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The Future Is Open: The OpenDocument Format

Posted by michael on Sun Jan 30, 2005 03:00 PM
from the backward-compatible dept.
Software Government Politics
Daniel Carrera writes "I've written an article for Groklaw describing the OpenDocument format: 'I asked Daniel Carrera, an OpenOffice.org volunteer, if he'd please explain the OpenDocument format. How does a format get chosen? And is OpenDocument on the list of acceptable formats for governments like the State of Massachusetts? We are all concerned about proprietary formats and standards, and more and more governments are adopting policies requiring open standards, it's a very important subject.' It's currently being considered by the EU Commission as a candidate for an official format."
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  • It has always baffled me... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by krudler (836743) on Sunday January 30 2005, @03:03PM (#11522042)
    Why people never even consider that something else exists other than MS Office. It's not just a philosophical argument, everyone I know has ran into problems with a .doc from a different version that doesn't open. It is hard for some people to do work at home, then bring it to work/school and use it! If it's a .doc, it should work in every version of work. The same goes for all the other formats.

    Krudler
    • Well, I think that depends. You can't expect every version of MS Word to support newer features (although the ability to read the rest of the document should be unaffected). However, never versions of the software should always be capable of opening older documents.
    • Because in these days most of the people that use computers are not computer experts (not that this is a bad thing though)

      If they have a problem with microsoft word, they don't usually blame the program. For them there is no distinction between the software that runs on their computers and the computer itself. They blame the computer, because they don't know better.
    • supposed; ought to: thought.
      These are the voyages of the conditional-ship Hypothetical, its five year mission to discover how that vast delta between the reference state and reality crept into the system...

    • Not true. Move on. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Saeed al-Sahaf (665390) on Sunday January 30 2005, @03:31PM (#11522298) Homepage
      Why people never even consider that something else exists other than MS Office

      First, Word Perfect is still King in law offices and certain other niche areas. But two words: "Market Saturation". If you need to communicate with the majority of people and business out there, if you're not sending .doc you might as well just send a random string of characters, so it's a matter of if you want to do business or not.

      everyone I know has ran into problems with a .doc from a different version that doesn't open

      Also, most people don't have problems opening Word docs that are not the latest version, this is simply an anecdote perpetuated by people that don't like Microsoft. Right now, I have Office 97 (which I actually have owned since about that time) at home, and have never had any problems opening brand spanking new Word docs.

      I support open document formats because it promotes competition in the areas of application user experience that count like usability. I would very much like to see OpenOffice mature to a point where most people including large companies would feel safe transitioning. But repeating these discounted "stories" of version incompatibility help no one.

      • Re:Not true. Move on. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by gardyloo (512791) on Sunday January 30 2005, @03:45PM (#11522395)
        most people don't have problems opening Word docs that are not the latest version, this is simply an anecdote perpetuated by people that don't like Microsoft.

        Great. But the point is that no one, if the program were committed to being more compatible with past versions, should have problems. I have problems opening Word docs in several versions, whether they were created on older versions or on the newest ones. And many people I know do, too.
        I don't care if 70% of people who use Office haven't had compatibility problems. I DO care that at least half of the people I work with do or have had problems with it. When you say "discounted 'stories'", I take some offense, because those stories should NOT be discounted, and they aren't apocryphal -- many are true!
        There are rarely problems with postcript files or .pdfs, and they look much better. There are NEVER any problems with .rtfs, or with plain .txt documents, and even though these don't have the bells and whistles of many Word formats, they're always readable, and always editable.
        There's a higher standard than Word, and there has been for a long, long time.

        I don't hate Microsoft, but their compatibility issues are ridiculous.

      • Re:Not true. Move on. (Score:4, Informative)

        by civilizedINTENSITY (45686) on Sunday January 30 2005, @06:22PM (#11523631)
        The biggest problem our campus printing shop has is incompatibilies of versions of MS Word due to different computer labs running different versions (97 thru 2000 Pro). Mostly this seems to relate to embedded graphics and the formating of text around said emedded object. This isn't anecdote perpetuated by people who don't like Microsoft, this is historical fact related to using the campus printing shop, acknowledged by them as well as students.

        Some classes required bound reports (Software Engineering did...), and your only hope is PDF. Crappy formatting isn't an option in a "professional" report.

    • Re:It has always baffled me... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by fm6 (162816) on Sunday January 30 2005, @03:34PM (#11522316) Homepage Journal
      It's not just a philosophical argument...
      Indeed, the philosophical argument is of no interest to anybody except a few geeks. But there are a lot of practical reasons to want alternatives to MS Office. Not just the reasons you mention, but issues of cost, and of problems caused by overdependence on a single notoriously flaky company.

      But if you're baffled by people's adherence to MS Office, then you've never used this kind of software in a real-world environment. Being able to pass a file around without interopeability problems is crucial. Given the messy kind of data most people have to deal with, the only way to do this is to standardize on a specific set of tools from a specific vendor. In the past, you had real competition between Microsoft, IBM/Lotus, WordPerfect, and others. It was inevitable that one company would win the desktop application wars, though I wish it wasn't the same company that also won the desktop OS wars.

      If you're going to end this monopoly, you're going to have to overcome the same social and economic forces that drove Lotus and WordPerfect into niche status. There's more to doing that than simply coming up with a technicallly supperior or more open product.

      • ..., But if you're baffled by people's adherence to MS Office, then you've never used this kind of software in a real-world environment. Being able to pass a file around without interopeability problems is crucial.

        I am STILL baffled... I have attended meetings where I worked where people literally were not able to print or view agendas, etc. ahead of the meeting because of the incompatibilities among the microsoft applications! Were it not so counter-productive to the work at hand, it would have been funny. (And this was/is an almost every-meeting event.)

    • Ive recently started using Apple's iWork suite, in particular Pages, and I love it much more then MS Office!
    • One word: Outlook.

      Until FOSS can replace Outlook, Office is a necessity. In fact, most people I work with use Outlook all day everyday and would be perfectly happy on Writer and Calc. But until we can't ditch Outlook, because that's what everyone knows.
      • Software?

        To most people Microsoft is synonymous with computers period.

        • Re:It has always baffled me... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by 808140 (808140) on Sunday January 30 2005, @09:27PM (#11525012)
          You know, I'm not sure that's the case as much anymore... or really that it ever has been, actually.

          The reason is simple: Apple. Now, Apple has taken a second (third?) seat to MS-based PCs for a long time and I think they probably will continue to do so for the forseeable future (ie, I am not an Apple zealot). But Apple remains a name-brand that exists in the public, non-geek consciousness. While their current success is due almost entirely to their iPod, in most people's minds, they remain a computer company.

          I believe that part of the reason that alternative browsers like Firefox are beginning to gain ground is because of MS's discontinued support of IE on the Mac. Despite the fact that not many people use Macs, many of the people that do are not geeks, and those "not-geeks" were forced to consider the browser question in a more realistic way when MS discontinued Mac support. Up until then, they likely considered (as most people do) that IE was the internet.

          Now they know better, and as you've probably noticed on Slashdot, Mac-types are a loud bunch -- even the non-geeky ones. They use Firefox or Safari and they make a big fuss about it. They're convinced of a conspiratorial anti-Macintosh agenda on the part of, well, pretty much everyone and they complain loudly when things don't work well on their macs. Nowadays, this includes websites.

          My point in all of this is that MS has been the big bully in the industry for a long time. Apple, Sun, IBM -- all would be exactly like MS if their roles were reversed (IBM in fact was, at one time) -- but as it stands, all would like nothing more than to see MS toppled.

          Individually, each of these companies represents a feeble marketshare. Together, it still isn't much, but it's enough, I think. They have the users required and the lobbying power, too, to really make a difference. IBM and Sun have always had the problem of being companies only IT people really know much about, due to their lack of penetration on the desktop. Apple, on the other hand, is widely seen as a desktop system normal people actually use, and so Apple being on board hopefully will make more non-industry folks aware of what's going on. Unfortunately, these three companies haven't been keen on cooperating on things like formats precisely because of the lack of open standards -- none of them wants to allow a competitor to dictate the structure of any format.

          Each of them produces its own office suite; each of these is MS Office's bitch. By making sure that their office suites all interoperate 100% with an open format, and by lobbying governments (especially non-American governments) with arguments about (American) vendor lock-in, I believe they can make in-roads into ODF adoption.

          If governments use it, large companies and contractors will be forced to use it as well, even if infrequently. They will quickly find MS Office's inability to save into these formats annoying (which will not force them to switch to another office suite, but which will cause them to lobby MS to support the format).

          Big companies = big clients = big money. Add this to the fact that any law requiring a government to adopt an open format that MS Office doesn't support will make the use of MS Office illegal in a de facto sort of way, because of its non-compliance.

          If (and that's a big if) all of this happens, if the laws pass, and IBM/Apple/Sun manage to cooperate for a change, I expect that MS Office will include support for a usable subset of ODF. What they will not do -- what they will never do -- is make it the default format. Further, they will likely ensure that some features of their doc format cannot be saved in ODF, allowing them to pop-up the little box that warns the user that "some formatting information may be lost, proceed?"

          This will make little difference to governments legally required to avoid doc, but this will be enough to prevent widespread adoption in the private sphere.
      • Who's being bafflingly ignorant?

        The original post did not bring up forwards compatibility. If you managed to read in an expectance of forwards-compatibility into that, then it's no wonder how it 'manages to come up' all the time.

        Here's a tip: Stop assuming everyone is an idiot, and you'll find less people are idiots.
      • Actually, I used to write document conversion programs many years ago (back when dedicated word processors were still common). There were a couple of document formats which did support forward compatibility. It's been 25 years, but I believe IBM was one. The other escapes me (maybe Aquarius?). (I guess you can count SGML as supporting forward compatibility too.)

        Basically, an older program could read any version of the document format. When it encountered elements it did not recognize, it retained them, but

  • Talking to yourself again? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Daniel Carrera writes ... 'I asked Daniel Carrera, ...'

    Hmm... /me scratches head

  • From a user's perspective (Score:4, Informative)

    by bigberk (547360) <bigberk@users.pc9.org> on Sunday January 30 2005, @03:12PM (#11522148)
    For a similar discussion, but from the perspective of an OpenOffice.org user, check out this article [pc-tools.net] (even though it's really talking about OO.org, there is a section where it goes into the advantages of open formats for data interchange and longevity/archival). The XML format discussed there is I believe the same as OpenDocument

  • .txt (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Sophrosyne (630428)
    Send all your files as .txt
    If Fancy formatting is really necessary send as a pdf.
    I could care-less about OpenOffice, they have done a nice job at emulating all the really bad elements of Microsoft Office without the perks like the speed of office, the interoperability, and some of the features.
    • Ah yes...I'm sure that will work. Tell me, where do I get a free WYSIWG editor so that I can collaborate with other people who can't write latex?

      What? There isn't one? Well, that's not going to work, is it?

      perks like the speed of office, the interoperability, and some of the features
      OpenOffice might not have the speed, but it has more compatibility than Office does. Try this: get several versions of Word. Get them to output documents containing text boxes with floating alignments and put them on a
      • Ah yes...I'm sure that will work. Tell me, where do I get a free WYSIWG editor so that I can collaborate with other people who can't write latex?

        He said .txt not .tex, as in plain ASCII, not TeX/LaTeX files.

      • Re:.txt (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Probably you are confused between .txt and .tex. You can use just notepad or wordpad for the first. Only the second one refers usually to LaTeX. But even for that second one you can try, for example, the nice (and free) LyX [lyx.org] (there is a standalone version for windows [zonnet.nl]) and there are much other for windows (of course for the free operating systems there are much many).
      • I just think that the UI is very similar to every other word processor out there- there is little innovation in OpenOffice, and not much incentive for people to use it other than being stuck on a linux system. I realize that openoffice inherited a lot from staroffice, which is both a positive and a limitation.
        I've stopped using word and office, but I think the hook for people is exchange operability- not always word operability.
        For many documents .txt would probably suffice- I know people like nice head
      • This makes no sense... most source code files (which is what I assume you are referring to) are saved in plain text format, nothing more.
  • This is to the EU (European Union) and MA (Massachusettes), plus all those who want to bend the likes of MS.

    They should draw their terms, make them known to all stake holders and put a close that says something to the effect that the likes of MS, by submitting whatever they submitting, agree to the terms. These terms could be GPL/LGPL or whetever they license they choose. This would save them (EU & MA), the burden of having to interprete whatever MS and others mean in their licences.

    In effect, they

  • Wishful thinking (Score:3, Interesting)

    by JAFSlashdotter (791771) on Sunday January 30 2005, @03:31PM (#11522302)
    While I honestly hope the OpenDocument format catches on and wins out in the end, I really think it's not going to make a major impact until Microsoft Office & Works save in OpenDocument format by default.

    I find that in my experience, most MS Word users have no clue what different file formats are, why they'd care to change, or even that they CAN choose a different type in the "Save As..." dialog. The only time it ever becomes an issue is if the version of Word / Excel / Powerpoint that they're using at work is significantly newer than the one they have at home . If they don't let that completely stop them (maybe "Clippy" shows them how), they learn to choose "Microsoft Excel 97" from the list if they want to take work home. That's the only time they are likely to differ from the default. And when they do that, they get warned what a bad idea it is, because features or formatting may not be available.

    No, I doubt the future is open, unless Microsoft makes open the default.

    • I find that in my experience, most MS Word users have no clue what different file formats are, why they'd care to change,

      People who install software for them might have a clue. That's where it matters.

  • It seems the Irish Government has copped on (Score:5, Informative)

    by Milton Waddams (739213) on Sunday January 30 2005, @03:53PM (#11522460)
    They release their documents [budget.gov.ie] in OpenOffice, PDF and .doc format.
  • A very interesting place to discuss and advocate open formats is OpenFormats.org [openformats.org]. It is a wiki, so you can contribute, too.
  • Semantics or no, Massachusetts is a one of four commonwealths. It should not be referred to as the "State of Massachusetts".

  • The OpenDocument Format (Score:5, Interesting)

    by demon_2k (586844) on Sunday January 30 2005, @09:23PM (#11524986) Journal
    Obvious point : This could help solve most of the compatibility problems between different Office suits. Your work document may one day open in your frineds OpenOffice word processor and look 100% thesome as in you MS Office.

    The problem : Digital Rights Management. Ms might have or might open their XML document format. Other suits might open their format.

    However, can a application be an owner of a license? You could have a DRM'ed document created using Ms Word that is in an "open format" but, only Ms Work is licensed to open it or you are only allowed to open it in Ms Word. Anything else is considered a hack and you could me prosecuted under DMCA.
    • on windows, stay away from any adobe readers above version 4. i have no problems with version 4 on my pentium 2.

      on linux, acrobat's *ok*, but gpdf and xpdf are pretty decent and very fast. the new version of kpdf in kde 3.4 is going to be great as well.
      • After all complaints about the slowness of Adobe Reader 6 they have sped up version 7 A LOT. It starts almost instantaneously and even performance within the program is much better.
        • Yeah, and did you notice it is because they preload it in memory and leave it there, kind of like Office. Check your process list sometime...

    • I will definitely miss that loading time (of approx. 2 minutes) of Acrobat Reater and that invaluable information on those 4573 (or something) patents that they have for one document reader software!

      I too was very disappointed with Adobe because of the Acrobat Reader in Version 6.x.
      But they managed to fix the performance problem in version 7. I haven't benchmarked Acrobat Reader 7, but it feels like it loads and scrolls as fast as version 5 with all the benefits from version 6/7.
      Now they only need to imp

    • Try unzipping it first.

    • Re:OpenOffice (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Xtifr (1323) on Sunday January 30 2005, @03:43PM (#11522385) Homepage
      No, I've never looked at an OOo document in notepad; that would require installing a system that runs notepad, finding a copy of notepad, and installing it. That's an awful lot of work to go through to get a crappy plain-text editor that's nowhere near as good as the ones I already have installed. :)

      I have looked at OOo documents in Emacs - many times - and it all looks pretty straightforward to me. With a bit of practice, I bet I could write OOo documents in Emacs. I'd hardly call that a nightmare.

      I'd think that you were just unaware that OOo files are zipped, except that your second sentence implies that you did find text in the document, which seems like it would have been hard if you hadn't unzipped it. So I have to assume that you're just ignorant of XML. No, it's not a "freaking nightmare", it's a simple, pretty straightforward format.

      And, just to complete the trifecta of you being wrong, I'd like to point out that .doc files DO have text you can decipher. I routinely use the UNIX strings command to extract the readable text from .doc files. Before OOo/Abi/etc. had usable MSFT filters, that was the only way I could read .doc files. And it actually works fairly well, if you're only interested in the content, and unconcerned about the format. Which is why I still often use strings to read .doc files. (The strings command loads a lot faster than OOo or even Abiword.)
      • You might want to check out Antiword. [demon.nl]

        I've been using that lately on .doc files and it works great - though I have to admit I haven't tried it on anything very complex yet.

      • Re:OpenOffice (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Geoffreyerffoeg (729040) on Sunday January 30 2005, @08:45PM (#11524740)
        No, I've never looked at an OOo document in notepad; that would require installing a system that runs notepad, finding a copy of notepad, and installing it. That's an awful lot of work to go through to get a crappy plain-text editor that's nowhere near as good as the ones I already have installed. :)

        Notepad has become a generic term much like Kleenex, Xerox, Coke, etc. I really don't feel like explaining what "vim" is, what "vi" is, and how the two differ, every time I want to say I opened something in a text editor. If you ask someone for a Kleenex, do they say, "No, but I have a Puffs Plus (or whatever); would you like that instead, or shall I go buy a box of Kleenex?"
        • Gee, I thought the smiley would be a pretty clear indication that I was teasing, and it was intended as a joke. Ok, it was a fairly dumb joke I admit, but seriously, dude, don't be so bloody offended at a stupid joke just because it's stupid. Laugh or not, and move on. Life's too short.
    • Sure... but I know how to unzip a zipped file first before loading the XML part into notepad... Given that I run a system with that nightmare of text editor.

      • Re:OpenOffice (Score:2, Informative)

        by doj8 (542402)
        It does depend on the version of Word which created the .DOC file, the method of saving (fast save vs. normal) and how heavily edited the document.

        I just searched several hundred .DOC files for human-readable strings. Twelve documents had any significant human-readable text in them, barring phrases such as "Word.Document.8", "Dan Jenkins", etc. - document metadata, in other words.

        Some others had phrases or occaisional paragraphs which were human-readable, the rest was not.

        Years ago I wrote document conve

    • Years down the road, when everyone is still using Microsoft formats, I'll be sure to remember the prophetic vision of this article.

      Agreed. What MS Office will always have (and Lotus/Apple/et al. before that had) is ad money. They can sell to the schools and offices that move formats in the first place.

      Over the years, people at home bought/received WordPerfect/MS Word/etc 'cause they needed them to use the formats they used at school and work. What OpenOffice.org needs, I think, is an even larger word

    • You can represent any color using RGB if you allow numbers outside the range of 0 to 1. This is probably a better solution than trying to change the colorspace and relying on all programs managing to implement identical conversions.

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