Microsoft Announces OOXML-UOF Project with China
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon May 21, 2007 03:17 PM
from the tit-for-tat dept.
from the tit-for-tat dept.
Andy Updegrove writes "Today, Microsoft announced its own interoperability project to bridge the gap between China's domestically developed Uniform Office Format (UOF) and Microsoft's OOXML. In the continuing tit for tat battle between ODF and OOXML, this announcement tracks the intent of an already-existing 'harmonization' committee, hosted by OASIS, that is exploring interoperability options between ODF and UOF. Like the OOXML-ODF translator project announced by Microsoft last year, the new effort will be an open source project hosted by SourceForge. The announcement is, in one sense, no surprise. Microsoft has been waging a nation-by-nation battle for the hearts and minds of ISO/IEC JTC1 National Bodies, in an effort to win adoption of OOXML (now Ecma 376) as a global standard with equal status to ODF (now ISO 26300). In order to do so, it needs to offset the argument that one document format standard is not only enough, but preferable. With UOF representing a third entrant in the format race, easy translation of documents would obviously be key to lessen the burden on customers of products based upon one format or the other."
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Microsoft Announces OOXML-UOF Project with China
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Haaaa (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.everybodysucksbutme.com/)
China: "Sure, whatever."
Microsoft: "What's wrong?"
China: "Can we still pirate software?"
Microsoft: "Sure, whatever."
How about... (Score:3, Funny)
Why? (Score:2, Insightful)
The only straight answer I've heard thus far was from one guy who told me it was because he owned stock in Microsoft. Windows & Office, after all, are the only two profitable divisions in all of Microsoft (and they do make one hell of a profit, precisely because of the lock-in).
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Because for the average user, Microsoft products (at least Office) do the job required, and do it fairly well, and no one is providing anything that, despite file format incompatibility, provides a compelling reason to change aside from "we're a bit cheaper". Without that, no one is going to get up in arms.
If someone comes up with a way to fill the role of the word processor or spreadsheet in a way stunningly better than Microsoft has, then substantial numbers of people will start chafing at vendor lock-in. As long as most competitors are just making "me too, and you can run me on more OS's" products, they'll have a niche, but not a big push for change.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
(http://nickstallman.net/)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)
(http://stylus-toolbox.sf.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday May 15, @11:50AM)
But OpenOffice.org Writer is stunningly better than Microsoft Word [newsforge.com], in many, many ways, unless you're one of those people that simply must have Word's outline view. Better bullets and numbering, better support for templates, support for conditional formatting, and better support for master documents are just a few of reasons why I use OpenOffice.org Writer instead of Word for my writing projects, despite having access to both at home.
Outline view (Score:4, Informative)
I keep hearing about Word's outline view - what does it offer that OpenOffice.org's Navigator does not offer? I can move sections around, demote and promote sections, quickly jump to a section/table/picture in the document from the Navigator. Please enlighten me!
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Competition?? (Score:4, Insightful)
A design competition for file formats would persumably benefit programmers who write word processors. But once the design is fixed, they too would rather implement one format rather than two. Again, the word processor has an internal representation of the data, and reading/writing to disk can be done in many ways. Of course, having the format be a dump of the internal (binary) data structures of your program would be a big boost -- but that can hardly be said to foster competition.
OSPC? (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.animal-assist.org/donate.html)
Open Standards are great!
The Churchill quote (Score:4, Interesting)
(http://booktextmark.mozdev.org/)
We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans,...we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender...
- Winston Churchill, June 4, 1940
It is sort of disturbing to see that and then this text in the next paragraph:
If there was any doubt left in anyone's mind that Microsoft will do everything that it can, and wherever it must, to ensure that ODF makes the minimum inroads possible into its vastly profitable Office franchise, the news of the day should put that doubt to rest. In the continuing tit for tat battle between ODF and OOXML, Microsoft announced yesterday it's own interoperability project to bridge the gap between China's domestically developed Unified Office Format (UOF) and Microsoft's OOXML...
and then this little piece: This will hardly be the last beach upon which Microsoft will defend its Office franchise.
So by this logic MS is a liberator fighting against the evil forces of Free Software.
Probably there is some comedic value in it, but honestly this leaves a very unpleasant taste.
Benefits to MS (Score:2)
What's the big problem? (Score:4, Funny)
(Last Journal: Monday November 08 2004, @07:50AM)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gandunifieddocumentformat xmlns="...">
<ODF>
<!-- ODF stuff -->
</ODF>
<OOXML>
<!-- OOXML stuff -->
</OOXML>
<UOF>
<!-- UOF stuff -->
</UOF>
</gandunifieddocumentformat>
DONE!!!
We are bigger than China (Score:1)
The more standards the better. (Score:1)
It's only right.
All those surprised raise your hands... (Score:1)
In Communist China... (Score:2)
PR (Score:1)
I have no idea what's worse... (Score:1)
(http://www.greg2k.com/)
OOXML-UOF! (Score:1)
That's the great thing about standards... (Score:1)
I, for one welcome our Sino-Corporate overlords (Score:1)
(http://www.corrupt.org/ | Last Journal: Monday November 05, @12:06AM)
There never will be a standard document format (Score:2)
(http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/~synchrotech | Last Journal: Monday September 24, @07:26PM)
Consider that images are fairly easy to describe - "a grid of pixels, each pixel being a particular colour" - and then consider the plethora of image formats still in use today - bmp, jpeg, tiff, gif
Why is this the case? Because needs change depending on context - for images, format choice depends on: file size, fidelity/lossyness, multiple image support, transparency, and the doozy - backward compatibility.
Documents are much more complicated than images - fonts, content, frames, tables, embedded images etc. We'll never see a document format for the ages. Also, things change - e.g. electronic paper might see the rise of animated text/images in documents.
The best we can hope for is tools that can convert between document formats, the same way we deal with multiple image formats. And this means that the formats themselves needs to be very well defined, publicly available and not encumbered by patents.
244? (Score:2)
It's deja vu all over again.... (Score:1)
Re:hey retard ./ editors, it's != its (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.animal-assist.org/donate.html)
Re:hey retard ./ editors, it's != its (Score:1, Funny)
retard
Re:hey retard ./ editors, it's != its (Score:1)
Re:hey retard ./ editors, it's != its (Score:2)
It's easy to loose perspective given the persistant grammar errors.
---
Cry Havoc! and set lose the dogs of war!
Re:hey retard ./ editors, it's != its (Score:2)
"Ooooooh if it's possessive, it's just I-T-S, buuuuuut ifit'ssupposedtobeacontraction then it's I-T-Apostrophe-S!"