's StarOffice, and Open XML was based on the Microsoft Office formats. Both have the goals of being open, both have been submitted to standards bodies, and both have a commitment from the donating companies (Sun and Microsoft) that there will be no licensing restrictions and anyone is allowed to freely use the formats. A big difference though is that the ODF folks took a slightly different approach as far as when to declare draft 1.0 complete. There are even features that OpenOffice supports that aren't yet defined clearly in the spec. The Ecma draft on the other hand pretty clearly defines everything, which then allows people to implement as much or as little of it as they want.

A recent statement that really left me scratching my head around this though was made by Gary Edwards up on Stephen's blog post. You may remember Gary as the guy who was under the impression that there was a mythical binary key in the Office XML formats. Gary is a member on the ODF Foundation and has been talking a lot about the add-in they built to open and save ODF in Microsoft Office. I still haven't had a chance to look at the add-in, as it's been kept pretty secret, but Gary has really promised a lot. Here is what he said on Stephen's blog about ODF not being full fidelity with the existing base of documents:

You're wrong. The OpenDocument Foundation plug-in will deliver near perfect fidelity for ODF documents produced by MSOffice. Our fidelity is near identical to the fidelity achieved when converting MS binaries to MOOX.

Maybe you need to pay more attention to the trials going on in Massachusetts. Oh, that's right. Microsoft isn't participating in those trials. Based on the piss poor fidelity of your translator project, i wouldn't participate either if that was the best i could do.

The truth is that it doesn't matter to us if it's billions of documents or ten documents. If that document can be loaded into any version of M$Office from 1997 to 2007, we can convert it with near perfect fidelity. At least as good as your own conversion within MSOffice to MOOX.

Perhaps you need to worry more about your own credibility than that of the ODF Community. We're doing just fine thank you,

Oh yeah, one other thing. Accessibility add ons to MSOffice work just fine with ODF. There is no performance differential between ODF and MOOX within MSOffice worth worrying about. There is no differential in how accessiblitiy applications are handled. So what was your complaint again?

~ge~

I really don't understand this. First off maybe he isn't aware that the translator project we announced is currently in a very early prototype stage and is completely open source. It will continue to improve over the coming months. I understand people usually expect stuff that we announce to be further along, but we wanted this to be done in the open so anyone could comment and contribute.

I also thought that everyone was in agreement that the ODF format was not yet to a point where it could fully represent the existing base of Office documents, but Gary seems to say their tool can somehow get around this limitation. I don't know how deep Gary has looked into this, but it's simply not possible unless he and the ODF Foundation have already added significant extensions to the ODF standard. I haven't seen these new extensions documented anywhere. The OASIS ODF technical committee claims it's still over a year away from defining spreadsheet functions and tables in presentations, and no mention of solutions to the international numbering issues or even simple things like character highlighting.

Gary also doesn't seem to understand the performance problems with ODF. It has nothing to do with performance once the file is loaded. The problems are with how long it takes to read and write ODF files since they decided to use a generic table model to represent full spreadsheets.

So, while I think the ODF spec is a great representation of the OpenOffice file format, it's just not anywhere close to the Ecma spec in terms of representing Microsoft Office documents. And since we already have billions of documents in that format and hundreds of millions of customers, we absolutely have to keep our focus on the Ecma spec for now. We are also helping to build transformations between the two formats, which really helps to show the beauty of working with documented, open, XML formats.

-Brian

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 26, 2006
    I have read comments all over the place about the bad UI integration of the ODF translator add-in. I posted a discussion of this on my blog yesterday including what could be done to give ODF a more prominent status in the UI: http://pschmid.net/blog/2006/07/25/32

  • Anonymous
    July 26, 2006
    I thought I should include the next paragraph of David's comment, which you helpfully snipped:

    "MS is just forgetting that the OD format was designed from the start to be as much independent as possible from the implementation of the office suite applications, and that's why it was a great basis for a standard."

    The big difference isn't when ODF was standardised. It was standardised when it was ready. The big difference is that ODF is designed in a generic manner, and the format represents the data. OXML has been designed for Office, and the format represents the data structures Office uses internally.

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Alex,
    Thanks for including that, although I had already included the link to David's full post so that folks could read the rest of what Dave said as well as the original question he was responding to.

    My point was that contrary to what a lot of people have claimed, the ODF format was designed by a much smaller group of people (primarily Sun engineers) working on StarOffice. That's why ODF lacks a number of features that are present in other Office applications. I really wanted to make sure that it was clear that the goals of the two formats are very different.

    The OASIS committee work wasn't started until after the format had already been designed. The committee (while it did make some changes primarily to tag names, namespaces) made the decision on a number of big issues to push the spec through to completion withough finishing those issues. This is why the claims some folks are making about ODF fully supporting legacy documents is false.

    -Brian

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Brian -

    Part of the reason you are seen as using FUD is that you seem to intentionally confuse the possible features in those billions of documents with the actual features.  I have worked for a major law firm that used Word extensively, and I doubt that 0.1 % (one tenth of a percent) of the Word documents created by that Firm use any feature that would not render perfectly under these tests.  MS Word in particular has many, many features that virtually nobody uses, so the issue isn't just what could be done but what is done.  With Excel, that is probably somewhat less true, but it is still a relatively small (perhaps 10% to be generous) of the spreadsheets that do anything out of scope of ODF.  I do not have enough personal experience with PowerPoint to make even an educated guess at how many PowerPoint presentations use specialized techniques.

    This is not to say that a) ODF doesn't need work, as it certainly does, or that b) the claims you quote aren't meant to give an impression that is not quite correct, as they certainly are.  Nonetheless, if you can confidently say that there are billions of MS Word documents and Excel spreadsheets out there in the world, I can confidently respond that there billions of documents and spreadsheets which would render at least as well to ODF as to OpenXML.  Part of the reason is that Microsoft has not always cared as much as you seem to about fidelity with older formats, and I have even had to use other word processors such as WordPro to occasionally recover an MS Word document that is from an older version to convert it to an MS Word document that Word 2003 will read properly.  Microsoft's claims that all previous MS Office formats will convert with complete fidelity to Open XML, or even to MS Office 2007 "native" formats are also extremely unlikely.

    I just wish both sides of this debate would quit with the over exaggerated claims for their side and the over exaggerated issues with the other side.  Just get on with making the best product/format you can and stop with the FUD, and that goes for both the ODF Alliance (of which I am a member) and Microsoft (of which I am a Business Partner and customer.

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Stefan -- the blame goes both ways; I think that was Ben's point. But what Brian has been posting the past few weeks is pure FUD; factually correct, but quite misleading.

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    It seems as though what separates ODF from OpenXML is not so much the format itself, but the tone of the respective formats' proponents.

    Brian's equability in entertaining and responding to the sometimes feverish pitch here is commendable. It's also what keeps me coming back to this blog. Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    It's FUD because you consistently make huge, unsupportable, generalizations based on small pieces of evidence. In every one of these posts you start with a legitimate observation, and then move on the point you really want to make: don't use ODF.

    I'm not saying nobody on the other side does that, but that hardly excuses it.

    I think it's fair to say that there will be interoperability trouble spots in BOTH of the formats, and the best way to solve them is to for the two groups to engage with each other, rather than to always look to score points in the blogosphere.

    I picked apart the new OXML/Office 2007 citation and bibliographic support on my blog, but I hope it's clear I did this not to make MS look bad, but because I care deeply that you guys (and the ODF world too) get it right. And I hope you guys actually listen; you might regret it if you don't.

    BTW, when I do presenttions I use either XHTML (typically for teaching) and  Keynote-produced PDF. Why? Because I think both solutions are superior in their domains than both PowerPoint and the ODF presentation apps!  So I think it's problematic to use the fact that IBM happens to post presentations in PDF to reach any meaningful conclusion.

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    OK, Brian, fair enough on your final point. I agree; it is a good thing.

    FWIW, IIRC, the quote from David Faure actually disputed the notion that MS had earlier been pushing that ODF was essentially a Sun-only affair. I think you're being a bit selective there. If you read farther down he said:

    "MS is just forgetting that the OD format was designed from the start to be as much independent as possible from the implementation of the office suite applications, and that's why it was a great basis for a standard."

    BTW, read the ODF TC Charter for the design goals. I think they actually are straightforward, and straightforwardly different than your's.

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Brian,

    I couldn't agree more with your last point above. It is definitely a good thing. However you are talking about this issue as if there were no dismissive and biased statements from Microsoft about ODF, and about other competitors etc as "hobbyist" attempts.

    As an example you keep stating that ODF is based on Sun Staroffice format, selectively quoting David Faure's post and ignoring the statements in the Openoffice.org XML project website as to what the initial goals were. At this stage of the debate you can not claim ignorance as this has been repeatedly mentioned in your blog.

    You work for Microsoft and there is quite a bit of history on how you compete in the market. At some point you will realise that biased statements like these actually discredit you in front of many people.

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Hi Oscar and Bruce,

    Sorry if this hasn't been clear, but the point of this post was to try to clear up where my criticisms lie. I actually truly respect the work going on in OASIS on the ODF Technical Committee. In fact, I want to apologize if any of the statements I've made in the past year have been offensive to those folks. I've tried to always be clear that I have no problems with ODF as a document format. I just don't see it as a document format that would work for our needs.

    My big issue is with the folks making claims like I mentioned above. You have the press release on ISO making claims that I don't think are achievable with the current version of ODF. The ODF Alliance is pushing folks to mandate only ODF, and I definitely have issues with that. I want for those folks to acknowledge what the goals of the OASIS TC were, since (as you mention) they have been fairly well stated for some time. Compatibility with the existing base of Microsoft Office documents was not a goal, and so the ODF Alliance/Fellowship/Foundation probably shouldn't be claiming that it does that.

    Again, I apologize if I've offended any of the technical folks working on the formats or tools. I just need to show why Open XML is a needed format, and why the standardization in Ecma is so valuable.

    -Brian

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Microsoft has refused to document their .doc format, intentionally trying to make it difficult for other applications to read it, just so they can tout thir new XML format as being able to better interoperate with the old formats.   In the past they have used the opacity of .doc to their advantage, creating slight differences between successive versions of the format to make people upgrade.  With this kind of behaviour, don't you think it's understandable that we are rather put off by Microsoft pointing to the obscurity of its .doc format (which is intentional) as a reason why its new XML format is better than ODF?  That's basically what Microsoft is doing when it says that its XML is better at being compatible with the "billions of documents".  I'm sure if Microsoft were to fully document its proprietary formats rather than attempting to trap users' data, folks would have no problem making sure that ODF was 100% compatible with MS proprietary formats, rather than 90 something percent.  And people might start to trust you a bit more rather than holding you responsible for the dodgy, anti-competitive tactics your company has carried out in the past (and continues to do).

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Gary Edwards of the OpenDocument Foundation stopped by the other day to comment on my post...

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Gary Edwards sounds like a raving lunatic slashdot refugee.  Anyone that uses the term "M$Office" clearly has no credibility.  And his conspiracy theories about secret binary keys and his rantings regarding the MS-sponsored ODF translator only proves that he's lost it.

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Alex, I'm sorry, but the statement "MS is just forgetting that the OD format was designed from the start to be as much independent as possible from the implementation of the office suite applications, and that's why it was a great basis for a standard" is a flat out lie.

    As I said in when responding to an earlier entry to this blog:

    Here's what http://xml.openoffice.org/ says regarding ODF and OpenOffice.org:
    -----------------------------
    OpenOffice.org XML file format: "The OpenOffice.org XML file format is the native file format of OpenOffice.org 1.0. It has been replaced by the OASIS OpenDocument file format in OpenOffice.org 2.0."

    OASIS OpenDocument file format: "The OASIS OpenDocument file format is the native file format of OpenOffice.org 2.0. It is developed by a Technical Committee (TC) at OASIS. The OpenDocument format is based on the OpenOffice.org XML file format."
    ------------------------------

    So, ODF is based on OpenOffice.org's previous XML format.  ODF is not "nuetral" any more than OpenXML is.  ODF is simply the opened version of OO.o's previous XML format and OpenXML is the opened version of Microsoft's previous XML format.  ODF is not standing on any higher moral ground, contrary to the rhetoric of the ODF peanut gallery.

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Brian -

    Sorry, I really need to take issue with your first comment in response to mine.  Certainly, as you say "converting a logical data model from a binary format to an XML format without ANY loss of data or structure is perfectly possible.",  but which binary format did you mean?  As far as I have been told, it is the binary format which is to be released in MS Office 2007.  Are you suggesting that there have been no changes in that binary format since Office 2003/98/95?  Of course there have, so the question is not whether binary compatibility with a n XML format is possible, but whether binary compatibility with several quite distinct variations is possible with a single format.

    My company does data format conversions regularly, and I fully agree that ODF will not do a 100% conversion from Microsoft Word docs, much less some of the other Office formats.  On the other hand, I flat out don't believe that Microsoft is any more capable of 100% conversion from all pre-existing .doc formats, although I certainly applaud both Microsoft and the members of the ODF Alliance for making 100% the goal.  It is just too common for Microsoft Word 2003 to not be able to render Microsoft Word 98 to believe that you can fully solve that problem.  You don't even have that big an advantage over ODF, since your XML format seems artificially constrained to the binary format in Office 2007.

    So, I hope you prove me wrong, but I think it is equally prepsoterous for the ODF Alliance or Microsoft to claim 100% format fidelity.  I wish both sides would admit that and move on to more constructive areas, such as better future planning.  After all, we should care equally about the next several billion documents to be created.

    - Ben

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Gary Edwards hath scriven:

    "OBTW, if you're still all twisted up about the fabled binary keys, check with the original EU Valoris Report.  They were the first to make it an issue.  Stuck it right in your face too as i recall, demanding the keys be removed.  Good thing you complied.  It was the right thing to do."

    I went to the Valoris Report that was linked to on Sam Hiser's blog and I couldn't find anything about binary keys in the report.  I asked there for a specific citation to a page, at least.  I'm asking again.   Where in the EU Valoris report is there anything about some key on Microsoft XML documents (the Office 2003 ones, as I don't think the 2007 format were around for that report to analyze).  I am yet to have anyone show me a document that has such a thing.  Surely this is a simple empirically confirmable fact, yes?

    To paraphrase, "show me the key!"  

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Don Giovanni, you just needed to click a bit further down the link you provide. These are the original goals of the Openoffice.org XML format:

    Our mission is to create an open and ubiquitous XML-based file format for office documents and to provide an open reference implementation for this format.

    Core Requirements (these items are absolutely required)

      1. The file format must be capable of being used as an office program's native file format. The format must be "non-lossy" and must support (at least) the full capability of a StarOffice/OpenOffice document. The format is likely to be used for document interchange but that use alone is not enough.
      2. Structured content should make use of XML's structuring capabilities and be represented in terms of XML elements and attributes.
      3. The file format must be fully documented and have no "secret" features.
      4. OpenOffice must be the reference implementation for this file format.

    Core Goals (these items are highly desired)

      1. The file format should be developed in such a way that it will be accepted by the community and can be placed under community control for future development and format evolution.
      2. The file formats should be suitable for all office types: text processing, spreadsheet, presentation, drawing, charting, and math.
      3. The file formats should reuse portions of each other as much as possible (so for example a spreadsheet table definition can work also as a text processing table definition).

    OASIS File Format Standardization

    XML file formats allow users to regain ownership to his/her own data, by allowing access and manipulation of office documents by arbitrary tools which support the file format. To make such capability ubiquitous, we believe it is necessary to standardize file formats. Thus, we have contributed the OpenOffice.org XML File Format to OASIS. The further development of the format now takes place in the OASIS OpenDocument Technical Committee.

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Firstly, I use Latex, MSWord et al., and OOO.
    None of the current or proposed formats are, in my opinion, ideal.
    The problem lies in mixing the document's data and the presentation of that data. The process of publishing should be after writing. This is what Latex part-way achieves. With MSWord and OOO, due to the WYSIWYG, formating as you type is the routine. Indeed, the presentation/publishing is almost done up-front. Ideally, the system used in LATEX of defining the documents elements, eg, date, author's name, abstract, email, and then placing the elements in the published work as required by a template (the positioning depending on the template, eg, the author's name may be near the beginning or at the end
    depending on whether it is a report or a journal publication). However, LATEX can also mix in a complex macro language formating commands and data structures. I think we should be looking more towards an xHTML/CSS structure enabling the post-formating of LATEX. The data-based xml then has the advantage of having meta-tags for entry of the document (if required, chopped up according to the tags) into a database, and also being "published" in several formats depending on the applied style-sheet. If I want to fix the way the thing looks then I need some format (PDF?) which is not readily alterable.  

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Don Giovanni -

    Obviously, I don't have to point out that I didn't make that claim. Believe David Faure or not; you can't pick and choose which bits of his statement you like and then make a call to his authority.

    I think it's pretty clear that ODF is very much implementation-independent. The markup structure is heavily influenced by existing standards and re-uses existing standards. OXML does little of either.

    Obviously, we'll have to wait until OXML is properly specified, but I would be willing to bet that the final draft has changed little from Microsoft's original submission.

  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2006
    Ben,

    the phrase you quoted was mine, not Brian's. So let me try two answer the two points you're making:

    "I think it is equally prepsoterous for the ODF Alliance or Microsoft to claim 100% format fidelity"

    That's not true. You can put anything in XML without any data loss, as long as you design the XML schema with this requirement in mind. If you have a formal, computer-readable specification of the original (binary) format, you could even build a program that does just that.
    There's no way you can even come close to this when you are mapping two existing formats that were not buildt with each other in mind. It's just not true. (Of course MS didn't use an automated process, so, as I said, there's room for mistakes. But the two aproaches are still light years apart.)

    "but which binary format did you mean?"

    Since Open XML is the default format for Office 2007, I don't think that MS has changed a lot in the binary format and adapted the XML format as an afterthought. So the reference for binary compatibility would be Office 2003. Any problem that Office 2003 has with reading binary Word 98 files will probably also be there when converting Word 98 files to Open XML.
    But that's more or less a problem of the past. These quirks in backwards compatibility have already had their effects, and it's just about as useful to complain about those as it is to complain about any other problem in the old binary formats. I mean, there's a reason even MS want's to get rid of them.

  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2006
    Stefan -

    Sorry, I misread the author.  If you read what I wrote, I agree that you can have 100% format fidelity with a single binary format, but Microsoft is not claiming that.  It is exactly the issue of with earlier formats that causes me to claim that they can't have 100% format fidelity.

    Also, you say the following: "Since Open XML is the default format for Office 2007, I don't think that MS has changed a lot in the binary format and adapted the XML format as an afterthought. So the reference for binary compatibility would be Office 2003."

    There are two problems with this logic.  The first is that this assumes that there have been no revisions in the Office technology since the 2003 release.  I think Microsoft would jump to argue that that is not true.  If the Open XML format were really designed to the 2003 binaries, it would be just as difficult to force the changes for 2007 back into that format, as the alternative which is to force the 2003 binaries into the 2007 format.  You can't both argue that the XML is directly taken from the 2003 binary format and that it is completely compatible with any changes since.

    - Ben

  • Anonymous
    July 28, 2006
    I think there's a confusion about the Microsoft Office binary formats (specifically, for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, the first ones to be covered by Office Open XML) and features carried in that format.

    I believe it is accurate (but perhaps not apt) when Microsoft represents that the document format has not changed since it was first introduced (in Office 97 I think, but certainly by Office 2000, I'm too lazy to check).  This same binary format is available in Office 2007 and I am willing to believe that there is full roundtripping between the Office 2007 binary version and the corresponding OOX files.  (That is the stated intention but I am in no position to test for discrepancies that might exist in the beta implementation.)

    There are downlevel differences, whether intentional or unintended, and these have to do with features carried in the format.  The downlevel degradation is supposed to be graceful.  The prospect of encountering uplevel features was built into the early versions, according to the accounts I've seen, but it means that you can't always roundtrip from a later version of Office to an older version and back again and have fidelity to the original.  (But if it works for the 80-20 ODF case, whatever it is, it probably works about as well in Office.)  The same will be true with the OOX converters when they are used with downlevel versions of Office, and Brian has reminded us of that.  (I am using the current beta with Office 2003 pretty much on a regular basis.)

    The same thing will happen when ODF is reved, as it surely will, and downlevel ODF implementations are "surprised."  Depending on how this is handled, any uplevel extensions will possibly be treated as foreign elements and, in accordance with the ODF specification, be ignored but preserved (however one can rationally do that on a practical case by case basis).

    So there is nothing happening here that is not already happening with ODF (except the lack of a floor specification and poor anticipation of up-/down-/cross-level issues will be painful for the early deployment of ODF on any significant scale in interchange settings).

    Irreverant side note:  I notice that the OpenOffice.org 2.0x that I run does a pretty good job of importing and then preserving basic features from the binary version of an Excel 2003 spreadsheet that I use every day.  There are some niggling roundtrip issues having to do with number formats.  On the other hand, if I save the very same spreadsheet in Excel 2003 Spreadsheet.xml, OOo imports it (using OpenOffice-specific extensions for the formulas) but fails pretty miserably to preserve the features and it won't roundtrip successfully because of that.  Excel doesn't have any problem re-importing the Spreadsheet.xml, so my document is not using any features that don't roundtrip from Excel binary to Spreadsheet.xml and back.   So this experience has nothing to do with limitations of the formats.  Obviously, both formats can potentially go back and forth and roundtrip between Excel and OOo, because the .xml version doesn't lack anything that the binary version has, in my particular case, and the binary goes back and forth pretty much undisturbed.  This just shows that the OOo conversion paths are not at the same level of quality with regard to different Excel formats.  It's a reality and current-state situation, not the potential case.

    So when kvetching about the way-early not-even beta, function-incomplete status of the open-source OOX-OOF translator (if that's what we should call it), one should be mindful that even non-beta release software has a tough time with full-fidelity-preserving conversions even when it is clearly possible in the case of specific documents (like whatever the non-specific 80-20 case is that people keep handwaving as good-enough for ODF).

    It's all about reality. In the end, reality wins. (Based on loose analogy with the principle that nature will not be fooled.)  Of course, there is P. T. Barnum to be concerned about in the short term.

  • Anonymous
    July 29, 2006
    Brian, this spin game is disgusting - I mean yours.  Sure there are .doc files that cannot be converted to ODF.  There will always be,  because YOU will ensure this.  The point is that there are billions of documents that will convert fine, and the percentage will grow over time.  (Hey, maybe the next version of ODF will even support Word macro viruses!)

    I've been having conversations with some friends who say "Microsoft is changing, Bill is gone, maybe the industry will come to trust them again."  Then I come across a blog like yours, and I think no, until people like you are around, the industry will never trust MS.

    Looks like "sudo apt-get install openoffice.org" finished, time to get back to work.

  • Anonymous
    July 30, 2006
    Ben,

    you're right, I didn't read carefully enough.


    "The first is that this assumes that there have been no revisions in the Office technology since the 2003 release."

    I'm not assuming this. What I am assuming is that, starting with Office 2007, the primary development takes place in the XML arena, so additions would have to be retrofitted into the new binary format. What this means is that the Office 2007 XML format is 100% compatible to everything that office 2003 can read. that seems good enough for me. So, if some word 98 stuff can't be read, you already have a problem today (unless you are still using word 98, in which case you are probably not a word power user anyway ;-))

    Fixing backwards compatibility issues with pre-2003 versions that surfaced in Office 2003 or even before would be a nice additional goal for Open XML conversion. But as I understand it, that's not part of the story. Technically, it's more a problem of the current binary reader engine than of the file format anyway.

    In Office 2007, binary formats are for backwards compatibility only, so I don't get how compatibility to a new, extended binary format (which nobody should be using anyway) would matter. Everybody has been complaining about these binary formats forever (and for good reasons too). And now you are complaining that the new (default) format might not be compatible with a new, revised binary format containing features that cannot be read by old Office versions anyway?

    Stefan

  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2006
    Stefan -

    No, I could care less about the new, revised binary format.  Yes, I am glad that Microsoft is moving to a more universally defined standard.  But how do you draw the conclusion that since "primary development takes place in the XML arena", that means that "Office 2007 XML format is 100% compatible to everything that office 2003 can read".  

    Is there any evidence or indication that Microsoft would really make the brand new, feature filled version of their software dependent on a four year old standard?  They may have a goal of 100% fidelity in conversions, but it seems at least plausible that they would base their 2007 XML format on their 2007 binary format (or vice-versa if you like), not on their 2003 binary format.  I don't see how you can so confidentally make this assumption.

    - Ben

  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2006
    Dennis H. et al

    The mythical secret key has been a mystery for some time now.

    http://nfocentrale.net/orcmid/BlunderDome/clueless/2005/10/my-fud-is-fuddier-than-your-fud-so-fud.asp

    Gareth

  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2006
    Come on, I´m sure that there is someone in the ODF camp more mature than Gary Edwards that can explain the hyperbolic claims made in the ISO press release. The silence so far from Sun and IBM has been deafening, not to mention ISO and OASIS themselves.



  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2006
    I am curious whether any estimates have been made about how many billions of Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents there are out there.  This is significant because if there are, say, thirty billion, it might not be hyperbole at all to say that "Billions of existing office documents will be able to be converted to the XML standard format with no loss of data, formatting, properties, or capabilities.", because it is quite likely that even given a generous 80-20 rule, 80% of those contain nothing remotely difficult to convert to almost any other format.  It is fairly likely at least 20% of Word documents would translate just fine even to plain text, and 20% of, say, 20 billion, would still be "billions".  If on the other hand, there are only two billion such documents, this would definitely be hyperbole.

    This is not to defend the extreme claims that do come out of the ODF camp at times, but it does point out that the quoted claim may not be unreasonable.  Of course, I may be missing a nuance here.

  • Anonymous
    July 31, 2006
    Brian,

    You may have a great time pocking fun at ODF. I don't care about ODF.
    However, I would rather have you spend more time improving your own mess rather than criticizing somebody else's.

    Microsoft's XML format is a giant mess with no consistency.

    The date problem I mentioned is just one out of many problems.

  • Anonymous
    August 01, 2006
    Ben,

    What I tried to say is: I assume the 100 % goal is as compared to the current (i.e. 2003) binary format. I'm not saying this has been achieved, sorry if I was unclear. But I am claiming that it is a perfectly achievable goal if you can tweak the target schema, which the ODF converter guys cannot. That's where I think major differences arise, and that's why I think the statement is somewhat reasonable from MS and completely unrealistic from ODF.

    How can I be sure that compatibility is measured with the 2003 binary format in mind? I cannot. But older formats are unlikely, and the 2007 binary format is almost completely irrelevant, so it kind of has to be 2003, right? Maybe Brian can say something about that.

    I like your defense of the "billions of documents" statement, btw. So instead of outright lying, this would make it intentionally misleading. Imagine Microsoft making up stuff like that ... and the response ;-)

    Stefan

  • Anonymous
    August 01, 2006
    Good point, Stefan.

    The problem is that is exacly what we are getting in this blog. Intentionally misleading.

  • Anonymous
    August 01, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 02, 2006
    Oscar,

    Your twist the meaning of my statement and don't even think it worth the trouble to explain your point. Brian gets paid for dealing with arbitrary statements like yours, so I guess that's OK. I don't, so please leave me out of your propaganda games.

  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2006
    Stephan

    Apologies if i have offended you. I thought I was keeping with the general tone of this entry in the blog. Anyway, what my point was is based on my experience of both programs I think the impression Brian is trying to convey, ie. OpenDocument and Open Office are not 100% compatible with the existing installed base of office documents has at least as much spin as the claim of some guys in the other side of the fence.

    In my experience and for most documents I've used the formatting is kept to the degree I need. If I want perfect fidelity I wouldn't trust Office either, I would use PDF.
    Where I think he may have a point is when you are working/collaborating with MS Office users on the same document. There again I have experienced some issues when upgrading to a new Office version is not done across the organisation.

    So I don't see this as an engineering problem but as a market reality and perception problem. I can not argue whether fidelity is 97% or 101%, I can tell you that based on a fairly thorough use of both programs the level of interoperability you can achieve is more than satisfactory.

    As stated by other people in this blog, the reason is not even better is that existing binary documentation was not available under a license that most developers could work with, so they had to resor to reverse engineering. In that sense the new MS Office XML programs should be an improvement.

  • Anonymous
    August 03, 2006
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 04, 2006
    Stefan,

    I was trying to understand the point you are making by excluding the "political", "propaganda", "higher moral ground", but I just got bored.

  • Anonymous
    August 04, 2006
    That's good, Oscar. Go play somewhere else.

  • Anonymous
    August 07, 2006
    I've been getting so much spam that it's been really hard to keep up with some of the comments. It looks like I deleted a comment from Gary Edwards accidentally that pointed to that funny clip of Balmer jumping around. Here is the post Gary left:

    Gary Edwards has made a new post: re: Spin Spin Sugar.

    A raving lunatic?  Perhaps.  But not one without inspiration:

    http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-3446931931514285011&q=microsoft

  • Anonymous
    August 29, 2006
    Gary Edwards of the OpenDocument Foundation stopped by the other day to comment on my post " Spinning

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