Why OpenOffice.org? Open Document Formats 478
Jem Berkes writes "In this current article about OpenOffice.org (also covered at Linux Today), I try to make a point about OpenOffice's commitment to open document formats and interchange as the strongest selling point - never mind cost. The OOo developers are putting a lot of effort into their XML format; will this pay off, and will users notice the significance of OpenDocument/OASIS document formats?" This can't be said enough: file formats are what determine whether and how easily data is portable, or whether the user is just stuck.
Righto Mate (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Righto Mate (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:patent xml for Wordprocessing (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Righto Mate (Score:3, Insightful)
If you are going to take into account all things that have been patented you can well stop developing software altogether (I found your comment informative, anyway, sorry if I sounded offensive).
Sam Hiser, OpenOffice.org - interviewed at LW (Score:4, Informative)
Not to be negative but... (Score:4, Insightful)
Not to be negative but...Looke here. (Score:5, Insightful)
http://graphics.openoffice.org/svg/svg.htm [openoffice.org]
However someone is working on it, and there's enough documentation out there, you can too.
file size (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:file size (Score:5, Informative)
Rename it to zip and extract the files.
The extracted files are usually larger or about the size of Word documents.
wouldn't that make data recovery harder? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:wouldn't that make data recovery harder? (Score:4, Interesting)
Nope Zip files can be recovered either entirely or in part...depending on the dammage. A minor amount of corruption may not lead to any data loss -- something that isn't true if the original uncompressed data is dammaged by the same amount.
Since the contents of the zip are text files, at worst they could be edited by hand to correct them. I can't think of a more stable document format that doesn't involve having multiple copies of the document.
Re:file size (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:file size (Score:2)
Open a staroffice document in winzip and you will find the content xml files...
Re:file size (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:file size (Score:2)
As anyone who's written in C will tell you, "interesting" things can happen if your program hits something in memory which doesn't match expected values.
Stability (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Stability (Score:3, Funny)
An apostrophe on
Re:Stability (Score:4, Informative)
Try using Memtest86 [memtest86.com] to diagnose your system. It may be nothing, bad luck, or some other component of your system misbehaving, but it's usually bad memory.
Why do I like OO.o formats? (Score:5, Funny)
If it ever goes away I shall have to switch back to mailing them raw TeX files again.
Formatting Woes (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Formatting Woes (Score:2, Insightful)
Thats why I just use MS Office.
Atleast I am assured that everybody can read my documents.
Re:Formatting Woes (Score:2, Informative)
Regards,
Steve
Re:Formatting Woes (Score:5, Interesting)
It's by design. When MS Word was being pushed by Microsoft as "industry standard" (back in the late '80ies, early '90ies), it came with dozens of import filters for about any word processor format known to Man. So the MS sales person could always point out that no one would loose any old data, because Word was pretty capable of reading the format in question.
With the later versions, the number of file formats MS Word was supporting, shrank. And today it is reduced to old MS Word formats (and none of them as perfect as other office suites) and to a number of good documented formats (RTF, HTML, plain text). I remember when the company I was working for was converting from OS/2 to Windows NT4.0 and the old Ami Pro documents were no longer readable. It was quite an effort to finally find an old copy of Winword 6.0a to import the Ami Pro files, because the later incarnations of MS Word weren't able to read them directly.
Too Bad OO Sucks So Bad (Score:5, Insightful)
However I have tried hard to switch to OpenOffice. Even our business people have tried to use it. And the sad truth is that it just sucks. There is no way in hell that OpenOffice competes with Microsoft Office for usability. The PowerPoint clone is especially weak: in PP, common buttons like "make the font bigger" are prominently displayed, while in OO you have to hunt hard for the button in the customization menus, and even then it doesn't work right.
This is not to say that OO is not a valuable asset. Clearly a lot of people have worked hard on it. But don't kid ourselves, this beast has a long way to go yet just to compete with MS Office 97, never mind 2003.
Crispin
Re:Too Bad OO Sucks So Bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Which is quite odd, because a huge number of people still are using Office 97. The bank I work for is 100% Office 97 (on NT4, not kidding), at home I use Office 97. Actually, I strongly dislike anything beyond Office 97. I don't see any reason to upgrade... many people don't. So OpenOffice is
Re:Too Bad OO Sucks So Bad (Score:2)
The problem with programmers designing interfaces is that they design them with themselves in mind.
Re:Too Bad OO Sucks So Bad (Score:4, Funny)
Re:[OT] devolution of MS Office (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to say the most impressive thing about Office is VBA. It works in all Office apps and is very very simple yet exceedingly powerful. Any replacement needs perfect VBA understanding.
Re:[OT] devolution of MS Office (Score:3, Interesting)
If there is already a Macro language that works in a very similar way it would not take much effort to fill in the gaps and change the syntax so it's VBA compatible.
Re:[OT] devolution of MS Office (Score:5, Interesting)
"WtF?!" you might ask :) A collegue tried switching to OpenOffice. We got into swapping a PowerPoint document back and forth, and at some point I started getting .ppt files that PowerPoint97 could not open, claiming that the file had been created by a future version of PowerPoint. So something is broken in OpenOffice's "export to PowerPoint" that is emitting files that PowerPoint97 cannot read.
Oh, the irony. Forced to upgrade to Office 2003 because someone in my organization tried OpenOffice :(
Crispin
I'll start (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't lose graphics in imported Word documents.
When you export Word documents, they need to have file sizes that are similar to what they would have if you saved them with Word. I can't email someone back a document that has had a huge increase in file size. Word is bad enough with file sizes, b
OO in law offices (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm learning --- ever so slowly --- more about Linux and Samba so I can complete the office transformation some day. Its hard to find patient teachers, and tech understanding comes slowly to some of us. Its worth the effort though.
Re:OO in law offices (Score:2)
The sad thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The sad thing is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The sad thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)
When dealing with buisnesses that you wish to continue dealing with in a positive manner (be it for commerce, looking for a job, or any other reason), you try not to do things to annoy them overmuch. Just shrug, show them what they want to see while you do what needs to be done in the background. Most of them will be happy as long as they get the results that they wanted and what *they* see is what they expected to (there are exceptions to this, but as a general rule it's not a bad guideline).
Re:The sad thing is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually they don't. If someone is technically inclined enough to know what a doc and xls file is, they are 15 geek shame seconds away from downloading Acrobat.
...and then they have Acrobat for windows, which is a piece of garbage. Reading PDF files on windows is a painful experience for many. Acrobat reader is slow and clunky. You can scroll bitmaps faster.
That said, I send only PDF files for security reasons. If your company does not require you to clean all outgoing word files, or convert them
How to speed OpenOffice file-format adoption (Score:5, Insightful)
Suddenly you have an alternative to the traditional recipe of using
Re:How to speed OpenOffice file-format adoption (Score:2)
Re:How to speed OpenOffice file-format adoption (Score:2)
Re:How to speed OpenOffice file-format adoption (Score:3, Informative)
Re:How to speed OpenOffice file-format adoption (Score:3, Informative)
It already is in my operating system (Mac OSX) - well not the OS but the GUI framework.
Re:How to speed OpenOffice file-format adoption (Score:5, Interesting)
PDF? Proprietary? Only if you mean Adobe's implementation. There are thousands of tools out there for generating and viewing PDF content in the open source world. Calling PDF proprietary simply because Adobe doesn't provide a viewer for all platforms would be like calling multicast DNS proprietary because at least initially, stock versions of Rendezvous wouldn't compile under Linux.
Based on that same definition, Postscript is proprietary. Oddly enough, Ghostscript is sometimes known to open encapsulated postscript files generated by Adobe Illustrator that Adobe's own Photoshop can't. When the open source software exceeds the quality and reliability of the reference implementation, it can no longer reasonably be described as proprietary, even if the reference implementation happens to be, IMHO.
That said, I would no more recommend people posting PDF or OOo docs than Word docs, for exactly the same reason. You have to download special software to view it. Even if Firefox had a plug-in in the shipping version, most people wouldn't have that version. For that matter, most people don't use Firefox.
The web is a powerful platform for deployment of information precisely because there are a very limited number of standard formats for contents, and a single standard environment for viewing them. It pisses me off to no end when I see a PDF file without an HTML version alongside it. The last thing I want to do is deal with a whole different environment to view content---whether it's Acrobat or a viewer plug-in makes no difference. Ditto for Word, OOo, etc. (As I always say, "Repeat after me: 'HTML is for Viewing, PDF is for Printing'.")
And I hope I -never- have to read something that some clueless peson uploaded in Postscript again. Yes, there's software for every platform, but no, most people don't have it installed, and it's a pain in the ass to distill to PDF just to view something that's usually mostly plain text anyway. And before you ask, yes, sometimes I have been known to just read the Postscript file in vi.
Bottom line, if in doubt, HTML. If HTML won't work because the person posting it is too anal about formatting... HTML anyway, and post a nice, neat, formatted PDF for the three other people in the world who are as anal as they are. ;-)
</rant>
We now return you to your regularly scheduled discussion of open formats.
Re:How to speed OpenOffice file-format adoption (Score:3, Insightful)
Caller: "I'd like to ask some questions about the document you sent me. OK, in the second paragraph starting on page 4, which starts with "In case of a system problem..."
You: "In my copy, that paragraph starts with "If you need to reformat the disk..." You need to set your font size to 10, and make sure you have 1-inch margins when you print. Oh, and be sure you use a variable-width font.
Re:How to speed OpenOffice file-format adoption (Score:3, Insightful)
A non binary filetype has many more perks as well (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:A non binary filetype has many more perks as we (Score:3, Informative)
zdiff (1) - compare compressed files
If that won't work out-of-the-box, it could be made to easily.
XML Formats rock! (Score:5, Interesting)
Using a proprietary data-format, I'd be lost now. Using an XML-Format, I just open the file in a text-editor, check what happenend since my last (regular) save, copy&pasted the changes step by step to the old file, until it crashed.
Then one step back, analyze the problem, send bug-report to Scribus-developers and be a happy man.
Re:XML Formats rock! (Score:3, Interesting)
50 years from now (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:50 years from now (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with you, but in 50 years time, I'll be retired or dead. Most people simply don't think about things like that in the time frame of "many years from now".
Re:50 years from now (Score:4, Interesting)
Data Interchange with Open File Formats (Score:5, Interesting)
In another procect, I use a similar technique to visualize raw data given by CSV (e.g. Adsense data). It saves me a bunch of work I'd had to do manually in Excel.
Magic like this would not be able utilizing proprietary file formats. OOo's XML file format has made my life easier. And I love OOo for it :)
Re:Data Interchange with Open File Formats (Score:3, Informative)
Read from CSV files, Oracle tables (residing on a Linux server), and SQLServer tables, combine into one or more graphs, lists, and charts, user modify if wanted, and one button click output to Powerpoint slides and/or HTML and/or PDF.
Interoperation like this has been a central part of MSOff
Re:Data Interchange with Open File Formats (Score:3, Interesting)
While it is right that MSO has some interoperation features, it might not have the ones I have to use. My Accounting Suite uses Postgres. So great - there seems to be no way to make an invoice with Word or Excel from one single database entry. With OOo, I write my Interoperation features by myself, in any language I am willing to, using any input format I want to.
And try to trigger MSOs interoperatio
Re:Data Interchange with Open File Formats (Score:3, Informative)
Open document formats vs accepted document formats (Score:2, Insightful)
The problem (IMO) with OO.o is that it saves the documents in its own format by default. Sure, you can select to save it to any number of formats, but most people j
Re:Open document formats vs accepted document form (Score:2)
Re:The persistance of Monopolies. (Score:3, Insightful)
In the real world civil suits usually end in settlements that leave both parties more or less where they began. There is compensation for damages, but life goes on.
It is a waste of time to dwell upon an argument that fundamentally leads nowhere.
Might other word processors adopt the format?? (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how feasible it would be for other word processors, such as AbiWord, to use this format natively. Or, at least appear to use the format natively.
That is, after all, what happens in other areas: MS owns the market leading, proprietary, format/protocol, and then the others rally around an open alternative.
BTW, I don't think that the XML encoding is important. What matters is that the format is legally open, that it is published with good documentation, and that there is nothing hidden in it to tie people to OOo.
Re:Might other word processors adopt the format?? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Might other word processors adopt the format?? (Score:3, Insightful)
The OpenOffice format is being standardised by OASIS [oasis-open.org] and the KOffice developers have decided to use it as the native format [kde.org] in future.
Format is open, but is it used? (Score:2)
Are there actually any programs other than OpenOffice.org that can read/write in OOo formats?
Re:Format is open, but is it used? (Score:3, Informative)
File format interchange (Score:2, Interesting)
I favor html to the doc (in any shape or form), but what I do like about OOo is it's file conversions, which are still a little clunky, but they're still usable. I find the following especially useful:
And it's all free.
Open formats are good (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Open formats are good (Score:4, Interesting)
Many people are telling me that OpenOffice could be faster and less demanding on memory, and these are areas where our own products shine. Have you never wanted OpenOffice to start a little quicker?
My personal feeling is that even open source products are not beyond the realm of criticism in areas where they fall down. Mind you, I am seeing that our little PlanMaker/OpenOffice comparison page [softmaker.de] is causing the OOo developers to improve their product. So, even if you never use TextMaker or PlanMaker, you profit from our little row.
Apart from that, I am still convinced that open document formats are the way to go if we all (united and apart) want to break Microsoft's monopoly.
Re:Open formats are good (Score:3, Informative)
The problem was with OOo file format documentation. It's huge but neither complete nor correct. The Oasis documentation was much better. We were backporting information from the Oasis docs to our OpenOffice filters.
Important for government work as well. (Score:5, Informative)
For Peruvian Congressman Villanueva, use of free software and free formats was critical--his letter to Microsoft on why he was rejecting their arguments [theregister.co.uk] explains how important not being locked in is to doing transparent government work in addition to treating citizens well. I'm sure he's not the only one, but his letter to Microsoft is well worth reading.
Yes, open formats are required. (Score:3, Interesting)
This was a big reason they did NOT adopt open office, because in their corporate world (that is the opposite of real life) Microsoft Office was the guarantee that their documents would be accessible in 10 years, or more. I disagreed and did some arguing with them for the importance of open formats, but in the end they choosed Microsoft Office. Because; In the corporate world, Microsoft is king.
I believe they made the wrong choice and (IMO) the correct way of following FDA regulations, etc, is to use open formats for data/documents/etc. However this has not yet been realized by the industry (or FDA, I believe).
However, when the industry DO realize, all open formats will be at a very nice spot compared to Microsoft Office/closed document formats.
Integration is the holy grail (Score:3, Insightful)
The place where the open oo format can rule, is by integrating its use with other open software. Things like, an Apache server that can *create* the document format based on data it holds. By writing php scripts that can output their data directly into spreadsheets that contain formulas etc. Imagine a web application that allows the user to modify the spreadsheet online, without having to download/upload the whole thing. Think collaboration. This is where MS is trying to get too.
The power lies in finding the advantage of documented file formats. But, the first step is creating and documenting them. We just don't have that *killer* app yet.
Office 2k3 has XML support (Score:4, Informative)
Story from the front lines (Score:4, Interesting)
Source: a poorly rendered GIF.
Equipment: one Linux machine, with OpenOffice.org installed.
I found the matching font, got the dots lined up, converted it to a traced object, found the right "burnt sienna" color... but that pukey-green was nowhere in any color selector I could find.
After hunting for nearly a half hour, for an edit box that would let me enter an arbitrary hex triplet, I just saved the file and quit OOo. Then I unzipped the document, opened the style sheet in NEdit, and changed the hex triplets by hand. Save, exit, re-zip, and open it in OOo to see if the changes were correct. Voila!
I never, never ever would have been able to do that in a Microsoft product. I will grant that Microsoft may have made the hex triplet entry somewhat more obvious, but that doesn't mean I would have been able to find it any more easily. They absolutely control how the user accesses the document. OOo lets you access it any way you want.
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:2)
Who cares if its XML?-XML Grouch. (Score:2, Insightful)
To those who don't understand XML, but that's OK. We love you in spite of your faults.
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:5, Insightful)
A proprietary XML file is not at all proprietary compared to a binary file. They're easy for even a novice programmer to figure out how to read.
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:2, Insightful)
<data>
AAAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBBBBBB
</data>
Someone could wrap a binary file with XML tags. Is it suddenly more readable than before?
Abuse of XML (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, between implementing "buzzword compliance" and actually encoding the structure of an object in XML. I can see how publishers of proprietary programs could abuse the letter of the W3C Recommendations by having their programs shove a base64 encoded binary in an undocumented format into an XML element and then trying to sell their programs using a misleading claim that the result benefits from being XML. Should that practice become
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just look at the XML parts of Winamp 5. Colors are specified on a scale running from about +4,000 to -4,000 for each shade, instead of say 24 bit RGB, and including other required settings. Various parts of the skin may get variable names
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:3, Insightful)
So what?
With XML you have to put work into obfuscating it, and you have the possibility of having a clear and reasonably self-documenting format.
With binary formats its already obfuscated from the start. If I hand someone a binary file, were is the built-in indication of endian-ness, work length, data labelling or structure?
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:5, Informative)
The point of XML isnt that its human readable. Its that its machine PARSIBLE and that one can use a rather large number of tools in order to process the CONTENT without having to deal with all the proprietary ***** that is normally in there.
Being able to apply XSL alone on a document means it incredibly simplifys the process of converting from one format to another WITHOUT having to learn YA proprietary format/tools.
And to give you an idea of the value of this - Ive just spent 3 weeks converting a LARGE word document to XHTML (properly, i.e. its accessible, well formed etc etc). If this document had been written in OO (or if it had been possible to import it into OO without OO having convulsions on many of the tables), Id easily have shaved a week off that work.
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:2, Interesting)
You are right, still XML is a hard hitting buzz word that has the attention of the politicians. XML and open formats have been synonymous at least in my country (Denmark) where open formats is something no politicians talk against (as opposed to open source).
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nonsense! OpenOffice adds images as files to its zipped archive. They do not get embedded in the XML. Thus SVG, PNG, TIF, JPG, and all the other image formats are treated the same.
Do this experiment. Create an OpenOffice.org document. Embed an image in the document. Save the document. Rename the sxw file to zip. Open the zip file using your favorite method. Notice that the image is a separate file and not a part of the content.xml file.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
"...nothing more than...:" (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd say that's a pretty good reason right there, especially compared to a non-human-readable one (MS).
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:2)
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:3, Insightful)
I have to agree with the GP post ... it's not the format, it's the documentation of the format that matters.
Let's say that OOo were to disappear one day, replaced with another suite from somewhere else. If that new suite also documented its format, it would be simple, if not completely trivial, to write a convert program to convert from OOo to the new suite. Nothing here is fundamentally different just because OOo uses XML.
The only difference between XML and other formats is that with XML you may not ne
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:2, Insightful)
The file format of OOo XML files is gzipped ASCII.
KFG
Re:Who cares if its XML? (Score:4, Insightful)
...
The fact that the data format is documented (and the commitment to keep it so) is what's important.
Amen. I blogged [silmaril.ie] more open file formats for my wishlist just last week and I've just received abuse from the anti-XML faction ("too hard", "too fiddly", "just a fad"). OK, so I haven't exactly been polite about programmers who don't grok XML in the past, but believe me there is still a hard core of non-Microsofties out there who still want XML to die :-)
The fact that the format is XML is rather meaningless [...] For many things XML is unsuitable/non-optimal...
Yes, it could have been a number of formats (ODIF, anyone? :-) but XML was explicitly designed for (well, inherited its application to) textual information [w3.org], so it's a little captious to say it's unsuitable for binary data, but the important long-term reason is not just that it's documented, it's that it's based on an international standard [iso.org], so it's public, stable, and cannot be hijacked [nzoss.org.nz] by corporate factions (they'll try).
You should care that it's XML...
Re:Why not just .pdf? (Score:2)
Re:OO Templates? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hate to point out the obvious... (Score:2)
Word is the defacto standard now. Open it up and let other companies make programs to use it. As we speak, office 2003 is incompatible with older versions to once again lock people into microsoft software.. this just sucks.
Re:Stuck in DOC-land. (Score:2)
You web link also does not work!
Re:OpenOffice is better (Score:2)
Re:OpenOffice is better (Score:2)
You really must like OOo a lot since it automatically changes ALOT to a lot
Re:opendoc? (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDoc
Re:open format != popular format (Score:3, Funny)
that'll show them.
Re:Why bother with WYSIWYG? (Score:3, Interesting)