Slashdot Log In
ODF Editor Says ODF Loses If OOXML Does
Posted by
kdawson
on Wednesday March 26, @02:58AM
from the strange-bedfellow dept.
from the strange-bedfellow dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The editor of the Open Document Format standard has written a letter (PDF) that strongly supports recognizing Microsoft's OOXML file format as a standard, arguing that if it fails, ODF will suffer. 'As the editor of OpenDocument, I want to promote OpenDocument, extol its features, urge the widest use of it as possible, none of which is accomplished by the anti-OpenXML position in ISO,' Patrick Durusau wrote. 'The bottom line is that OpenDocument, among others, will lose if OpenXML loses... Passage of OpenXML in ISO is going to benefit OpenDocument as much as anyone else.'"
Related Stories
Firehose:ODF editor: ODF loses if OOXML does by Anonymous Coward
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
3 questions... (Score:5, Insightful)
He invoques the need to have a formal definition of some features (formula definitions and legacy stuff) as benifiting ODF if OOXML pass, so this raises the questions:
1) Aren't these already included to some extend in what was submitted for iso acceptation?
2) Wasn't this specification part of what EU's justice were asking Microsoft anyways?
3) Is it that hard to reverse-ingeneer that kind of spec?
Asking in good faith, as I really hav no clue.
Re:3 questions... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:3 questions... (Score:5, Insightful)
No. His point seems to be that some features are not in ODF yet, so we might as well accept Microsoft's, and that way we have to support fewer different implementations of features. He's approaching this thing with a naivete that is stunning in an adult who has watched Microsoft's behavior with standards.
From the letter:
More importantly, what if ISO and Microsoft reach different definitions for the same OpenXML functions? After watching Java and Kerberos and CSS... We already have indications that Microsoft would ignore ISO on OOXML, too.
Re:3 questions... (Score:5, Interesting)
From the article:
His big beef is the ODF standard needs to have some formula definitions added??? So add them to the standard! Somehow I think the actual formulas, at least the financial ones, are already defined in some other standard, maybe not an ISO standard, but a standard somewhere. I just can't believe CPA's make up their own formulas. (OK, honest CPA's.) And since these formula's are standard somewhere else already, then OpenXML should have the same formulas.
"But what if there are different standards for the same financial function?" you ask. Well, then have a flag to pick which one is used as part of the function call. If OpenXML doesn't do this then ODF can make claims that Excel is not suitable for financial calculations. Actually, from the comments above, I'd say that is already the case. "...output varies by version and service pack of MS Office." does not inspire confidence in me for one.
The author also seems to think having OpenXML as a standard will provide anyone and everyone the complete specs to the standard. From what I've read, this isn't the case so far, and I doubt MS is anxious for that to happen. Get it approved, yes, but describe it in enough detail that anyone else could fully implement it, no.
As it is, Microsoft will not commit to supporting the standard. According to Brian Jones, a Microsoft manager who has worked on OOXML for six years: "It's hard for Microsoft to commit to what comes out of Ecma [the European standards group that has already OK'd OOXML] in the coming years, because we don't know what direction they will take the formats. We'll of course stay active and propose changes based on where we want to go with Office 14. At the end of the day, though, the other Ecma members could decide to take the spec in a completely different direction. ... Since it's not guaranteed, it would be hard for us to make any sort of official statement." [techworld.com]
Don't fully understand his arguments (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Don't fully understand his arguments (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Don't fully understand his arguments (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Don't fully understand his arguments (Score:5, Funny)
Ahhhh young grasshopper, to understand his logic and arguments one must first understand the The Time Cube. [timecube.com]
-
Okay, now I'm'a *hafta* RTFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
... at least so I can find out what he's smokin' and get me some of that. I mean, whah??? If OOOXML is garbage, and not an open standard given the really big implementation holes, and not apparently implemented *anywhere* (nor, some might argue, implement*able*), why is it in anyone's interest to have it passed? Aside from Microsoft's, of course.
Confused,
Can't say that I understand him (Score:5, Interesting)
Rob Weir's response to Patrick's sudden flip flop (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Rob Weir's response to Patrick's sudden flip fl (Score:5, Informative)
In addition,
Patrick Durusau is one of several editors on ODF (in ODF 1.0 he was one of six editors) and in ODF 1.1 and the 1.2 drafts he's one of three and one of two respectively. So he's not the editor, he's an editor.
Patrick doesn't present technical arguments, he only presents political ones, and generally he seems to be of the opinion that it's better that Microsoft be involved in ISO than not (and this opinion overrides any issues of quality, or whether anyone else can implement OOXML). This is the idea that this way we get to have more of an impact on Microsoft.
In my opinion OOXML is an insincere involvement in the ISO process (as shown by minimum change during the fast-track, and poor documentation of OOXML) and I think it's naive to expect more in the future. So to me the political angle on this fails.
The technical angle on it fails completely [robweir.com].
Read Contra Durusau by Rob Weir (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/contra-durusau-part-1.html [robweir.com]
This guy Durusau seems to have changed his mind to a pro-MS shill in recent times.
Well, I disagree. (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting angle on Durusau's behavior (Score:5, Interesting)
This is conjecture, obviously, but I find it plausible, FWIW, especially since there is now a follow-up.
From the Horse's mouth (Score:5, Informative)
Wanna know how much Microsoft has reformed this sort of thing?
You can get it all here http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071023002351958 [groklaw.net]I don't know about ODF (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing is, 500 pages of ODF spec may not be much better for small businesses. What we need is a specification with multiple levels of fallback for simplier generators and consumers. For example, one part of a document zip file can be plain text contained in the document, with reasonable efforts to convert document structure to a human and machine readable plain text representation. For producers, it will be valid to generate a document bundle with only the text file and nothing else.
How this kind of thing works - Soft Bribery (Score:5, Interesting)
-------
I want to tell you Slashdot people something about how this kind of thing works. I don't really know the name for it, but I call it "soft bribery". You might also call it "economic alignment" or whatever. Here's what happens.
A large, rich stakeholder wants a particular outcome - in this case, MS wants OOXML to be ratified. They have some adversaries - respected leaders of the OSS movement or ODF foundation, in this case. Note that there are always certain people with disproportionate voices - these people are really hurting them. How can they turn them around?
They can't outright bribe them. That's illegal and probably wouldn't work anyway - people would feel insulted. So what they need to do is ensure that the "thought leader"'s economic interest is aligned with their own.
We see this happen all the time - a previous strong advocate against something, in this case pro ODF and against OOXML, will suddenly get more concilatory. See Durusau's change of tone for an example. Now I don't know him, but I'm pretty sure here's what happened.
He would be in constant contact with the OOXML team in MS just as a matter of course. One day, though, they'll tell him to expect a call from a VP or higher - big guns. He's excited to be able to reach higher up in the company. Finally, they're taking him seriously. He might be talking to a billionaire!
He'll get the call. "Wow, we're really impressed with your work on this. My team is always telling me what a smart, together guy you are", says the VP or Partner or whatever. "I just wanted to tell you that we really appreciate the work you're doing and we can learn a lot from you. Say, when this is all over, if OOXML finally gets accepted - we'd love to get you in for some interoperability training and consulting, our staff could really use your insight. We pay pretty well, $500 an hour, and we estimate the contract would last for a year fulltime, but we're flexible with your current work - we just need you on call. What do you think?"
There you go. That's it. A year's worth at $500/hr is close enough to a million bucks, the guy's got a mortgage, game over. Of course MS wants it kept quiet or the deal's off - that's their "standard business practise", and the contract has an NDA clause.
Game over. I'm sure this is what happened to Durusau. I'm pretty sure it's what happened to Miguel. Unless you're independently wealthy, not many people can say no to a few hundred thousand in "consulting". Needless to say, he'll never step foot in any Microsoft building. Hell, maybe it's a lot less than a million - it was for someone I know.
I am going to be very vague here - sorry if you think I lose credibility, but I don't want to burn my friend. He was the CEO/CTO (same guy) at a small systems integrator in the educational sector "somewhere in Asia". A largish school deal was in the works, his company advised decision makers in favour of linux. A respected company, had a lot of sway with the local suits, it was looking like going their way. One day he gets a call to the cell phone - wow, one of the big guns!
"We really like the work you're doing. Say, it looks like this deal isn't going to go our way - but if it does, we'll need a partner to help us interoperate with the existing infrastructure - you installed a lot of it, so you're first in line and we'd like to book you in advance just to make sure we can get you. What are your rates? Well, we'd like to make sure we have you for at least six months and we actually pay a set rate in this area of $$$. Is that OK? We'll fax over our proposed contract right now, we're pretty eager to go ahead with this, so just to lock in our booking we'll deposit the first 25% of the contract as soon as you fax it back to us, is that good with you? Refundable if we don't get the deal of course. Commercial in confidence, naturally. Let us know ASAP, and good luck with the deal!"
The contract was over triple what the linux deal would have earned. He has a wife and kids - I'm not going to cast the first stone. They dropped their opposition, recommended the MS deal, and got paid a quarter of a million (equivalent) to do sweet fuck-all for 6 months. My friend feels like a sell-out, but his daughter's now in a better school.
I don't know how to stop this happening, but until it does, MS (or GM, or Exxon, or whoever) will win and win and win. Ask yourself how much your advocacy would sell for. Ask yourself how you'd explain to your wife that you were turning down enough money to send the kids to college because of your preferences for which software to use.
This is how it's done people.
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't see it. (Score:5, Interesting)
First, literally, I don't see TFA. I see TFBE -- The Fine Blog Entry -- which quotes the letter, but doesn't link to it.
But I'll work with what I have:
Then OpenDocument is the correct, standard definition, and OpenXML will be even further from standardization.
The fact that Excel output varies by version and service pack, and is sometimes downright wrong, is all the more reason to ignore it. Approximate it, maybe, to make porting easier. Write a compatibility layer, even. But don't push through an entire second document spec, which is so deeply flawed in so many ways, just to make us match one particular iteration of Excel output.
Oh, and Excel output varies by version and service pack. WTF makes this tool think Microsoft will even try to adhere to a standard, even if it's their own?
It certainly would, wouldn't it?
Except for the fact that the OOXML spec doesn't include them. In all its six thousand fucking pages, not one mention of how, exactly, to implement LineSpacingLikeWord95. And what's he proposing -- delay OOXML until this can be included in the spec, and thus make it, what, twelve thousand pages? Or push it through in the faith (hah!) that Microsoft will add it to the next version of OOXML?
Consider, also, that there is a right way to do this: Styles. Extend the style system to support this quirky behavior. Support quirky behavior in an abstract way. Then, put the actual definition of LineSpacingLikeWord95 in the document itself, as a style. Translating back is easy, too -- just look for styles flagged that way, or just styles that happen to match the original format's quirk.
It would take some work, sure. But it would be pushing the work back to Microsoft and Office, not to ISO and any potential other implementations. And it would mean we don't have to carry this legacy crap with the format forever -- eventually, there will be no more Word95 documents, and no implementation will have to care that LineSpacingLikeWord95 corresponds to an actual way of saving a Word95 .doc -- just that it should look a particular way.
no "co-evolution" (Score:5, Insightful)
It's an office format, not nuclear fusion reactor design. ODF is already the better format, and there's nothing that ODF can learn from OOXML. Whatever expertise might flow from other standards into ODF already does because ODF (unlike OOXML) builds on existing standards.
But there's another reason why ODF won't benefit: OOXML "standardization" is just a trophy to Microsoft, a check-list item for buyers who want a standardized, open document format. Microsoft is going to keep adding proprietary extensions as they see fit, without bothering going through standardization or documenting them.
(The guy also grossly misuses the term "co-evolution", but let's not dwell on that.)
That may be true, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
* There are some serious technical issues with the current proposal that have to be resolved
* There are some very serious problems with the way the process has evolved
* There is no guarantee that Microsoft will follow their own standards -- since, if there are big changes to the standard, it would require them to change their current file format.
The first two problems indicate that, perhaps, the fast-track-to-ISO was not a good idea for this standard, and that some more time and work is required before the standard is approved, no matter how beneficial an eventual approval would be for anyone.
What kind of ODF editor is that then? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ODF editor on OOXML (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, that's what we call "not documenting the format."
Oh, and yeah, great, they documented the format. But it is NOT something that should be accepted as a standard. BF is a documented programming language, but if you had to pick a standard language, would you pick BF, if there was, oh, any other alternative?
What is so difficult about the two words "open" and "standard"? A proprietary trade secret is antithetical to that. Relying on proprietary trade secrets in a proposed "open standard" makes it neither.
Which in no way mandates that these legacy attributes also be completely opaque to every implementation except one.
Oh, by the way, we have a way to store odd formatting, and maintain backwards translateability -- styles. Extend the style system to where it can support weird shit like adjusting the "justify" algorithm, and store a SpacingLikeWordPerfectForDos (or whatever) style, in the document, with some special flag to indicate how it translates back into legacy formats (like Word 95 binary .doc).
Except that, as you say, the cryptic legacy stuff is a trade secret. Which is why we really don't want it ratified as any kind of open standard, as it is, quite simply, not open.
I'm sorry, but you can't have it both ways. Either you've got trade secrets based on your file format, or you have an open standard. Not both.
Re:We failed already (Score:5, Insightful)
Acrobat, on the other hand, is a bloated pile of garbage.