New York Decision On ODF Vs. OOXML Approaching

christian.einfeldt writes "In August of 2007, the State of New York passed legislation requiring its CIO, Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, to gather information on the advantages and disadvantages of adopting either ODF or OOXML as a document standard, and to report her findings by 15 January 2008. As part of her duties under that legislation, the CIO issued a Request For Public Comment to get feedback on the topic. The deadline for that public comment is 28 December 2007 — so there is still time for the Slashdot crowd to be heard."

Write!

[h4rm0ny]

If you don't do something as quick and simple as writing to ask for something, what right do you have to complain when you don't get it. If just a small fraction of the people here write in support of ODF, that will be a huge and impressive response.

There's enough complaining about OOXML et al on this site. Put your money where you mouth is.

I'm a New York State resident and...

[betterunixthanunix]

...I've just about given up on politicians in this state. Albany has not been able to pass an on time budget for...actually, I don't think I was even born the last time they passed an on time budget. Governor Pataki was a union-busting asshole, and Governor Spitzer has failed to fulfill his promise of restoring integrity to Albany. Hillary Clinton votes for one idiotic bill after another, and Chuck Schumer voted in favor of Mukasey (need I say more?).

Not even Windows users like OOXML

[webmaster404]

Not even Windows users like OOXML. Even the ones with Office 2007 usually save into .doc format. I don't see why we can't just go with plain old .doc. Sure it isn't as "open" as ODF, but OOo and Office can read them well enough (now if I got to make the plans, it would just be plain .txt, fast and easy to read, who needs formatting) to see what they are saying. But OOXML just plain isn't adopted anywhere, it lacks support for non Windows platforms and no one really knows what the "standard" actually is, and knowing MS's previous actions, they will soon "extend" OOXML to have "features" that will make the free/open source document readers have yet another thing to deal with. So why can't they go with .doc? Or better yet HTML? Even .txt would be better then OOXML, even though ODF is nice, Windows systems with Office need "plugins" to view them.

Fuck document formats. XHTML and SVG work fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck all these document formats. XHTML, CSS, PNG, SVG and PDF work just fine for displaying virtually any sort of data.

XHTML is the container. It allows for textual documentation to be represented, and allows for other data representations to be embedded within that container. Its native support for tables makes it usable even as a spreadsheet (which can be powered by JavaScript).

CSS allows for very complex document layout and stylings to specified with ease and conciseness.

SVG can represent nearly all vector-based pictorials, including many forms of graphs. Bar charts are easily represented with rectangles, and a pie chart is easily represented as a collection of filled arcs. SVG's scalability allows for these charts to be resized really easily.

PNG images can be used for all other images that aren't best represented using SVG.

PDF is the perfect format for bundling all of those other resources together in a medium that displays on almost any system.

Best of all, those are all open standards, with free implementations available for almost every operating system and platform. There's just no need for this ODF and OOXML bullshit.

Re:The only thing I want to know....

[ls -la]

is when Microsoft is going to stop the shennannigans and start playing ball with the rest of the world.

When they stop making money off of shenanigans. Innovation takes time and money, it's cheaper to copy other people.

Can someone tell me when the last time they tried to compete on innovation rather than vendor lock-in?

I'm pretty sure that was before I was born.

Can someone make the argument that OOXML is all about document protection for the consumer and not about keeping everyone else on the run?

Probably, but I doubt it would be a very compelling argument.

Can someone tell me that Vista was supposed to make everything better for the USER?

Well, it's supposedly more secure...

Can someone tell me why I need DRM in my life?

I'm sorry, it's not your life. Read the EULA on the last piece of music you heard: "We, the RIAA own your soul. By listening to any music in any form, you agree to this binding contract."

Can someone tell me that C# is open and not proprietary? It only runs on one platform, theirs? How is that better than writing natively? The UI is only for IE with .NET? Why would I want Silverlight over Flash?

Does Microsoft even pretend C# is open? If so, is it covered by any patents (that Java and C don't have prior art on)? And actually, I believe C# runs on all microsoft OSs without recompiling, something they couldn't do without .NET. And I haven't actually seen silverlight, but I haven't heard an argument (convincing or not) to use it.

Can someone tell me why they took scripting out of the OS?

Security, likely.

Can someone explain to me why Steve Ballmer still has a job?

See #1: They're still making money.

Can someone tell me if they are offering ANYTHING I want? As a user? As a developer?

Probably not, but that's why you're using Linux, right?
Actually, they do have DirectX, and with it a lot of games.

Can anyone explain what I'm missing here?

As long as MS is still making a profit, they'll keep doing what they're doing.

I'm sick and tired of them making it unnecessarily difficult to do anything with computers. I know they are a business charged with profitability but is it too much to ask them to solve my problems with real solutions?

Yep. Money is their only motivation.

Is it too much too ask them to sell me something without a truckload of baggage?

I guess maybe it is.

Guess you answered your own question there.

Re:When is....

[harlows_monkeys]

So when is Sun going to turn control of ODF over to a standards body? (There is a difference between letting a standards body approve a particular version, and turning control over).

There are zillions of things wrong with OOXML, so why do people keep picking things that are ALSO problems with ODF? It would be a lot more effective to pick those areas where ODF is actually different and better, and push those.

Re:Fuck document formats. XHTML and SVG work fine.

[xouumalperxe]

Sorry to burst your bubble, but there are several issues with the idea you posted.

PDF is a great format for publication, but crap for information exchange. You need some sort of "work format" to do the heavy lifting for you before you can commit the document to its published .pdf form. Regarding that "work format", I'll assume that by "XHTML" you actually meant "XML", since the latter is a general purpose mark-up language, and the former a domain-specific application of the latter, and this whole discussion is overkill if you really meant XHTML, since that is simply not enough for a functional office application format.

XML might have many virtues, but it has one major flaw: It's not a standard. It's a meta-standard. You need a DTD to turn XML into a usable standard to work on -- like XHTML. Guess what, exactly, ODF and OOXML are? Yip, they're at their core just DTDs for specific applications of XML. Funny you should mention SVG for vector graphics: It's just yet another DTD for XML. Effectively, your statement that XML is the solution is in direct contradiction with later saying that OOXML and ODF are unnecessary.

The idea of "powering a spreadsheet with JavaScript" kind of implies that you're going to embed the actual calculation logic in the spreadsheet, rather than just having a formula language. Nice and light -- or perhaps not. As far as I can see, the only other way to read that statement (which is more or less equivalent in performance) is that you're suggesting writing the calculator core (the one single part of the application you'd really really want to write in highly optimized C) in JavaScript, which is really not that good an idea either.

CSS might be quite powerful for the web, but for book formatting I'll stick to TeX, thank you very much. That's just an example of a particular application where CSS is underwhelming compared to the alternatives. I'm not much of a fan of writing a gazillion different standards for slightly different application uses, but using CSS as the baseline layout description language for your whole office document format is a hardcore case of shoehorning.

Finally, and just to nitpick, PNG is really underwhelming for photography and similar image types, where JPEG is far better.