Microsoft Lashes out at Massachusetts IT Decision

scoop writes "Infoweek is reporting that the plan to eliminate the use of Office by the Massachusetts state government (previously covered on Slashdot) has not gone over well with Microsoft. Microsoft's Yates said the company agrees with the adoption of XML but does not agree that the solution to "public records management is to force a single, less functional document format on all state agencies." Microsoft also states they will not support the OpenDocument format. Looks to me Microsoft is scared their biggest cash cow is in danger from a free alternative. Soon I'm sure we'll see a Microsoft funded comparison between Office and OpenOffice."

Embedding VoIP in documents

[Anonymous Coward]

Further, he added, "this proposal acknowledges that Open Document does not address pictures, audio, video, charts, maps, voice, voice-over-IP, and other kinds of data our customers are increasingly putting in documents and archiving."

Last time I checked, it wasn't possible to embed "voice-over-IP" in M$ documents either..

Re:quite stupid decision

[Pipedings]

Well, I don't understand why they don't want to support it. The Office 2003 XML format is also open (perhaps a bit less "open", but open anyway) It's not open just because it's XML. XML littered with calls to undocumented, vendor-specific libraries isnt any more open than the previous .doc Formats. And Microsoft is not "stupid" for not supporting OpenDocument. What good cause would you have to use M$ Office for 500$ when you can get OOo free? Oh sure, somebody might actually make use of an obscure M$ Office feature. Then again, an Office suite that can't handle page counts in the hundrets isn't worth anything to me.

Re:IE follows HTTP Standards?

[jez9999]

What makes it more humourous is that I believe he meant to say "HTML standards". If it didn't comply with HTTP standards, it might have a bit of trouble connecting to servers. :-)

Re:Flexibility?

[Bert64]

He also states:
"this proposal acknowledges that Open Document does not address pictures, audio, video, charts, maps, voice, voice-over-IP, and other kinds of data our customers are increasingly putting in documents and archiving."

how would you put voice-over-ip into a word processing document? if it's stored in a file then it's not exactly travelling over ip anymore.. it's merely a voice recording in a file, for which many formats already exist..
As for voice, audio, video, pictures etc, there are already documented open standards for such files, and opendocument will include these files in their original format inside the zip container.. what's the point of converting existing open formats into an xml representation of the same format?

Re:Results are in early

[Linker3000]

Just for clarification - what do you mean by 'eats large documents' - do you mean it copes well? I hope not because having had to work on courseware developed by others in Word, in my experience, the software chokes (ie crashes and corrupts files) big time on large documents regardless of whether they are in one large file (ie: >200 pages) or split into chapters. Image placement is very erratic and on most Word-originated projects we move all of the text and graphics into either Pagemaker or InDesign.

If you have ever seen a large Word document where all the image placeholders have become replaced with a large red cross you will know what I mean. Hooray for regular backups.

Re:It's about ideology not flexibility

[MadEE]

According to the OASIS spec Embedded images (among other things) seem to be supported.

Re:Results are in early

[thc69]

Open Office (comparatively) sucks.

Okay, I'll feed the troll, as I agree about older versions. I've found OOo 1.14 to be inferior to modern versions of MS Office, myself. It was slow and unstable, and lacked functionality, IME. I kept trying to give it a chance, and finally gave up.

Have you tried OOo 2.0 beta yet? It kicks ass. It's quick, stable, smaller footprint than MS Office, has all the functionality I've ever used from MS Office, as well as features that I need that AREN'T in MS Office.

If all that wasn't enough, it handles almost every oddball, complex previously created MS Office file I feed it. I have some spreadsheets and Word templates that I'd never expect to work in OOo, but all except one work perfectly.

Wanting to print in booklet form, I downloaded a MS Word template, and it works fine in OOo 2.0 beta under Suse. The template in question is at http://rickyspears.com/blog/?p=76 [rickyspears.com] . However, I've found that it may not be necessary -- it appears that the functionality is built in to OOo, in the form of some of it's print options.

Re:Beware of Bribery

[mwa]

However, don't be surprised if Massachusetts backpedals on their decision...

They already have. Only they backpedalled away from Microsoft Office XML.

The previous draft of the standard allowed the use of Microsoft's XML file formats. Microsoft even changed their XML licensing in response to Massachusetts initial concerns.

Not to be hood-winked, lots of open source/open data/open information supporters took time to educate the drafters on exactly how Microsoft's format was not free. Take note of Groklaw articles [groklaw.net] regarding Mass., XML, and OpenDoc.

This is a huge win for open standards and democracy. The MA drafters' first priority has been citizen access to information and, once explained, they clearly understood that Office's formats are not "free" as in "freedom of the people to access government information."

Arguments about any quality or attribute of file formats other than free access to all citizens are not going to fly anymore in MA. Here's hoping other governments learn from this.

Re:Flexibility?

[mikael]

How would you put voice-over-ip into a word processing document?


The same way you would put streamed video on a webpage. You'll have some tiny embedded object that lists the application to be run and the file path/url to open.

For voice-over-ip, you would have the application and the telephone address/number of the person/company to be dialed.

Re:It's about ideology not flexibility

[belthezar]

Documents saved in OpenDoc format under OpenOffice 2 beta just show up as one file. I have no idea whether there is some sort of seperation inside of that file, and frankly I don't care. As far as I can tell it's just one file even with pictures embedded in it.

I haven't tried to embed any "VoIP" though.

Hope that helps.

Re:It's about ideology not flexibility

[belthezar]

Replying to myself here ....

I just opened one of my document files with WinRAR just to see what would happen, and it looks like it is seperate files and folders inside the main file. (including a Pictures folder which had my embedded picture in it)

Pretty interesting stuff!

Re:Free Office Viewers

[lovebyte]

And obviously these free office viewers work on other systems than windows? No.
You still need to buy MS system to view them.

OpenDocument is a Good Thing

[chris-chittleborough]

OpenDocument is an OASIS standard, but it comes from the StarOffice/OpenOffice people. They obviously put a lot of work into developing a good set of formats for office documents, as opposed to letting the coders design the format. (I'm a coder, but ...) They make heavy use of W3C standards such as CSS, XSL-FO, SVG and MathML, so there's lots of potential for interopability. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument [wikipedia.org] for a good introduction. You can download the OpenDocument specification itself from http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?w g_abbrev=office [oasis-open.org]. From what I've read, it's an excellent piece of work.

Contrast this to Microsoft's poorly-documented new XML format, which is mired in the deep and dangerous swamps of backward compatibility with everything from OLE onwards.

Which would you trust?

Some areas where Writer is worse than Word

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

What specific gripes do you have with Open Office? What does MS Office do for you that Open Office doesn't?

I'm not the poster you're replying to, but I've also expressed the opinion that OpenOffice.org is (at least for now) inferior to MS Office in several ways. Here are a few, from direct personal experience, about Writer vs. Word in particular:

• The usability is terrible.
  • Shortcut keys for selecting styles and inserting special characters, anyone? Writer is a goddamn word processor, and I shouldn't have to reach for my mouse every two or three characters in order to type common special symbols and do routine formatting.
  • I have similar gripes about direct formatting. Where are the shortcut keys (or even the menu commands, sometimes) to simply remove all character formatting or all paragraph formatting and return to the style's default settings?
  • Navigating the cursor around things like text boxes and tables is almost impossible to do reliably.
  • Want to update a table of contents that's marked non-editable? Try right-clicking on it to get the menu option and... oh, you can't.
• Mail merge is terrible. It has basic limitations when it comes to the output produced (though in fairness some of these are expected to be fixed in the forthcoming OOo 2.0). The whole data sources architecture is broken horribly, particularly if you're using a Calc spreadsheet as a source. In MS Office, it just works. I have watched more than one person give OpenOffice.org a fair try, experience its mail merge, label it something we wouldn't repeat in polite company, and go back to Word, probably never to return.
• Tables of contents don't work reliably. Try doing a typical book thing of having an abbreviated table of contents with just the chapter titles, followed by a more detailed one with the sections as well. Writer can't, at least not without getting all the page numbering and title information seriously wrong.
• The styles system isn't just confusing, it's broken in several places. Try doing anything non-trivial with numbering, and it all goes to pieces. Try specifying useful things like relative sizes in a supposedly hierarchical system (as in, I'd like the test for a Heading 1 to be 120% of the size of the main body text) and you find that either you can't, or your relative information is just converted to absolute values immediately, missing the point completely.
• The page layout tools have some frankly bizarre limitations. You don't seem to be able to place a text frame of an exact size, and then insert a table into it to fill the frame, for example. You have to have a blank line outside the table afterwards, whether you want it or not.

I could go on for a long time, but the upshot is that OpenOffice.org Writer is fine for routine word processing where all you need is typing a letter. Then again, so is any glorified text editor. When it comes to the extra stuff a WP is supposed to bring you -- better formatting/page layout, stylesheets/document templates, tables of contents, mail merge, etc. -- it just has too many elementary bugs and usability flaws for me to recommend it over MS Word any time soon. It's a good effort, and with time and some insight from the project leaders, it could easily overtake Word in these areas, but it's not there yet.

They mean for dictation

[doodlelogic]

And it is big business. Lawyers, accountants, etc dictating, saved in a word document then sent over IP to a secretary either in the office or in India.

Re:Flexibility?

[JPriest]

That feature is named "Click To Call"

Re:It's about ideology not flexibility

[ozmanjusri]

I really don't see how they can justify such FUD

It's less FUD and more self-justification. If you open an OOo .odt XML file (rename it to a .zip and open it with Winzip or Windows zipfile on Windows) you will see a directory structure which includes folders for embedded objects. The XML then references the images or charts.

Microsoft's Office XML embeds the chart/image data in the XML as binary, and it's that embedded binary data which allows Microsoft to keep Office formats proprietary and retain data lock-in, while giving the appearance of using an open format.

The true irony here...

[Chordonblue]

...is that is was Microsoft THEMSELVES who helped form OASIS - the group that came up with the OpenDocument schema. If Mr. Ballmer can stop throwing chairs and primal screaming for a few seconds, perhaps he can explain why MS pulled out of OASIS at the last minute and why MS Office will not accept that format. Specifically now MS, why is this format less functional? HINT: it's not an answer to say, 'because we don't control it'.

Either way, MS will have a lot of dancing to do to explain why it is that every other word processor will use OpenDoc but them. Expect to see the battle happen over and over again in other states governments, schools, etc.

Re:It's about ideology not flexibility

[arose]

OOo puts the images together with the XML into an archive (a simple zip in fact), this not only gives you a self-contained document, but also saves space.

Re:Results are in early

[gullevek]

It doesn't need an email client, because Mac OS X itself comes with an full email client.

Pages is a very nice write program for more the home user, or somebody who writes a lot with templates etc.

Keynote is really great and gives PowerPoint kick in the ass. And PP is the most used program in my company. The Mac Users are prefering Keynote over PP ...

But I really miss a spreadsheet app. Thats what I use most the time. and I really dislike Excel, cause it doesn't do what I want ... Reading in various formated CSV files (different delimiters, different encodings) or writing them.

OLE

[Midnight Thunder]

Don't forget that word documents are actually OLE containers, alowing embedding of an OLE object, much like a plugin in a web page. In fact it is that aspect that causes problems sometimes, when the plug-in software is not installed on the platform where it is being viewed.

For my 5c worth, MS Office is a good piece of software, but I just find it a little too expensive for using at home. If it was $200 CAN, or less, as opposed to $700 [amazon.ca] then I might actually consider paying for it.

I have used the MacOS X version of office, and except for the major issue of not supporting Cocoa data formats, in the copy-paste process, its a very useable piece of software. I just wish they would address the outstanding issues. See this thread [google.ca] for more infor on the copy-paste issue. NeoOffice on the Mac still feels like it could do with a fair bit of GUI refinement.

Re:Results are in early

[CastrTroy]

OO.o is technically superior. I'll give you two reasons. Draw, and Base. Draw is really nice to have when you want to do page layout with lots of pictures. Coming from a coreldraw background, its' nice to have an application that can do good page layout without having to pay through the nose for coreldraw, pagemaker, or quark. It's also nice to have it integrate nicely with the office suite. Which neither corel, pagemake, or quark do.

Base is also superior to Access. Access is a terrible database system. Base lets you connect to just about any database system. Imagine all those crappy databases strewn all over your organization centrallized on a single computer running MySQL. Access doesn't support some very useful SQL statements, and it scales terribly.

Oh, and if the formatting gets messed in word, you're pretty much screwed. You can't do much to save your document, short of doing a copy, paste unformatted, redo all your formatting. With OO.o, I can unzip it, look at the XML, and remove the unnecessary XML that's causing the problems. Really they should add a "reveal codes" feature like there used to be for Wordperfect 5.1. It's nice to know that I can fix it if I need to though. I don't know why they ever developed a word processor without this. You have to admit, that no matter how good your wordprocessor is, there's always going to be a time when you want to edit the formatting directly. There's always going to be problems. Might as well allow the user to fix them.

Re:"Additional" functionality of Office

[aaronl]

The format is, in theory, compatible. They're all bloated OLE memory dump based files.

Moving from Windows to Mac can screw it up, having different printers can screw it up, and sometimes one version of Word just decides that it doesn't *like* that file from another version. Sometimes Word can't open files that it created itself. Sometimes different versions will render completely different.

Hell, sometimes you have to open a Word doc in OpenOffice, save it, and then go back to Word. If you ever open a document and it comes up blank, Word probably decided it's having a bad day. Try the OOo trick and it comes back.

Basically, OOo is more version compatible with Word docs than Word is.

Also, don't forget the new Office format is XML. That makes it incompatible with all other versions of Office.

Re:Some areas where Writer is worse than Word

[Noksagt]

What specific gripes do you have with Open Office? What does MS Office do for you that Open Office doesn't?

In this context, the argument should really be about OpenDocument vs. .DOC or MS XML file formats, as that is what MS has complained about. I think people would find it far more difficult to come up with gripes.

In fairness, that isn't the question parent post responded to. I agree that OO.o isn't perfect. But I disagree with some of the complaints.

The usability is terrible.

Applies to both products. There was an IT Conversations piece about how some support guy helped some famous actress/screenwriter with MS Office & ended up removing all functionality except save, print, and bold.

Shortcut keys for selecting styles and inserting special characters, anyone?

This doesn't work for me in MS Office. I'm sure that the problem exists between the keyboard and chair, but I assign a shortcut key to the angstrom or degreee symbol or various greek letters & they don't persist beyond the current session. That is, I close office & reopen it & the shortcuts don't work. Even if I open the same document.

Assigning persistent macros in OO.o works fine for me. (What's your problem? Ease of assigning them?) However, a better solution is to use deadkeys, Multi_key and/or Mode_switch in X. This makes my special symbols work in every application.

Writer is a goddamn word processor, and I shouldn't have to reach for my mouse every two or three characters in order to type common special symbols and do routine formatting.

Again, this is far from my experience. I'm anti-mouse as well.

I have similar gripes about direct formatting. Where are the shortcut keys (or even the menu commands, sometimes) to simply remove all character formatting or all paragraph formatting and return to the style's default settings?

I have a macro to do this:

MyText = Shape.getstring()
Shape.setString(MyText)

Navigating the cursor around things like text boxes and tables is almost impossible to do reliably.

Different from MS is not impossible. I find programs to be frustrating. But I also think Word Processors were never intended to be layout programs, so I forgive both.

Want to update a table of contents that's marked non-editable? Try right-clicking on it to get the menu option and... oh, you can't.

Works over here (OO.o 1.1.4 on Linux).

Tables of contents don't work reliably. Try doing a typical book thing of having an abbreviated table of contents with just the chapter titles, followed by a more detailed one with the sections as well. Writer can't, at least not without getting all the page numbering and title information seriously wrong.

Again, seems to work here.

OO.o (and Abiword/Gnumeric) are already serving as needed supplements to MS Office in our organization & are solely used for some major documents by some people. Despite your personal gripes (some of which are legitimate bugs), it is being used right now.

Yes...

[Anonymous Coward]

These articles are delicious with irony. I sometimes find it difficult to believe these are real! Do any of the Microsoft PR people ever sit down and read statements they've made?

I realize that it's a rhetorical question, but yes, they do. That's why they still have jobs, which they have done magnificently (they haven't been sued for lying, have they?).

Re:Some areas where Writer is worse than Word

[rmcd]

Two colleagues are writing a textbook using Word, which they selected because of the collaboration features. At some point the auto-numbering got confused and the publisher had to hire a consultant to go through the entire manuscript and fix it: sections, figures, equations, you name it.

I used Word to prepare a report full of autonumbering. I was careful to use styles for everything. I inserted a table of contents and not only did all the numbering vanish, so did all the bullets!

I know that there are folks who have figured out Word's idiosyncracies and can produce high quality documents with it. But I have *never* had an acceptable experience with it. It always does something unexpected. Not a rant, just a statement of fact.

Re:Some areas where Writer is worse than Word

[Anonymous Coward]

Writing a textbook in anything other than TeX is just insane. With TeX you get it all, CVS/SVN support, diff, patch etc. Layout separated from content, heck you can even use LyX which imo is lightyears ahead of Word in ease of use. Btw, I've introduced LyX to some computer unsavvy users (my GF included) many of which likes the fact that they don't have to think about tabulating text. Some people just doesn't seem to be able to understand how tabs work at all, no matter what, they just place multiple spaces. Which of course makes everything a hell when changing fonts or printing the output. All wobbly and bad page breaks etc..

Re:Flexibility?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not true.. the OpenDocument format supports OLE objects.

Re:Flexibility?

[richlv]

was this a serious question ? :)

yes, openoffice.org supports embedded objects like spreadsheets in text documents, text passages, spreadsheets in presntations and, i think, almost any combination of these in any component.

and it's not something that will be introduced in 2.0 - it has been there... well, for some time - i just can't remember, because it was there when i needed it the first time :)