Microsoft Votes to Add ODF to ANSI Standards List

RzUpAnmsCwrds writes "In a puzzling move, Microsoft today voted to support the addition of the OpenDocument file formats to the American National Standards List. OpenDocument is used by many free-software office suites, including OpenOffice.org. Microsoft is still pushing its own Office Open XML format, which it hopes will also become an ANSI standard. Is Microsoft serious about supporting ODF, or is this a merely a PR stunt to make Office Open XML look more like a legitimate standard?"

Re:My Name Is Bill

[Falladir]

rtf is not an open format. From a popular commentary [goldmark.org]:

In earlier versions of this document, I listed RTF (Rich Text Format) as a more standards based way of exchanging word-processor documents. I have been corrected on that point innumerable times. RTF is little better than MS-Word format itself. It is a little better, but it shares all of the problems as MS-Word. Although RTF was advertised as a document exchange format, it never lived up to that. It appears to have varying features, and the various version of RTF that Microsoft products create have elements which only Microsoft Products can read. Note that this is not because MS-Word is a better product, but because Microsoft keeps elements of what it considers to be RTF secret.

Consumers may not care what format their stuff is in, but when they get a replay saying "sorry, I can't seem to open that .doc, could you save it as .odt?" they'll care whether their word-processor can do it.

Re:My Name Is Bill

[spun]

Come on, if .rtf and .txt could store the files that Word could create, people would never have used .doc. What a poorly thought out response, equating .rtf and .txt with formats that can actually, you know, store all the formatting you applied to your documents.

Not necessarily.

[khasim]

However, it's going to be harder and harder, as OpenOffice will implement a way to read and write MS's XML format, since it HAS to be documented if MS intends to satisfy government customers.

As can be seen with their current "standard", they can just cite "behave the same way as MS Word version X.y.z on OS a" and claim that it is "documented".

Since Microsoft is the only ones who REALLY know how that behaviour was implemented, they'll be the only one who can write a compleat implementation.

Just as the situation is today. Look at the "reviews" of OpenOffice.org by various "journalists". You'll see them complaining that the formating on a document was "messed up" when they went
from MS Word
to OpenOffice.org
back to MS Word.

Now, if there are a dozen word processors out there and they all implement the ODF standard and none of them (except MS Word) trashes the formatting when bouncing a document between the other 11 ...

THAT is what businesses and governments want. The ability to see the same document the same way no matter WHO edited it on WHAT operating system using WHICH word processor.

If Microsoft fails at that it will be because Microsoft failed on their own.

Re:My Name Is Bill

[edwdig]

RTF is simply a version of .doc that's largely ASCII text. It's main purpose was to be a format that was easier for tools to parse. Windows Help files used to be based off it. You can still drop whatever random objects into it.

Re:Why would it be puzzling?

[shaitand]

'I think you're misusing the term.'

I disagree. Your distinction while technically accurate ignores the fact standards bodies do not exist to publish standards just for the hell of it. A standard is published with the full intention of being universally accepted as THE standard way of accomplishing the given task. Standards aren't open merely opening details, they are about actual inter operation and predictable behavior. SMTP wouldn't be a useful worthwhile standard if I couldn't anticipate EVERY mail server adhering to it.

'"THE Standard" means "the most common way of doing it", and can refer to things that may or not actually be open standards.'

A closed standard is still a standard. Microsoft is a strong proponent of taking an open standard, extending it, and making their closed standard 'the most common way of doing it'. Once upon a time all standards were closed. Open standards were created so that open specifications could become the 'the most common way of doing it'. The entire idea is that the industry collaborates to develop an open specification and everyone agrees to use that specification.

'There are many cases where there is more than one standard to do the same thing'

Not beneficial cases.

'For example, bolt sizes. There are metric and English standards for precisely the same thing.'

That an excellent example that illustrates my point nicely. Metric is a unifying standard that has been adopted by almost the entire world. The United States has not converted to metric and this creates large amounts of confusion, errors in calculation, and general mayhem. It has even cost billion dollars spacecraft. Two standards for the same thing runs contrary to the purpose of devising a standard and is always a bad thing.

'Even document formats have multiple standards already. Both ODF and PDF are ISO standards, for example.'

It is actually you who are misusing the word standard. A standard is a specification that is adopted throughout the industry. A standards body develops those specifications and they call them standards on the arrogant assumption that everyone will use them. In principle these organizations have members that constitute a lion share of the industry and those members have an unspoken agreement to adopt the specifications they are helping to develop. Unless the industry actually DOES adopt the specification, it is simply a specification not a standard.

There are plenty of existing document specifications ODF and PDF are bad examples since they serve different purposes. Adopting a single open specification as the standard is the best thing for the industry in every case. Industry has recognized this long ago, that is why we have standards organizations.

Microsoft hasn't stood in the way of ODF at all???

[mpapet]

Really???

Then what the hell happened in Massachusetts wanted to switch to ODF?? Here's a long-winded citation: http://searchenterpriselinux.techtarget.com/origin alContent/0,289142,sid39_gci1144104,00.html [techtarget.com]

No, they'll do what they already do with everything that's not a .doc (or whatever extension is next) make it _really_ hard to use anything but .whatever.

Re:Red herring

[prockcore]

IE, Firefox, and Opera all support DesignMode extensively. Safari is the odd man out, failing to support 90% of the execCommands, and failing to even return the proper return value.

IE, Firefox, and Opera all support XSLTProcessor. Safari is the odd man out, failing to support it at all.

It's disingenuous to say that FF, Opera and Safari are all pretty much equivilent and IE is the one with all the weird exceptions. In fact, it's more accurate to say Safari is the weird browser. Safari's javascript is at least 4 years behind all the others. Didn't even support Ajax until Safari2.

Non-Standard is Standard

[Anonymous Coward]

HTML was designed specifically to support custom extensions and tags. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a browser supporting a new tag that is not a part of the official HTML standard. There are tons of tag extensions. Mozilla supports the canvas tag which is not a part of the standard. Mozilla supports extensions to CSS which are even prefixed "mozilla". All the standard states is that if the browser doesn't recognize the tag it must ignore the tag and not fail to render the basic elements of the page.

Re:Why would it be puzzling?

[1110110001]

Windows had threading for years before POSIX did. Keep your fork().

1003.1c-1994 (real-time extensions and threads). Thus it had to be in Windows 3.0 or 3.1 because for years is at least two years and NT came out in 1993, which is too late.

And fork() is not that bad if done right.

Funny how MS gets an instant bad wrap

[mgiuca]

Isn't it funny how, when Microsoft does something puzzlingly in support of what we've all been asking for all this time, rather than being congratulated, the Slashdot crowd immediately starts trying to guess what their devious secret strategy is here to achieve world domination?

Possible reason for this: They have been around for thirty years, and in all that time, they have ALWAYS had a devious secret strategy to achieve world domination!

On with the speculation!

Obviously they're just doing this to make themselves look better when it comes time to vote for OOXML!