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Office 2007SP2 ODF Interoperability Very Bad
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon May 04, 2009 07:55 AM
from the are-you-really-surprised dept.
from the are-you-really-surprised dept.
David Gerard writes "Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 claims support for ODF 1.1. With hard work and careful thinking, they have successfully achieved technical compliance but zero interoperability! MSO 2007sp2 won't read ODF 1.1 from any other existing application, and its ODF is only readable by the CleverAge plugin. The post goes into detail as to how it manages this so thoroughly."
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Technology: Microsoft Office 2007 SP2 Released, Supports ODF Out of the Box 274 comments
shutdown -p now writes "On April 28, Microsoft released service pack 2 for Microsoft Office 2007. Among other changes, it includes the earlier-promised support for ODF text documents and spreadsheets, featured prominently on the 'Save As' menu alongside Office Open XML and the legacy Office 97-2007 formats. It is also possible to configure Office applications to use ODF as the default format for new documents. In addition, the service pack also includes 'Save as PDF' out of the box, and better Firefox support by SharePoint."
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What did we expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, really?
Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Funny)
I might be confusing Microsoft with a wife beater, but the mentality is roughly the same it seems.
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Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Funny)
I might be confusing Microsoft with a wife beater, but the mentality is roughly the same it seems.
What do you tell a user with two black eyes?
(I propose that the answer is "Did you really think Apple was different from Microsoft?" but that might not win me too many points around here. The converse would work almost as well, but nobody would have believed that Microsoft was the good guys.)
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Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's unfair. Apple have never made an iWorks product intentionally produce a broken ODF document! *cough*
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Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Informative)
nobody would have believed that Microsoft was the good guys.
Actually there was a time when Microsoft was hailed as the white knight in the shiny armor freeing us from the evil IBM empire.
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Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually there was a time when Microsoft was hailed as the white knight in the shiny armor freeing us from the evil IBM empire.
Yeah but that was ~twenty years ago, which is like two hundred in do^H^H computer years.
Since then Lancelot has screwed the king's wife and is off in the wilderness slowly going insane.
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Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
| Actually there was a time when Microsoft was hailed as the white knight in the shiny armor freeing us from the evil IBM empire.
I've heard this said, but somehow I managed to miss it. I started work in the industry in 87, and had first encountered microsoft probably in 84. Outside of ziff-davis style vanity press, everything about MS was about what crap they were technically and ethically. The white knights were DEC, BSD, Borland, Commodore, ...
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Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Funny)
Nothing. He's already been told twice.
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Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
If it achieves 100% technical compliance with the standard, but zero interoperability, this is certainly a problem with the standard itself.
And the problem in this case is the missing formula specification. It's not in ODF 1.1, and ODF 1.2 is still a draft. While this is Microsoft and we all "know" that this was intentional, ODF is what should be fixed first. We were all bashing OOXML specifications, but ODF 1.1's far from perfect, as we can see.
Did the author of the article test with anything else than a spreadsheet with formulas? Formula breakage was expected and mentioned in the comments to the previous article. The interesting part is are there other flaws with ODF 1.1, are they addressed by 1.2?
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Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Informative)
And the problem in this case is the missing formula specification. It's not in ODF 1.1, and ODF 1.2 is still a draft. While this is Microsoft and we all "know" that this was intentional, ODF is what should be fixed first. We were all bashing OOXML specifications, but ODF 1.1's far from perfect, as we can see.
That is, curiously, not quite true. ODF 1.1 doesn't fully specify formulas, but it does specify the general syntax that should be used for them, and Microsoft seems to have ignored this. (Also, in practice, the major spreadsheets are quite similar in terms of what expressions they accept in formulas. This makes it relatively simple to convert between MS Office formulas and OpenOffice.org ones, which are what most ODF-based apps use.)
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Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Informative)
From the article:
The irony here is that the formula language used by OpenOffice (and by other vendors) is based on that used by Excel, which itself was not fully documented when OpenOffice implemented it. So an argument, by Microsoft, not to support that language because it is not documented is rather hypocritical. Excel supports 1-2-3 files and formulas and legacy Excel versions (back to Excel 4.0) neither of which have standardized formula languages. Why are these supported? Also, the fact that the Microsoft/CleverAge add-in correctly reads and writes the legacy ODF formula syntax shows not only that it can be done, but that Microsoft already has the code to do it. The inexplicably thing is why that code never made it into Excel 2007 SP2.
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Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly Microsoft's best interests are served by denying their customers interoperability.
That's what drives Microsoft's policy: cash. Everything else is PR. Which is duly born out by their actions.
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Re:Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft (Score:5, Interesting)
Oh course. This has always been true with Microsoft, where in the late 80s/early 90s they advertised they could read WordPerfect files from Amigas or Macs, but all it did was strip all the formatting to leave-behind plain text. Yuck. Even later when Word was released for early PowerMacs, I found that Windows Word could not read the Word documents from my Macintosh.
Microsoft does not want interchanging of information. They want everybody using MS Word on an MS operating system. The end.
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Re:Agreed ... interoperability harms Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft does not want interchanging of information. They want everybody using MS Word on an MS operating system. The end.
Every major vendor would probably like their own product to dominate. The difference is not the motivation, but the methods. Some vendors honestly try to make the best product and win customers by so doing. MS prefers to leverage monopolies to artificially break competing products and prevent users from being able to choose based upon the individual merits of the products in question.
I have no problem with MS wanting their OS and office suite to dominate. I have a problem with their breaking the law and hurting the industry, innovation, and end users to make that happen.
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Re:Never ascribe to malice... (Score:5, Interesting)
Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence
Of course, I am not that cynical. I was taught to never assume malice where incompetence would be the simpler explanation. But the degree of incompetence needed to explain SP2's poor ODF support boggles the mind and leads me to further uncharitable thoughts. So I must stop here.
from the referenced article....
http://www.robweir.com/blog/ [robweir.com]
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Counter-adage (Score:5, Insightful)
There's another saying, and one that I think better applies here: "Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, three times is a conspiracy."
And with Microsoft we're way past three times.
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Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, that depends on who you talk to. Here in the US, that's probably true. Pretty much it's up to Europe to send the lawyers back in.
But, there is a comment at the end of the article to check for an obvious abuse:
The only way for Microsoft to make their legacy ODF documents work and to exclude other vendors would be to specifically look in the document for the name of the application that created the documentThis should be simple to test with a text editor, change the name of the application to match one that works and test that.
Since I don't have access to Office 2007 until I get home tonight, I can't try this out. But if someone feels compelled in the meantime, I'd love to see the results. If the document "magically" works after changing the header, then Microsoft did *not* do enough to keep the lawyers at bay.
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Re:What did we expect? (Score:5, Interesting)
You really think so? The EU will probably slap them with a hefty fine yet again. This is just another example of Microsoft being deliberately anti-competitive.
Except if you look a little closer, the EU doesn't just fine them. The fine is trivial, and does nothing but make the news in the computer press. Just money. A fine is like a parking ticket. And if you are rich enough, you can theoretically see a parking ticket as a parking fee.
Forcing them to correct the problem to the satisfaction of a neutral third party acting as a technical "expert witness" however, is a worthwhile activity. And this can really sting. This is more like taking away their car, or revoking their license. Way more than a slap on the wrist and a stern look.
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They also claim Windows supports Posix (Score:5, Insightful)
As they also claim Microsoft Windows is Posix compliant! It is simply to be able to tic a "mandated" requirement in some government procurement, not as something one would actually use or deploy.
Re:They also claim Windows supports Posix (Score:5, Funny)
As they also claim Microsoft Windows is Posix compliant! It is simply to be able to tic a "mandated" requirement in some government procurement, not as something one would actually use or deploy.
Ah, I think you might have misread that one. The latest version of Windows is fully compliant with the ISO's 'Piece of Shit v9' standard. POS IX, not POSIX.
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Re:They also claim Windows supports Posix (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft Windows is POSIX.1 compliant, which will not help anyone today but which is nonetheless true.
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Re:They also claim Windows supports Posix (Score:5, Informative)
Well if you just go for the basic level of posix support, then yes it does support it. So does 100 other OSes, including weird embedded OSes that can't even run executables. Everything has to be compiled in, but they are "POSIX" too.
To be far UNIX Services for Windows is pretty decent and gives you a very complete POSIX environment on Windows.
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Problem with the Spec (Score:5, Insightful)
So, this is either a problem with the specification or a problem with other implementations. If MS has made a compliant program, who are we to complain?
Good point! (Score:5, Interesting)
I was thinking exactly the same thing. If MS have made a compliant implementation but it isn't compatible with anyone else's, doesn't that mean that ODF is broken? Isn't this exactly the sort of complaint certain people around here have made against Microsoft's own formats in the past: just because there's a standard that officially states what the document format is, it's no use if other people can't realistically implement it and then trust that interoperability will work?
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Re:Good point! (Score:5, Interesting)
Sure, it might be "incomplete" rather than "incorrect", but if we're talking about a standard for interoperability, doesn't "incomplete" pretty much imply "broken"? That sort of standard only has one job, and it isn't going to do it...
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Which means it won't get used.... (Score:5, Insightful)
...which is probably the point of this. The only reason to use ODF instead of MS native formats is for interoperability. When people don't use it, MS can point and say "see people don't want or need it and didn't care when we put it in". Useful at all manner of legal proceeding (antitrust anyone) to show that it's not important.
I'm shocked! (Score:5, Funny)
The article speaks about spreadsheets. (Score:5, Insightful)
The article speaks about spreadsheets, which the slashdot blurb neglected to mention.
Re:The article speaks about spreadsheets. (Score:5, Interesting)
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Unfinished sayings (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the trouble with people saying the first half of a saying and then trailing off. The people who know the saying get the point, and the people who don't remember a fragment and repeat it even though it makes no sense on its own.
To the people tagging this "embraceandextend". Embracing and extending is not a particularly bad thing to do. Many formats, including XML (upon which ODF is based), are built with this in mind. The complete saying that is referred to with "embrace and extend" is embrace, extend and extinguish [wikipedia.org]. The extinguishing is the goal here, the former two are merely tools to help them achieve this.
Everybody pile on Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
In the meantime, how the HELL is it possible the spec is so bad that you can be technically-compliant with it, and yet not be read by (almost) any existing implementation?
Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft... (Score:5, Informative)
this is how [wikipedia.org]
Kind of looks like the whole thing was a farce to begin with given how they created a bad spec and then went on to support a worse one before imploding.
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Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
Except...Microsoft already have a perfectly good plugin that can read & write ODF documents. It appears they've gone out of their way to break that existing code and do things differently to how everyone else (including themselves) are already doing things. As the author of the blog says "If your business model requires only conformance and not actually achieving interoperability, then I wish you well.".
If Microsoft have put all that effort into adding ODF support without actually achieving interoperability then it's a thinly veiled paper exercise on their part.
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Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
The current spec doesn't cover spreadsheet formulas: it has a big whole and basically says "Do what OpenOffice.org does for now".
The problem with MS's specs saying "Do what Word 97 does" is that no one other than MS knows what Word 97 does. But OpenOffice's source code is... open. Anyone can know what OpenOffice does, and if MS is afraid of GPL, they're big enough for proper cleanroom approach.
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Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because specifications are written by people and then read and interpreted by others. While specification creators try to be as complete and thorough as possible, there are still gaps. In something as complex as a document format like spreadsheets, I'd imagine it's an impossible task. Bake-offs where all the stakeholders get into a room, try to get this shit to interoperate, and then decided the proper interpretation, is where the interoperation work gets done. All of the Internet protocols went through a similar cycle. Then, when there is consensus on the interpretations, guidance and reference implementations can be written.
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Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Everybody pile on Microsoft... (Score:5, Insightful)
Self-replying, I know, but I just thought of something else.
According to TFS, Office fails to load ODF files created by any other application. If those files are compliant with ODF standards, the blame for this lies squarely on Microsoft. They fail to open standards-compliant ODF files.
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Well, interoperability wasn't the goal. (Score:5, Interesting)
Even if MS fails all interoperability (which I would bet they do), at least someone could use ODF with office 2007 and 10-20 years later be able to use the spec to develop an app to recover the documents.
Sun ODF plugin for Microsoft Office (Score:5, Informative)
holes in the standard (Score:5, Interesting)
Spreadsheets, people, spreadsheets (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is formulas. (Score:5, Informative)
ODF does not specify the a language for formulas. Everybody but MS uses one language, MS uses another. Of course there are incompatibilities.
Why did ODF not specify a spreadsheet formula language?
Re:I just hope (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, from the article: "First, we might hear that ODF 1.1 does not define spreadsheet formulas and therefore it is not necessary for one vendor to use the same formula language that other vendors use."
Seems like a rather large hole in the spec itself. ODF 1.1 doesn't define spreedsheet forumlas? So, what version will? I wouldn't put any effort into guess, nor making my application read various other vendor formats.. when I may well have to recode again when 1.2 comes out.
If anyone's to blame here, it's the ODF people for not having a COMPLETE spec. If formulas are so important to spreadsheets (and they are), why the hell would your spec not include how to store said forumlas?
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Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because apparently it's really difficult:
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/formula-for-failure.html [robweir.com]
Oasis and ODF committees would rather get it right than have something busted and broken like competing suites.
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Re:Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Interesting. According the article [linux.com] referenced in the Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] even OpenOffice and KOffice don't get along.
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Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft put all their Excel formulas into a private namespace. This is almost as bad as, say, writing a compiler that claims to be a C compiler, but really, all it does is validate the syntax of the C program and then look for C comments containing Pascal code, then compiling the Pascal code instead.
BEGIN
writeln("Microsoft rules!");
END
*/
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
printf("This is standard C code.\n")
}
Is it a problem with the C standard that I can embed Pascal in a C comment?
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Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
In order to claim (in a legalistic sense) technical compliance with the spec in order to be able to sell Office to companies/governments who have adopted policies requiring this, while at the same time making it virtually impossible for those organizations to actually USE a competing office product.
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