The Anti-ODF Whisper Campaign 213
eldavojohn writes "Groklaw is examining the possibility of an anti-ODF whisper campaign and the effects it has had on the ODF and OOXML Wikipedia articles. In the ODF article, Alex Brown bends the truth to make it seem like no one is supporting ODF, and that it is a flawed and incomplete standard. From the conclusion, 'So what is one to do? You obviously can't trust Wikipedia whatsoever in this area. This is unfortunate, since I am a big fan of Wikipedia. But since the day when Microsoft decided they needed to pay people to "improve" the ODF and OOXML articles, they have been a cesspool of FUD, spin and outright lies, seemingly manufactured for Microsoft's re-use in their whisper campaign. My advice would be to seek out official information on the standards, from the relevant organizations, like OASIS, the chairs of the relevant committees, etc. Ask the questions in public places and seek a public response. That is the ultimate weakness of FUD and lies. They cannot stand the light of public exposure. Sunlight is the best antiseptic.'"
Re:Let's start with the truth (Score:4, Interesting)
Kind of sad how few Word processors there are these days.
Even on your list at least four of them are based on the same code and two of them are Office.
Re:Corporate FUD is the real enemy here (Score:1, Interesting)
It really shows how desperate a company is when they have to get the FUD written so they can refer to it as tho it were fact.
Well, okay but the problem is that Wikipedia can easily be skewed by people with an axe to grind, and time to do so. This is especially true of relatively obscure matters, as standardization is for most people. "Common" knowledge with many independent experts who know about it tends to be more accurate. It is just too bad that Wikipedia is more and more used as if it were an authoritative source. The present Groklaw article shows how this can actually do real harm!
I'm a bit bitter about Wikipedia myself, because of a matter close to my heart, relating to a certain proprietary technology that is little known outside a small circle. It really should not be mentioned in Wikipedia at all. A former employee of the company where it was created made a self-agrandising Wikipedia article about its origins. I know the truth, but cannot really start rebutting it, because all relevant documents are company-confidential and I work under a pile of NDA:s (and would like to keep the interesting job). I have been wondering for years what to do about it, and concluded it is probably better to do nothing, as the other guy is of the obsessive sort, and has far more free time than I have. So I would inevitably lose any editing war... But this really taught me that Wikipedia cannot be trusted. A nice idea, but does not work.
Watch the wikipedia history (Score:4, Interesting)
Sunlight is the best antiseptic.
Exactly. Watch the history of the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]. Now that light has been shed on the issue, I'll bet the article becomes extremely accurate by the end of the day.
Is ODF cross-application compatible? (Score:2, Interesting)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I heard that ODF documents created in, say, OpenOffice weren't entirely compatible with AbiWord. Granted, I haven't had the chance to try this out myself.
Also, from what I hear, OOXML is even worse, since it seems to be deliberately broken.
Re:Let's start with the truth (Score:4, Interesting)
When have we seen any real innovation? It is like we got to Word and everything stopped. Than and most WP programs have become these huge monster applications that do more than 99% of their users need.
Re:Let's start with the truth (Score:1, Interesting)
they have the specs for ODF (which, granted are incomplete for spreadsheets for *very good reasons*, look it up)
So it is "FUD" and "a whisper campaign" that "Alex Brown bends the truth to make it seem like ... it is a flawed and incomplete standard."?
I've never really understood the acceptance that ODF has received. While I applaud and want an open document specification, why should we use ODF before it is complete?
We wouldn't accept such an incomplete standard from Microsoft. In fact, the rallying cry against OOXML was that it was "too complete" because it was X pages long.
Maybe the rabid ODF supporters should accept that ODF is *currently* flawed and incomplete. It's ok. Things have bugs and are missing features. Work to fix it instead of demonizing anyone who points this out.
Re:Let's start with the truth (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately this gives the impression that Microsoft supports Office Open XML but they don't. They plan to on the next version of MS-Office. They do support DOCX which is an ancestor of OOXML but they don't support OOXML itself. Neither does anyone else.
Rob Weir rigged his tests (Score:5, Interesting)
Weir's tests of MS's ODF implementation made a big point of the fact that if you saved a spreadsheet in OO, and read it with Office, it was not fully functional (you get the cell values, but not the formulas, so it becomes a static snapshot of the data).
Yet Lotus Symphony has almost exactly the same problem [lotus.com]. Weir got around that by using a beta of a future version of Symphony that fixes the problem.
Re:But ODF is a flawed and incomplete standard. (Score:1, Interesting)
Exactly. Trying to phrase this as a battle between ODF, the perfect standard, and OOXML, the unimplementable and broken standard, is not going to work. Both ODF and OOXML have serious flaws. Both have people working to fix them. Neither of them should have been rushed through standardisation without proper review, but since ODF was it's difficult for the ODF backers to justify not giving OOXML the same treatment.
Having two good standards for office documents would be okay. Having one would be ideal. Currently we have none, but we have two bad standards with their backers both trying to shout loudly that the other one sucks, to distract from the fact that their favourite one does too.
If either camp put as much effort into their standard as they have into their PR, we would have something very clean and easy to implement by now.
Re:Groklaw raises concerns of theft of bodily flui (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:But ODF is a flawed and incomplete standard. (Score:3, Interesting)
I wasn't aware of that. Could you please elaborate on that, with authoritative references? Thank you.
Re:Let's start with the truth (Score:4, Interesting)
Conspicuously absent: Apple's "Pages" word processor. I'd happily pay Apple for a word processor that plays nicely on my PPC Mac, but I'll be damned if I'm going to lock my data into Yet Another Weird Apple Format. Seriously, what genius at Apple said "we have a 0% share of the word processing market - let's invent our own incompatible format so that no one can exchange data with us!"
MS not the only ones (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Let's start with the truth (Score:3, Interesting)
Want to have columns that are a 0.4 inches wide? Forget about trying to just enter 0.4 into the column width cell, that doesn't actually work. You need to spend at least 10 min holding down the option key while grabbing the column with your mouse and moving it one pixel at a time.
Want to have a chart with identical formatting to a previous chart? Expect to create the 2nd chart no less than 3 times as the program decides to ignore half of what you do, and spontaniously change those settings that did take back to default on a whim.
Just this week I created a chart in powerpoint, using the default formatting of that template, and saved as a legacy PPT file (instead of PPTX). When I went to edit the chart the next day, PPT reformatted every possible aspect of the chart and I could not get it to go back to the templates formatting. I ended up having to create all 7 of my charts again from scratch (this time saving as PPTX). Unfortunately, I'm still going to need to save the final presentation as a PPT becuase the conference I'll be attending refuses to accept PPTX.
I'd swear that MS was intentionally trying to cripple the mac version of office, if it weren't so obvious that they are just incompetent.
Re:Let's start with the truth (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, for sure, give LyX [lyx.org] a try.