Does ODF Have a Future? 402
qedramania writes "Linuxworld seems to think ODF is a dead duck. Is the Windows monopoly too big and too entrenched? Other than diehard Linux fans, does anyone really care if they have to keep paying Microsoft to do basic word processing? It seems as though the momentum is towards a complete Microsoft monoculture in software for business and government. You can bet that big business and governments will want more than just reliability from Microsoft in return for their acquiescence. Does ODF have a future?"
You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:5, Interesting)
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Can't lose what you don't have.
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:4, Informative)
TimJowers
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:5, Informative)
This becomes a MAJOR problem in an environment where templates have not been created and/or maintained properly and efficiently. Often employees will take an existing document, ctrl-A, DEL, File-> Save As..., then start typing to create a "new" document simply to get the "corporate headers". If that initial document contained sensitive information, would you want this "new" .doc being emailed about?
This has been a problem [slashdot.org] in the past. [slashdot.org]
The fact that a /. reader doesn't see the problem with employees sending .doc files via email is all the more reason to worry....or to simply submit...
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In an enterprise environment, this is a non-problem. The standard image will have fast save disabled, markup viewing turned on, and the print/save/send warning turned on, and these settings will be reestablished every time a user logs on. This eliminates accidental disclosures but not negligent disclosures; there is no defense against the idiot who modifies these settings or ignores the warning.
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Why on earth would you need to destroy data?
One of my clients did this recently. We mirrored all of our MS format data to an archive volume, then used OOo's built-in batch converter to convert everything to ODF. We set it going on a Friday afternoon, and it turned out to be pretty seamless - not much hand-holding at all. When staff came in on Monday, they had a new office tool, and a
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At least with ODF or PDF the format is known, so you can parse it in a sandboxed environment on your mail filter, and remove anything that shouldnt be there. Sure there are still risks, but they are greatly reduced, any exploit against an ODF application would need to work without breaking the XML schema. Also with a stan
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not use a document exchange format that is natively supported on many platforms and which has a free viewer for Windows?
Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:5, Insightful)
See, no matter how much those of us who like and use Open Source bitch about this, if 90% or more of all of the computers in the world are running Windows, then to almost that proportion of users, there only is Windows and Office.
In their mind, it's unfathomable that you don't run it. IT installed their software, and that was Office. That's what it's always been. Everyone send them files, and those are office. They're not interested in, aware of, or looking for a document exchange format which is natively supported on many platforms.
I mean, really, you may as well ask Joe User to send you e-mails written in Esperanto because the e-mail would be readable by that theoretical 'anyone' who speaks Esperanto (which is practically nobody in the grand scheme of things). They're going to look at you and say "Esper-what-o?" -- because they have no idea it exists, what it's for, or what the hell you're talking about. To them, you're speaking in Martian and make no sense whatsoever.
We can advocate, and try to gently nudge people into the direction we would like to see. But, in the end, users simply overwhelmingly don't have a clue about the issue, and they don't care. This is true about almost all forms of open file formats -- I mean, go up to some random Windows user and start railing on about how ogg vorbis is the teh b0mb and WMA is teh sux0rs. They're not going to care any more than they will about ODF vs Office files.
I hate it as much as you, but the sheer size and inertia of the installed base of Office users is going to make it awfully difficult to supplant it as a file format of interchange. Don't expect it happen overnight -- Linux has been almost ready to start displacing Windows for about 15-16 years now.
Cheers
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I far prefer to read a document in KPDF than in a word processor: it looks neater and it is easier to navigate around.
If YOUR PDF viewer sucks, then use a different one.
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I sold the latte stand [therappaha...coffee.com] about 5 years ago.
No dogs, 100 person shop, yes CIO, no CEO, not in Enumclaw WA [google.com], still have too many Outlook junkies (3 remaining), OpenOffice/NeoOffice still a shade buggy for prime time and... why yes, I am important nerd on /.
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Our whole culture in America is based on free enterprise and a competitive market. Owning so much market share that that's virtually no competition is unhealthy for our economy and for the world.
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Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:5, Insightful)
It's hard to sell a file format. What people buy into is the product that uses the file format. The best way to spread ODF is to continue to improve the products that use it, so people will choose them over the alternative.
Another excellent point about OO.o (Score:3, Interesting)
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Anyway, his attitude is one of untrustworthiness. What can I say. If he had his head on straight we wouldn't be having these conversations because he'd understan
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Re:You don't need MS Office to create .doc files (Score:4, Insightful)
It's what happens when your data files are a nearly-straight dump of your bizarre in-memory data structures-- maintaining compatibility while changing the code at all is extremely difficult.
Largely an attitude thing (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Largely an attitude thing (Score:4, Funny)
If you meant lesser, what makes Kennedy's victims better than your victims?
(Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Re:Largely an attitude thing-Laziness on Their Par (Score:2)
That's simply laziness on their part. Laziness, and ignorance. They should be asking for your resume in a format able to be opened by Word.
The only reason I see for MSWord as an absolute requirement anywhere are tasks to be automated either through the built-in VBA scripting language, or a COM interface to use MSWord from another program. And how many users actually ever do that?
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Believe me, it's near impossible to convince managers that something that costs nothing can actually be better than something they shell out more dough than you make in a year. I tried my best to convince an ex-boss of mine to switch to OO. Made him
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Do you really *want* your resume in their database? Personally, I'd much rather send my resume to a person who can ignore it because they're busy rather than to a database where it will be ignored because I forgot to mention the keyword "AJAX".
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Although you raise an interesting question about the appropriateness of widespread network inclusion, I think the more important issue is that companies' databases will accommodate whatever formats they must. If you send in PDF, and I send in PDF, they'll adjust the
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Now, my last recruitment company got my resume in PDF only
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That, and they like to doctor your resume. Well, I don't know for recruiters, but being a consultant for a consulting company, I know that happens. I tried to submit my "company internal CV" as PDF but they wouldn't take it. Reason, they change stuff in it. For example, I speak German, read it but can barely write it. So, I'd say "German Spoken: Fair", "German Read: Fair" and "German Written: Poor". I later found out that they changed it "German Spoken: Good", "German Read: Good" and "German Written:
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Re:Largely an attitude thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Largely an attitude thing (Score:5, Informative)
Think "world" instead of "USofA". (Score:5, Insightful)
ODF is not going to take off in the US until AFTER the rest of the world has adopted it. So let's look at what other governments and such are adopting Linux / ODF.
Re:Think "world" instead of "USofA". (Score:5, Funny)
I think I might detect sarcasm... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think I might detect sarcasm... (Score:4, Interesting)
In that light, perhaps the metric system is the correct analogy.
Maybe the limit has more to do with how many politicians Microsoft can buy. For many years they ignored politics, preferring to exert their force against "business partners." After the antitrust suits they began to learn about US politics, and with ODF they began to meddle in state politics. But there are subtle difference in politics in every political entity - do it wrong and you're even worse off. They've just put a lot of effort into China, obviously because it's a big emerging market. They'll likely put a lot of effort into India, too. But beyond that, it starts getting little - and local.
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Re:Think "world" instead of "USofA". (Score:5, Informative)
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Although, you know, that's actually one of the saner complaints I've heard about going metric - it's not
himi
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All the more reason running unauthorized Windows installs have a happy future everywhere but probably the U.S.
Unrelated comment:
The more uncertainty and lack of information media outlets have the better when it comes to OO.org and Linux distros. Reliable "speeds and feeds" is what managerial types use to justify raping another market
I'd look at governments first. (Score:2)
If nothing else the tax savings will be worth it. You can run on the "I just saved our city 5 million local units of exchange every year for the next 20 years! That's 100 million local units of exchange I've save this city. Vote for me AGAIN!"
And once the file format monopoly is cracked, look for Linux deployments to increase.
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Citizens are the **last** ones to benefit when we aren't involved in our government. Always.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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And then the alternative will gain marketshare to the point that even mainstream consumers are trying it out, which will cause businesses to notice.
Honestly, the analogy I'd think of is Imperial vs. Metric. The rest of the world isn't nearly as wedded to Microsoft as the US is. Therefore, we're likely to see uptake of ODF become significant elsewhere before it
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I'm sure there are a lot of IT people in business that would like to move away from IE to Firefox, but it would just be too damn expensive to redevelop critical software to remove the IE-only components.
"Companies" that just don't get it (Score:2)
Dead for the Enterprise != Dead for the user (Score:3, Insightful)
The needs of the enterprise and the needs of the individual are different- might they not be better served by different formats?
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OOXML means Windows-only (Score:5, Informative)
I prefer OpenDocument, and I am putting my money into it: OpenDocument export is finally finished for our TextMaker [softmaker.com] word processor and will be released in a few days.
Prime Issue (Score:5, Insightful)
Folks, this is the heart of the matter. This is what needs to be understood by both sides of the argument:
What the poster misses is that people don't ... D O N O T accept or reject a file format. They, with the small subset of geeks on /., don't give a flip about file format. They accept or reject a program.
For ODF to be accepted, it has to be part of a program that most users have installed.
Program acceptance is usually established by:
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And VML isn't tied to Windows. It's implementable on any platform. It's hardly used by anyone anyway (not that SVG (the result of merging VML and PGML) is used much either, for that matter).
Re:OOXML means Windows-only (Score:4, Informative)
Imagine how loudly Microsoft would be complaining if someone proposed a 'standard' format that was a serialised stream of X11 commands.
News for nerds... (Score:2)
From the fine article:
"The deadline is July 20, 2007"
I'll get right on it then.
--
BMO
Re:News for nerds... (Score:4, Funny)
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Jeez, I was 4 years old. How come I missed that?
--
BMO
They said the same thing b4 FireFox came along. (Score:5, Insightful)
The MS-Office monopoly has so far been nearly impossible to beat. But things can change quite rapidly. Terms like vendor-lock and interoperability will eventually penetrate the skulls of the thickest CIOs and CTOs.
It would help if the supporters of Free Software and Open Software would stop fighting the internecine battles and start uniformly supporting Open Standards. Even before you mention the word Open Standards, immediately others pushing Free Software agenda and Open Source agenda push their pet projects, creating an impression it is all one and the same and one can not have Open Standards without also Open Source and Free Software. They are different.
You might not agree that replacing MSFT monopoly with some kind of duopoly (like it is with Intuit-Quicken and MS-Money). But it is definitely better than the monopoly. Once the customers are educated about the vendor lock and compatibility the duopoly will naturally break down. Eventually there will be enough space for Free Software, Open Software, and Close source software to coexist.
Damn Shame the IPhone Sucks... (Score:2)
They Keep Saying, "We've Already Won" ... (Score:2)
... but it's a lie. Office 2007 and Vista have very low adoption rates and Vista is looking more like a failure every day [slashdot.org].
People care about being able to read public documents five years after they were created, ODF has only begun to fix that problem and it's adoption is far better than anything previous, except ASCII. There have been a few legal setbacks, but the momentum is really on ODF's side.
It would help if the supporters of Free Software and Open Software would stop fighting the internecine batt
LinuxWorld = Pro Microsoft FUDster (Score:5, Insightful)
LinuxWorld is just trolling and spreading FUD with their "just too big, why bother, you can't win, give up, don't try, it'll never work, it can't happen, you're just wasting your time, resistance is futile" rhetoric
Their words are as dog farts. They are not to be considered!
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ODF works great for me, and I've never personally had anything rendered badly in OpenOffice, save for some ancient RTF documents written in a fifteen year old versions of MS-Works and IBM Works. However, when I do communicate with other people and send docume
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Sounds like they have been subverted to me.
Tail wagging the dog (Score:2, Informative)
Office is expensive, but OpenOffice doesn't look as good, doesn't work as well and feels cobbled together.
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Have you used 2.0? (Score:2)
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Office is expensive, but OpenOffice doesn't look as good, doesn't work as well and feels cobbled together.
Funny, I feel the same way about MS Office. I suppose it just comes down to what you use most, I only ran MS Office about half a dozen times in the last three years while running OO thousands of times. No question, OO is good enough for me, and it keeps getting better at a steady rate. New updates just arrive automatically along with my regular apt-get upgrades and I have never once seen a regression. It's hard to overstate the importances of no regressions. It would be just intensely painful to have
Re:Tail wagging the dog (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not the debate here!
We're talking about the format being used to create and store publicly owned information. The government is funded by the citizens. The citizen should not have to pay an additional Microsoft tax in order to access government documents. The government SHOULD BE worried, even though they probably are not. Even if ODF is adopted as the standard, MS has the option of supporting it in their applications along with everyone else. The reverse isn't true if the government decides to institutionalize vendor lock-in.
Doesn't Office 2007 already support ODF? (Score:5, Interesting)
IMHO, ODF is far from being dead.
If someone installs a ring in your nose,.... (Score:2, Interesting)
The entity that installed the ring, expects to recover the cost of the ring, plus a lot more.
Freedom is not free, but slavery costs more.
Once Upon a Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Then there were text editors tied to document preparation systems. Anyone remember RunOff/Runnem?
Then there were integrated full word processing software that you could load onto your general purpose computers. WordStar anyone? Surely you remember Word Perfect!
All of these existed and flourished well in their time, and all existed before MSWord, whose first incarnation on the PC/XT was wretched!
To say that MSWord can never be dethroned is bunk! MS loves to hear this talk, since you're defeated and they win before the battle has even begun. Previous solutions lost out when something better and cheaper came alone.
The more MS hikes the cost of MSOffice, the more they make it more difficult to use (WGA on Office anyone?), the more they remove MSWord from the virtually free Works package, the more Open Office improves while maintaining its low, low cost of Free, the more OEM's cut costs by preloading OO so that you have it right out of the box, the more MS has to worry about.
Talk defeat, and that's what you'll get. Then only MS will be cheering.
The Massachuesettes issue is a speed bump (Score:3, Informative)
You have to remember while MS Office has a large install base but most of the time when documents are made available on the web or exchanged via email, it is done in the form of PDF's. That means that since Open Office can output to a PDF without purchasing other tools that it actually has an advantage over all versions of office pre 2007.
It will take some time because of the install base of Office XP and 2003 out there but when companies look to upgrade in a cost effective manner and potentially need to utilize both ODF and Doc formats they will choose Open Office. Microsoft looks like it is going to put its head in the sand and not implement ODF into Office 2007 and therefore it will force those who need to work with government agencies to either constantly convert things or use Open Office. Also remember that it looks like MS Office 2007 does not have built in export to pdf functionality its an external plugin that has to be included or installed and that it looks like for anti trust reasons MS may have to disable that functionality at least in the EU if not the states as well. If I'm a company I don't want to have to buy Office and then Acrobat crap just to be able to write to PDF's.
All that OO has to do to cement their viability is to refine the UI a little more. I find some functions cumbersome for those used to Office's interface but those that have to switch to 2007 from Office 2003 seem to become even more baffled.
MS Office is losing (Score:2)
Anyone work in state government? (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems to me that open formats are most important for government archival purposes. That is, state governments are producing huge amounts of public documents that really ought to be preserved for posterity. Saving them in an open format (free from copyright protection which lasts 120 years in the instance of an institutional author like MS) seems to be a pretty good step to take towards that goal.
My question is, what are the practices of digital archival in state governments? Do they even have one? I
You're missing the point... (Score:5, Insightful)
ODF isn't there to dethrone MS as the word processor of choice, to think so is a bit foolish. It's there to provide a format that *everyone* can use. I will continue to use MS Office because I think it's a superior product, but ODF allows me to *save* my MS Office documents to format that *anyone* else can use, but more importantly convert from when I want to read my own documents in 20 years.
Remember, ODF is not a platform, word processor, gizmo, Office killer, etc. It's only a standard in which to format documents.
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Just a Question Never Answered Well (Score:2)
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Re:Just a Question Never Answered Well (Score:5, Insightful)
A properly prepared word-processing document these days, whether written with Open Office Writer, Word, or any other decent wp-program, is prepared using styles. You can't do that with RTF. It was inevitable that someone would come up with an XML-based format at some time, because RTF is just too inflexible and incapable of structuring a document.
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Re:Just a Question Never Answered Well (Score:5, Insightful)
The basic RTF spec is about two pages long, and about as complex as HTML 1.0. Like HTML, it defines a simple way of extending it. Word can export documents as RTF that include all of the formatting of the original. The catch? That nothing else can read them. Remember early on in the last browser war where IE and Netscape both defined large numbers of extensions to HTML? Imagine a situation like that, but with half a dozen browsers. Now imagine the browsers also edit the document, and strip out any markup they don't understand. That's pretty much the situation with RTF.
MS owns RTF and changes it at will (Score:4, Insightful)
This is completely unacceptable for a long-term document archive solution. It's not an open format, so you have to rely on Microsoft making "converters" for older iterations available, or reverse engineering. In addition, you have to realize that since the formation is closed, your reverse-engineered implementation may not correctly handle some "features." And that when MS decides to change things, your solution may not correctly handle the new "improved" format.
Not that Microsoft would intentionally break compatibility, of coure... What is it that the Office team says? "RTF isn't done until OpenOffice won't run"
Article proposes XHTML + CSS 3 instead (Score:5, Insightful)
Right at the end, the article suggests an alternative:
Earlier on, the article talks about how it's too expensive to "rip out and replace" MS Office with ODF. Well yeah. Often in technology, a new technology doesn't have to be better - it has to offer something compelling that the old one doesn't, such as a lower price, convenience, mobility, or networking. The new technology gains a foothold in its niche, then starts to expand beyond it - without necessarily ever completely replacing the older technology. Thus we have cell phones displacing land lines, YouTube pressuring television (despite its crappy quality), MP3s replacing CDs, laptops gaining on desktops, digital cameras edging out film, etc.
So it seems to me that the strategy of perfect emulation is a strategy for failure: if ODF does exactly th same thing, is the freedom it offers enough to compel organizations to switch? (We might say yes, but then we know the consequences of lock-in and we don't have to make the up-front investment.) On the other hand, for all its weaknesses, HTML offers all sorts of things that Word lacks (e.g. accessibility and reformatting for differetn devices, universal browser support, Net-friendly, strong semantics), and is probably good enough for most uses. Thoughts?
doesn't matter for most (Score:2)
There are only two reasons that I even notice. I create many documents and on a frequent basis I need documents from one or two years ago. Often, in the past, I have not been able to open tho
Open Office needs a tangible advantage (Score:4, Insightful)
A rule of thumb when trying to replace one product in the marketplace with another is that the new product needs two tangible advantages. ODF needs to have one "gotta-have" feature that non-technical people can understand and appreciate in order for it to successfully beat out Office.
Yes, ODF is theoretically cheaper then Office. However, the productivity boost of spending $500 / employee is a bargain when the employee's time is worth $50 / hour! (Remember, a guy making $20 an hour really does cost the company $40-$50 an hour.)
The "Open" aspect of ODF is too abstract for many people to understand. To the non-technical person, Office "just works".
Thus, in order for there to be a demand for ODF, there needs to be tangible features that work better with ODF then Office. What tangible features could people appreciate from ODF? Here are some suggestions that come to mind.
Thus, to repeat, in order for ODF to really succeed it needs to have easy-to-understand features that non-technical people will desire. Competing on price alone won't beat Office.
Everyone should be evaluating ODF (Score:3, Insightful)
There's some big News To Me in this article and I wish the open source community would do a better job of informing the rest of the world of this crap. This article mentions that Microsoft's OOXML format can't be implemented by other vendors. What?!?!? That's News To Me. I'm sure the article is right, but frankly, I don't keep my nose to grindstone enough to follow this kind of religious news any more and it's the first time I've heard MS restricts who can implement this file format. It also says it's an import-only format that's basically junk. Really? I didn't know that and I just assumed that the format was reasonable and worked. Can the rest of the world's new organizations please make a big deal out of those facts?
OOXML is crap and ODF works. That's important and I didn't know it.
Now, let's look at Microsoft's dominance in the marketplace. I guarantee you that every IT Director in the world is figuring out how to get OpenOffice in the door and figuring out what role it can play. When I look at my budget for the year I want eradicate any line item having to do with licensing. Realistic? No. Can we cut back on things? Hell yeah. We don't need every PC in this company having a copy of MS Office. For us, Outlook is a bitch, but the Exchange web client is pretty good. Visio and Project are tough ones, but not everyone uses it. Some people have custom integration with Excel, but those people are also a minority. Oh, and there's the religious thing with using free software, that's nice to me and gives me a warm fuzzy feeling.
So when you look at the landscape, the single biggest obstacle appears to be document formats.
And really, I know that's not even much of a concern. We already rely on the MS document formats as being the default. Maybe if ODF is so good we should consider switching our default formats now. Maybe that should be the first step in our migration. I could care less who came up with the document standard as long as the documents open and do what I expect them to do.
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If MS offered Office for Linux (Score:2)
But they don't because that would eat into their proprietary OS cash cow.
why ODF failed in Mass. .. (Score:3, Informative)
How can you equate political machinations with the the technical merits of a document format. If OOXML was so technically superior then why did MS need to get the decision to go with ODF reversed and Peter Quinn [groklaw.net] effectivly FIRED.
Yea I know, they just cut his funding and ignored his recommendations
MS Word documents... (Score:2)
The free world has already won. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Nice dreamming, but you can't really implement OOXML by the documentation and Microsoft has patents on it (that they promisse not to use against people that fit some impossible criteria).
Working as a hotliner ... (Score:3, Interesting)
The latest trend on our computers is to bundle them with a trial edition of Microsoft Office (60 days). This doesn't support saving your files it seems, nor priting or anything else even remotely useful apart from viewing documents.
Once we explain customers that they have to pay Microsoft to get a fully functioning version of the program, they almost always ask where to get something else, that works without having to pay for it. I always tell them to try out OpenOffice.org - see if it fits their needs. If it does, great - they've just saved a minor fortune. If not, they can always switch back to paying for MS Office.
Same when the computer is bundled with MS Works, which for some really arcane reason doesn't want to play nice with MS Office.
While I've no feedback from all of the customers that I've advised to try out OO.o, I have heard from several of them that they will never use MS Office again, when their trial version is so "buggy", that you can't even use it properly in the trial period.
Does ODF (well, something other than MS' formats) have a future? I would say it has a big future as long as Microsoft shoots itself in the foot instead of luring customers in with fully functioning/compatible programs.
But maybe that's just me.
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I think you answered your own question. B-)
But we're talking about document storage and exchange file formats. That implies the tools are the only thing that need to "learn" them at all.
Have you considered writing a plugin or mod for OOo to read/write TeX files? Get that right and you might change the whole debate. B-)
"Liberate your documents"? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think the slogan "Liberate your documents" is going to go over well with businesses. The image it evokes is security leaks and industrial espionage.
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