OpenDocument Now Published ISO Standard 134
bobibobi writes "After months of revisions, OpenDocument receives status of a full published standard. The various stages of a standard's "stage code are also online." The OpenDocument standard has been developed by a variety of organizations and is publicly accessible. This means it can be implemented into any system, be it free software/open source or a closed proprietary product, without royalties.
Hmmm (Score:1)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Informative)
1.4 What does "international standardization" mean? When the large majority of products or services in a particular business or industry sector conform to International Standards, a state of industry-wide standardization can be said to exist. This is achieved through consensus agreements between national delegations representing all the economic stakeholders concerned - suppliers, users and, often, governments. They agree on specifications and criteria to be applied consistently in the classification of materials, the manufacture of products and the provision of services. In this way, International Standards provide a reference framework, or a common technological language, between suppliers and their customers - which facilitates trade and the transfer of technology.
1.5 What benefits does international standardization bring to businesses? For businesses, the widespread adoption of International Standards means that suppliers can base the development of their products and services on reference documents which have broad market relevance. This, in turn, means that they are increasingly free to compete on many more markets around the world.
1.6 What benefits does international standardization bring to customers? For customers, the worldwide compatibility of technology which is achieved when products and services are based on International Standards brings them an increasingly wide choice of offers, and they also benefit from the effects of competition among suppliers.
http://www.iso.org/iso/en/faqs/faq-general.html [iso.org]
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Funny)
Summary: This means it can be implemented into any system, be it free software/open source or a closed proprietary product, without royalties.
Yeah, I really wish they would have spelled it out for us...
Re: (Score:1)
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)
You mean that the APIs for working with (MS) office files are well documented, not the formats themselves.
Re:Hmmm (Score:4, Informative)
Office 2007 File Format Specs:
http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/TC45-M.
Listing of MSDN Articles on working with the Office 2K7 Formats:
http://openxmldeveloper.org/archive/2006/08/31/59
Re: (Score:2)
Actually you two are both wrong. The current (2007) version of the office file formats are fully documented on the ECMA site, not MSDN (though MSDN does also have some docs on the file formats as well). In fact, it is actually the file formats and not just API documentation that you will find at ECMA.
Okay. Sometimes, Microsoft proponents argue that you don't need to know the details of the format, since they can be accessed though the API, which unfortunately would not work on other platforms.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It can also have proprietary extensions, and you can be sure it will in short order... And finally, is covered by patents.
The good thing about standards bodies: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
So, we should expect no problem with ODF reading and writing all microsoft documents to be able to seamlessly save across formats, then? After all, that is what specifications are for, right? Hmm, I'll believe that when I see it...
Oh, and who owns the IP present in each standard?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Value judgements aside, what do you mean by sold?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you even realise that
Microsoft? (Score:1, Troll)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: (Score:1)
Decades of formats (Score:4, Insightful)
No, they haven't! Most businesses have been using MS Word for one decade -- before that, they used WordPerfect. They actually switched due to a large effort on Microsoft's part to make Word read WordPerfect's format really well, while also being better software than WordPerfect. Software using OpenDocument could do the same thing, especially since it's actually a standard.
Companies have switched office software before; they can do so again.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, it's arguably less than that. The changeover started to happen around the time Win95 was introduced and accelerated as it beca
Re: (Score:1)
Can I load it in Word? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Can I load it in Word? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Everything is said here: "works quite fine"
If this plugin provides a good enough working editor for "simple" odt files, it's gonna be next to useless. I doubt it can do better because sticking with stan
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but... (Score:2)
Let's look at how they dealt with Sendo, a company that partnered with them to help them get into the clubby smartphone biz, ( http [theregister.co.uk]
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
If slashdot had a Bayesian spam filter, its eyes would be bleeding after reading your post.
Standards are good. Just look at MPEG and DVB - now broadcast standards. Complying with a standard delivers interoperability, but that is only useful if you're not the monopoly market leader. It's probably in Microsoft's interest to NOT adopt
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
they are [sourceforge.net]
Note under 'Contributers:' "Microsoft (Funding, Architectural & Technical Guidance and Project co-coordination)"
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Right. And that's why Microsoft isn't spending money lobbying Massachusetts [slashdot.org] to "take away much of the ITD's power to make technology policy". It's not trying to "protect its wildly profitable Office software franchise against potential erosion by competing products that support ODF". Microsoft doesn't care about ODF, yeah right.
Re: (Score:2)
So that's why you use the OpenDocument format!
If only it was that easy :(
Nice. (Score:4, Informative)
Quick example:
We do user requirements using Word. I wanted to extract them into a database so I can relate them
to functional specs, use cases, code, etc (yes, we're just figuring this out now).
To extract the requirements, I had to cut out each section of tables (Lord help you if they're nested,
or misaligned, or misnumbered) and plop it into Excel, scrub it repeatedly (scrub those nubs!), and
only then insert it into a database.
With XML-based documents, I just pull out all of the matching tags, form an INSERT around it, and off it goes into the db.
-BA
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
-BA
Structured, understandable, re-use of standards (Score:3, Informative)
Actually the scenario described, parsing a document to extract data and insert into a database, is much more straight forward in OpenDocument Format (ODF) than in MS Office Open XML (MOOX). Take a look at the specs, even a quick look. ODF is much more oriented to structure, with straight forward labels and makes bette
Re: (Score:1)
-BA
Re: (Score:2)
The Groklaw article [groklaw.net] is written by Alex Hudson, J. David Eisenberg, Bruce D'Arcus and Daniel Carrera of the OpenDocument Fellowship, and it is naturally biased. If you want to see arguments coming from both sides I would recommend the Wikipedia article on the issue [wikipedia.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Would it help if you used catdoc, antiword, wv, or saved the documents as RTF or HTML? Just spouting some suggestions, so that you won't have missed them.
Open source or a closed proprietary (Score:2)
O. Wyss
Re: (Score:1, Informative)
CHF 340 (Score:1)
</irony>
La Resistance (Score:1)
Bah, use TeX :-) (Score:3, Funny)
Tom
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But seriously, I use OpenOffice most of the time, but last year I wrote my 300 page thesis in LaTeX. I would always advocate LaTeX for large/complex documents. Each has their place. Hopefully Open Document, and it's common implementation in applicati
Re:Bah, use TeX :-) (Score:4, Informative)
\input{preamble.tex}
Dear Mary,
~
Sup?
~
Sincerely,
Tom St Denis
\input{postamble.tex}
Wow
Tom
Re: (Score:1)
MountainMan101 wrote:
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
MS Office (Score:2, Redundant)
Re: (Score:2)
Committee-based standards == Disaster (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
- Cough
XML DOMRe: (Score:2)
For the young and/or cl
Re: (Score:2)
Good News (Score:2)
What's bad IMHO is that ISO are charging money just for access to the standard -- it's not available online for you to print on your own equipment at your own expense. But, of course,
Cool... now make it part of another standard (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's see some mass migrations from MS Office to OpenOffice.org and other such Open Source office suites. A few large corporations making the switch will produce case studies and some of those nifty ROI projections the suits always drool over. A snowball effect would be nice. One company makes the move and triggers a chain reaction in all of their vendors, suppliers, distributors, subsidiaries, etc. etc.
Re: (Score:2)
A wider adoption by government bodies would probably provide the snowball effect you're looking for better than business, as it would be part of government regulations, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Having open and documented standards for storing data is ESSENTIAL, and absoloutely should be mandated if necessary. Where would we be if, instead of SATA/IDE/SCSI and CDs, every PC manufacturer used a proprietary type of hard drive and a proprietary form of removable media?
Just because the format is dictated, doesnt place any restriction on what you can use to manipulate the data, so long as it conforms to the standard. I can put my SATA drive i
Re: (Score:2)
You mean, where would we be if SoundBlaster cards had a proprietary CD-ROM interface that everyone used at one time, Iomega's proprietary zip drives became wildly popular, and many more formats like Bernoulli, Sparq, LS-120, Orb, and others were all competing to replace it? A world were different digital cameras have entirely different and proprietary
Re: (Score:2)
The proprietary zip format has died too, they were never as popular as you describe and quite quickly faded away again... Same for LS-120 and the others.
As for the solid state media cards, true there are too many formats, but they're not proprietary, there are many implementations of each format from multiple vendors, and the vast majority of cameras actually support the usb-storage standard anyw
Re: (Score:2)
Not really, but what was your point?
Obviously.
You're just simply wrong. They were selling just under 10 million drives per year, and the decline lasted several years, not because of propritary tech, but because of price, reliability, and capacity.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Indeed, but hastily-planned attempts to do so that end in failure will produce enough negative publicity to stall the entire momentum. You are assuming that all such attempts will succeed, and succeed well. But this is not at all obvious, even though they SHOULD succeed. But, a switch to OO.org is still a switch, i.e. a change in how things are alrea
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that there _is_ a standard. Something you can point to and say "that's how it should be done". Something that you can turn to if you need a way to do something. Something that you can use to shame parties who aren't complying.
Standard but less avaiable (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Why the ISO hatred? (Score:3, Informative)
From engineering I have learned that ISO standards are completely voluntary. They provide a means for Company A to say, "I need 1,000,000 bolts adhering to ISO XXXXXX". They can then find companies which adhere to these standards and purchase based on best price. If a company wants to be ISO certified for a process they must pay for an inspector to come and check out the process (quality, ensuring, stuff is done properly, etc). I have heard other people bitch about how much it costs to do this, however, it is not your company being forced into the standardization, rather YOUR CUSTOMER is demanding a specified level of quality. These people who are complaining are really voicing a view that they would prefer to deliver a LOWER QUALITY good to a customer for the price of the higher quality good and leave the customer none the wiser. This is a bad business decision.
The example I give above is for screw production, however treat software as a commodity. Then software which read and write files which adhere to the standard are best. Software packages can be built to support these standards and greater emergent networks can be formed (I give the internet and it's effect on business. I hope we can all agree on
To further my example, look into the history of screws or fasteners, there were many competing designs, and the 2-3 best remain today enshrined in some ISO standard along with all their derivative designs.
With the introduction of this ISO standard, business can more easily data mine, update, import/export, modify, and track changes. If any of you who read
Simple questions like "We have ODT files and require support according to ISO XXXXX, can you provide this with your product." replace long drawn out negotiations about who owns what file format or whatever.
In conclusion ISO is important for customers.
If I am misinformed on any of these topics, please respond.
The Problem with OpenDocument (Score:1, Informative)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
What you do is follow the standard and file bug reports against non-compliant applications. Documents that can crash Koffice would probably rate as quite severe bugs (IMHO it shouldn't crash no matter how incorrect input you feed it), and the OpenOffice people probably wants to be able to import Koffice files.
Protests? (Score:1)
Yours Today for Only $285.00 USD (Score:2, Informative)
ISO/IEC 26300:2006 PDF version (en) 13368 KB CHF 340,00
ISO/IEC 26300:2006 CD-ROM version (en) CHF 340,00
Interestingly, I can download the USB standard for free but I need to pay big bucks just to view a copy of the OPEN Document standard online? How OPEN is it when I can't even afford to see it?
I can download linux from Redhat at no charge, and Redhat is a For-Profit company, yet ISO is a non-profit organization. I can understand charging for the CD,
Re: (Score:1)
Not a Microsoft core asset (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
OpenXML, on the other hand, is Microsoft's proprietary format that it wants to be registered as an open standard, however it won't be truly as it has patent encumbrances. Besides, Microsoft likely sees O
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
OpenDocument is the format that OpenOffice.org and StarOffice use for their documents
Don't forget KOffice, Abiword, Google Docs, and about a dozen others that are in various stages of implementing OpenDocument support. Corel says they're adding OpenDocument support to Corel Office (WordPerfect), though AFAIK they haven't said when it will be available. I don't think IBM/Lotus is adding OpenDocument support to SmartSuite (Ami Pro, Lotus 123, etc.), but IBM is moving to the IBM Workplace suite, which is built on OpenOffice.org and, obviously, uses OpenDocument natively.
I predict that by
So much FUD, So little time (Score:2, Informative)
Open XML is *NOT* proprietary See for yourself: http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/TC45-M.h tm [ecma-international.org]
ODF is *JUST* as patent encumbered as Open XML is.
The owners of both ODF and Open XML do not and will not collect royalties (both have published a covenant not to sue)
Sun: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.ph p [oasis-open.org]
MS: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx [microsoft.com]
Non-Legalese Explanation: http://www.bakernet.com/NR/rdonlyres/CC54A6B6-79E8 -4E0D-B290 [bakernet.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Open Document comes from Open Office, not Microfost Office. RTFA and read this page [wikipedia.org] as well.
Re: (Score:2)
-1? the rest of the words are ment to be Finally! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re:The problem (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes like TCP/IP, ANSI/Unicode, HTML, CSS. You know those obsolete standards that nobody uses anymore. :P
Re: (Score:2)
(my eyes ! The goggles...)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The problem with those "standards" is that today this may be enough for all, but maybe tomorrow there will arise tasks for which the standards will not be good enough
Two points:
First, office document technology isn't likely to change all that much. Word processors and spreadsheets do pretty much everything they need to, and it's quite likely that improvements will be small incremental changes in the way users work with the tools (i.e. UI changes) rather than the sort of significant changes that require new data formats. Look, for example, at the fact that the Microsoft Office formats from Office 95 -- an 11 year-old suite -- remain unchanged. Microsoft is pushing
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine a document that someone writes that cannot be imported because the new word processor has a new improved document standard. I've been bit by some heavily formated text documents on Word 95 that Word 2000 doesn't get right.
OpenDoc may not be the answer (or maybe it is), but at least it's a well documented start.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)