What Does the Microsoft ODF Converter Mean?

Andy Updegrove writes "It's been a week now since Microsoft announced its ODF/Office open source converter project - time enough for 183 on-line stories to be written, as well as hundreds of blog entries (one expects) and untold numbers of appended comments. Lest all that virtual ink fade silently into obscurity, it seems like a good time to look back and try to figure out what it all means. In this entry, I report on a long chat with Microsoft's Director of Standards Affairs Jason Matusow, and match up his responses with the official messaging in the converter press release. The result is a picture of a continuing, if slow and jerky, evolution within Microsoft as those that recognize market demands for more openness debate those that want to follow the old way. This internal divide means that the proponents of change need to point to real market threats in order to justify incremental changes. This adaptation by reaction process leaves Microsoft still lagging the market, but has allowed those that favor a more open approach to gradually turn the battle ship a few degrees at a time."

Duh

Embrace, extend, extinguish? At least that is what everyone here is going to say, so I don't even see why the editors bothered to post this story. It's slashdot, we always have the same response to news about microsoft.

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of:

It means: there will be yet another way for desk potatos to potentially send me emails that aren't loaded up with some bell or whistle or whatnot that breaks them under anything other than the very newest version of MS Office.

Along with text, RTF, and older MS formatting.

And just like all those other options, they won't use it.

Oh, Boy!

I can keep using microsoft office forever if they support, fully and properly ODF. Actually that is only a semi-funny thought as I actually do enjoy using microsoft office as compared to the alternatives.

Re:Oh, Boy!

I don't think it's funny at all. Look, for lots of everyday uses, Microsoft Word isn't a bad program. Outlook, Excel, Powerpoint-- these all have their valid uses, and they all do a pretty decent job.

Is it good enough that I'd want to spend hundreds of dollars for it when there are free alternatives? Maybe, maybe not. It depends on what I'm doing and what I want, but I've spend money on Photoshop and Acrobat, and those also have free alternatives. I could imagine Microsoft Office remaining successfull if Microsoft starts selling it based on its own merits.

However, as someone running an IT department, I'm trying to migrate to OpenOffice where ever I can. It's not so that I can save a couple hundred dollars here and there, but I'm just entirely sick of the abuse Microsoft heaps on its own customers. All the vendor lock-in, piracy checks, and all the rest-- it hurts my company's flexibility. It worries me that my company might find itself in a position where it can't access its own data. I'm annoyed by the idea that Microsoft's default format isn't real XML, which would be easier for our databases to generate/process.

So what I'm saying is, yes, I'd like Microsoft to use/support real open standards. I'd like their systems to play well with others. I'd like to see a better version of Office for the Mac, and a version for Linux-- there have been times when I would have bought Office for Linux, even though Evolution/OpenOffice is working well enough.

I'd like Microsoft to do those things specifically because I kind of like Microsoft Office, and I'd like to keep using it. However, I can't, in good conscience, put my company's future at Microsoft's mercy because some executive in Microsoft is a childish prick who insists on leveraging their monopoly to the point of hurting their own customers. It's unacceptable.

Beating Microsoft to the punch...

Not so good times for Microsoft anymore... :-)

Today I saw this: www.officeviewers.com

You answered your own question

"...183 on-line stories to be written, as well as hundreds of blog entries (one expects) and untold numbers of appended comments"

While I'm sure they will come out with a useful tool of some sort, the bottom line is free marketing (IMHO).

It means...

...that you can convert ODF documents to and from Microsoft products with a simple plugin, I hope. Otherwise, I will have to keep on converting to .doc whenever I have to send out my CV.

Re:It means...

Write your C.V. in HTML and hand out the URL. Much more fun and saves on the bandwidth.

Tom

Re:It means...

I don't need people modifying my CV so I send it out in PDF and have never heard one complaint about the file format.

Avoid the bash and move straight to the tangent

I'll avoid the typical MSFT bashing and move on to a tangent.

When will "professionals" realize that Word is not meant for all documents? It's great for short documents, posters, etc. But for real professional looking documents it's hard to beat a typesetter like TeX [or LaTeX].

This has nothing to do with bashing MSFT and everything to do with bashing the "one size fits all" mentality.

Tom - Who hates writing a book in Word but will do it anyways because its good for the resume.

Re:Avoid the bash and move straight to the tangent

This is typical anti-OSS flamebait but I'll respond anyways.

TeX is a 30 yr old system still used today for a reason. Not saying the commercial side is bad but if you're working on a budget and need precision nothing beats TeX. Not only that but TeX is CVS friendly which comes in handy if you work in a team.

Besides, academia is moving towards Word for the very reason I cited. "oh it can do anything". Look at the recent LLNCS call for papers. They used to only accept photo-ready postscripts. Now they accept .doc files straight for the submitters.

And to add to that, writing a book in Word is cruel. You never get to see the final product and the flow/layout is just awful. When I was working on my first book I could easily make a modification then see what the final product would look like. Regenerating the entire 320 page book takes a mere minute [less really]. As an author it's encouraging to know what your presentation will look like as you work on it.

With my second book I will know what my pages look like a mere week or two before it hits the printers. That gives me very little time to review the layout and submit feedback. So I may get stuck with a book that really doesn't reflect what I wanted to accomplish.

Tom

Re:Avoid the bash and move straight to the tangent

When will "professionals" realize that Word is not meant for all documents?...This has nothing to do with bashing MSFT and everything to do with bashing the "one size fits all" mentality.

I agree fully.

I'm currently working in an office environment. Personally, I haven't used MS Word here yet - for every document I've created I've either used LaTeX (great for citations, macros, and breaking things into chapters) or Pagemaker (great when you want to do layout by hand.)

Everyone else in this building, however, uses MS Word as their Blunt Instrument to do whatever task they have to get done. They use Word primarily because it's what they know, it works (albeit poorly) and in the end, they're uncomfortable with computers. To a lot of the general population, even an office population, computers are still magic black boxes. I'm not sure if there's a way to combat that fear. How many people can change their own oil? Fix their own TV?

We're geeks. We learn the most efficient way to do things because that is in our nature. Most people won't bother. They just want to get the damn job done, even if they end up wasting more time in the long run.

Re:Avoid the bash and move straight to the tangent

"We're geeks. We learn the most efficient way to do things because that is in our nature. Most people won't bother. They just want to get the damn job done, even if they end up wasting more time in the long run."

I've spent a good deal of time in both Word and LaTeX and hear this all the time from geeks who still use LaTeX for everything.

It's worth pointing out that LaTeX is not the most efficient way of doing most documents. It is very good at handling citations, but that's it. For everything else, it is inefficient compared to a word processor. And, word processors could have excellent support for citations, if there was a market for it (a few thousand acadmics who expect all software to be free is not a market).

To back up that statement a bit, consider the process of createing a document in LaTeX. Usually, you open up a text editor, write your document using LaTeX's markup language and 'compile' the document. Once its compiled, you look at it in xpdf, find the layout/grammar bugs, and repeat. At some point, you start breaking the document out into sub-files that contain sections or complex equations, and it's not uncommon to have a main.tex file that builds the final document, usually with the aid of a makefile.

Given that workflow, can you see any reason LaTeX would appeal to geeks? Think about it. It's exactly the same way we learned to develop code in school! Edit, compile, run, subroutines, makefile. It _appears_ to be the most efficient way because it maps nicely to something we do on a regular basis. But, most people stopped using text editors and makefiles when IDEs matured. Here's the secret: Word processors are the IDEs of layout.

Let's look a little deeper. To do any basic formating in LaTeX, you have to surround your text with markup. That's extra typing, which is not terribly efficient. And, when you're reading heavily marked up text, you have to filter out the markup to make sense of things. To catch any layout errors, you rely on a viewer for feedback, which adds a roundtrip between the viewer-editor-web. I threw Web in there, because if you've ever tried to do any _real_ layout in LaTeX, you'll need to hunt down the secret incantation that solves your problem. Then there's spell checking. Sure, FlySpell is nice in Emacs, but it's hardly state of the art. Grammar checking? Don't even thing about it (yeah, I know this is of limited usefulness, but it helps sometimes).

Now, go back to a word processor. There's no extra markup to type, layout problems can usually be resolved by tweaking a few settings available from the context (right-click) menu, there's no compile-debug cycle. Styles (even in Word) can be defined to change the look of a document instantly (as long as you know how to use them, but the same is true for LaTeX). For complicated documents, word processors do start to show their rough edges. But, LaTeX doesn't scale that well, either. And, that's a customer issue, most people just don't do enough complicated layout for it to matter. Output formats? "Save as..." (and don't try the human readable claim - how often do you really go back and edit things outside the program you created them in? Be honest.)

So, next time you find yourself claiming that LaTeX is the best way to do everything, take a step back and make an honest evaluation of your workflow.

-Chris

Re:Avoid the bash and move straight to the tangent

You're right. That's why I started using LyX [lyx.org].

Avoid the tangent and move straight to the bash

The "existence" of the ODF plugin might really mean the exact opposite of what everyone would like it to be. In fact, it might mean the same thing as "Posix compatibility" or "Kerberos" did.

In other words, big migrations never happen overnight. Let's say that an executive has made a commitment to move his organization over to ODF. If Microsoft were to continue stiffing ODF acceptance, the first action would be to start rolling out and training an alternative tool, like OpenOffice. On the other hand, if Microsoft has announced an ODF plugin is coming, the first action is to stand pat, and wait for it. At this point, 3 things may happen:
1: Microsoft delivers an ODF plugin, and the migration moves onward.
2: The executive moves onward to a new position, and the ODF migration can be safely ignored and/or rescinded.
3: Things continue as-is until the deadline approaches and there's still no ODF plugin. At this point the business can either go into some sort of panic mode or make the first, perhaps of many, perhaps indefinite, ODF migration deadline postponements.

Note that all it takes is the promise of an ODF plugin to defer the whole "ODF threat". It's easy to add "schedule slips" and other such to slow the entire migration plan to a crawl, possibly even to increase its cost until everyone cries "Uncle" and decides that Office licenses until Doomsday are cheaper.

Turning the ship heading...

Bah, it's only an illusion. Microsoft's behaviour is not an accident, it's by design. This will only last for as long as it gives positive PR (a few weeks at most). Then it will silently fade into oblivion. That will be the sign that the captain is still at the wheel.

Duh

It means Open Document Format...geez, some acronyms are just easy...

Battleship

turn the battle ship

And that's the problem. The public perception is still Microsoft as a weapon of war. And it's the perception because that's still how Microsoft operates. Going beyond the open/closed debate they need to stop treating IT as a battleground. As soon as they switch from a war mentality to a peace and cooperation mentality things will go a lot smoother. For as long as they make a fight out of things there will be trouble. Maybe one day they'll learn there's actually money to be made while at peace with others.

Re:Battleship

Slashdot will forever hate Microsoft

That's a load of crap. There are valid reasons for disliking Microsoft at the moment. They try to push proprietary, patented file formats/codecs/protocols into the community so that everyone feels pressure to use Microsoft software.

I don't mind if Microsoft software is crap, because I can just choose not to use it.
I don't mind if Microsoft software is proprietary, because I can just use something else.

I DO MIND when Microsoft forces their users to try to exchange files with me that are in formats that Microsoft have made sure I can't read, either through secret specifications or through legal (software patent) pressure.

If Microsoft played nice, they could get along well with the Slashdot community. Have you ever considered why Microsoft has Internet Explorer? They don't make money by selling it. It's not really a decent browser - other browsers are better. So why do they have it? Why not just bundle Firefox or something else with Windows? IE is a power grab. Its sole purpose is to be incompatible with web standards so that websites are written specifically for IE and won't work well for users of other operating systems.

Re:Battleship

As soon as they switch from a war mentality to a peace and cooperation mentality things will go a lot smoother.

I think it is almost the opposite. Microsoft has always been at its best when it was not in control of the market, and had to fight for success. I remember very, very fondly Word 2.0 on DOS. That was a thing of beauty, and it came out of the need to compete with WordPerfect and Wang and all the other word processors on the market in those days. Microsoft weren't trying to lock out new competitors in those days, they were participants in a competitive landscape. That is what is missing -- that idea that they are participants in a fray, not the idea that they should enforce the Pax Microsoftia where no competitors are allowed.

Nothing

It means nothing at this point. It's only usable with Word 2007 and .Net 2.0. They are probably just trying to put on a show till all the government pressure is behind them.

Depends on the Implementation

Depending on how Microsoft chooses to implement it, it can be a Good Thing or a Distracting Thing. For example:

• They can make it simple or difficult to change the default file format (hide the option in some obscure dialog or make it impossible to implement via a group policy)

• They can change the default file format back to the proprietary format whenever there is a service pack (think Internet Explorer browser tug-of-war)

• They can throw up dialogs like "If you save in this format your document may look like crap later" (sort of what they do now)

If they stick to previous behavior, the converter will work, but it will be annoying enough to implement that a lot of people and organizations won't bother with it.

The real reason for this project is...

Imagine if Microsoft Office had the ability to create PDF files from any application without the dependancy on an Adobe plugin? Well, they already proposed that to Adobe and were denied. This is the solution, eventually PDF documents will become obsolete!

some sort of OpenOfficeConverter???

I was just thinking, when I read the lines:

"if even one citizen wants to send a document to a government in ODF form, they have to be able to deal with it."

I realize that OpenOffice has got an incredibly complex build system, and just sitting down and modifying is more than a simple task. However, it IS open-source, so I was wondering if anyone has considered this possibility:

What about a nice, self-contained version of OpenOffice, but with all of the GUI stuff stripped out, which instead of opening the editor, simply opens a little drag'n'drop dialog box. You select your desired "output format", and drop any document supported by OpenOffice into this window. This would include ODF files, Word docs, RTF, etc. It would then perform the equivalent of "Open" and "Save" in OpenOffice, in whatever format you specified.

Voila, instant converter!
I would think this would be a baby-step towards having a nice universal document converter. It doesn't strike me as totally necessary to have it as an Add-in to Word, at least not immediately.

Yes, this would use OpenOffice's reverse-engineering MSdoc parser for converting to ODF, rather than using Word's native code, but I imagine it would be a good start anyways, and easier to do.

Anyways, I've tried to build OO before and quickly ran out of RAM and disk space, but maybe someone would be up to the task.

HTML is also an open standard

does Internet Explorer follow it?

"Director of Standards Affairs"

...I report on a long chat with Microsoft's Director of Standards Affairs Jason Matusow...

Presumably his title is Director of Standards Affairs because Microsoft's relationship with standards is only ever a quick fling, and someone usually gets fucked.

Outlook

...evolution within Microsoft ...

Wouldn't they use Outlook?

Apples - Oranges

I love this quote from the article

"OpenXML and ODF were created for two very different purposes, and OpenXML is far superior to ODF."

If two things are created for two very different purposes how could one possibly be better than the other? Allow me to butcher a common colloquialism.

The apple and the orange were created for two very different purposes, and the orange is far superior to the apple.

Oh.

Well, if MicroSoft have a Director of Standards Affairs, then I'm sure it won't take threehundred people years to comply with a simple EU-ruling, now will it ?

Two camps

It seems to me that there are two camps inside Microsoft: the developers and the management. The developers seem to want to do cool things. They are reaching out to the development community. (With open source [sourceforge.com], coding4fun [microsoft.com], blogging, channel9 [msdn.com], etc). But the management is still trying to hold on to the old ways and the cash cows [microsoft.com].

Thank goodness...

This is probably going to be modded troll or flamebait, but I really dont mean it to be. In my social circle of geeks there are those who are ODF nazis. They refuse to send me documents in anything but ODF and it pisses the hell out of me. I have held my ground for a while because I, for various reasons, use MS office. Now both sides can be happy. Thank Goodness.

Let's start calling it "MS XML"

Right here, right now: Let us forever more call what Microsoft refers to as "Open XML" as "MS XML."

It's the sensible thing to do.

it doesn't matter

Microsoft may honestly deliver a reasonable ODF converter, or they may create a sham project in an attempt to get the item on their checklist without actually delivering anything usable.

Whichever it is, it doesn't really matter. Microsoft Office will have good support for reading/writing ODF, if not from Microsoft, then from third parties.

Whether Microsoft's converter works and is usable will tell us something about where Microsoft is heading; but for figuring that out, we'll have to wait until the converter and the new version of MS Office are actually out.

Re:Can they extend the format?

You mean, like OO.o already has?
OO.o has extended ODF for its own purposes since the ODF spec itself is incomplete (e.g. lack of a standard for storing spreadsheet formulas).

And how about this little gem?
http://opendocumentfellowship.org/applications/kof fice [opendocume...owship.org]
"Our tests show that OpenOffice and KOffice have some problems opening each other's OpenDocument files. Also, support for drawings is a bit incomplete."

I wouldn't be surprised if MS ends up with better ODF support (i.e. more compliant to the spec, as opposed to just trying to mimic whatever OO.o does) than most ODF-native suites.