Microsoft Announces OOXML-UOF Project with China 106
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."
Haaaa (Score:5, Funny)
China: "Sure, whatever."
Microsoft: "What's wrong?"
China: "Can we still pirate software?"
Microsoft: "Sure, whatever."
No ODF and OOXML are *not* "making peace". (Score:2)
They are just both converging with UOF, each on it's own.
Looks just like bad behaving child that up until the end won't admit working together, and China (!) takes up the role of the elder brother/parent coming to help them.
Sometimes you can try hard making up thing, but reality will always beat you a the weirdness contest. (China is the superglue holding microsoft and Free software together).
How about... (Score:3, Funny)
But can those features be incorporated? (Score:3, Insightful)
The question is whether or not the features of that standard can be incorporated into ODF soon enough for China to adopt ODF as their standard instead of their home grown one.
Or can a big enough chunk of them be incorporated so that they can evolve in parallel and merge some time in the future?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:1, 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
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: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well...a couple hundred bucks for most home users is a lot just to do word processing, spreadsheets, etc. Compare that to OpenOffice, which is free. That is a huge savings.
I'd say it's more likely t
Re: (Score:2)
Free means cheap huh?
Anyway, you know, I like, and even use (sometimes) OpenOffice, but honestly, if you put it side by side with Of
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
In Ubuntu, plenty of "Popcap-style" games are built in -- all you have to do is check the boxes next to them in the package manager and hit "install." Between that and installing Flash (so she could still play online games), his wife would be better off with Ubuntu!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It can be comapred to Gimp vs Photoshop. If you want to adjust the levels and remove the red eye of a photo, Gimp's nice (hell, even Picassa is nice). If you want to make a button or background for your web page, then Gimp is again nice.
But if you do complex photo retouch, ton of design, every day, then Gimp is unbear
Re: (Score:2)
I think businesses would always be skeptical of how exact a clone an exact clone really is. I think a fair amount of businesses use Word and Excel especially as application platforms to a degree, and if their applications won't transfer then it is not really a clone or really compatible.
Re: (Score:1)
I think the important thing to remember is that a large number of these installations are pirated from work or another source for home use. Now that Microsoft Office has introduced GenuineAdvantage in its latest offering, expect that people will start to take a more serious look at OpenOffice and other alternatives.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I do recommend Firefox to people, and offer Opera as an alternative if they do not like Firefox as IE is just that bad, but the difference between MS Office vs. OpenOffice. is not the same. Put simply: MS Office is a perfectly fine office suite, which most people buy with their computers. There is no good reason to switch, and OpenOffice's GUI feels unfinished. If OpenOffice gets to the point where its GUI is actually as usable as MS Office's, then I will start recommending it as opposed to simply mentionin
Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)
This is a commonly voiced anecdote among the FOSS crowd, but in reality it's almost complete self-serving bullshit. It's part of the Open Source mantra that assumes most "users" are complete idiots. And, since in most cases users must pay several hundred dollars in addition to their computer that came pre-installed with Windows, it would be had to miss that the Office Suite is not a part of the
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
For a start, on every computer I've tried it on, it loads much slower than MS Office, and just seems sluggish in general. This may be anecdotal, but for me, MS Office seems faster and nicer.
That's not to say that MS Office isn't hideously expensive for what it is. I'd love to use an open source office suite, but open office if not for me.
Re: (Score:2)
Word is often bundled with Windows now, and—and, look, I'm pro-OSS—Office Home and Student 2007 has a lot more polish than OpenOffice.org, and OneNote is, at least to me, a big plus.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, me too. I absolutely loathe the facts that I'm forced to use Windows and that I'm putting my notes in a proprietary format, but there's really nothing in the Free Software world that even slightly competes with OneNote. It really pisses me off, especially since I'm too busy to do anything about it.
I'd be happy if people got into the "how do we duplicate OneNote" m
Re: (Score:2)
OOo now opens even my most complicated documents. It's free. I don't prefer it yet but I'm headed that way. There will be a day in the next few years when I leave office behind except for work.
Re: (Score:2)
I realize Microsoft plans that. I still bought Office Home & Student 2007. Heck, I realized that when I bought Office 2003. I think I'd heard talk of it about when I got Office 97 (I skipped 2000). Microsoft has planned software as service for as long as the internet has been popular. When Microsoft decides to put Office on a rental basi
Re:Why? (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:1)
Another important issue is that the average consumer does not think in terms of document formats, they think in terms of programs. If something "needs to be in Word", then that means using Word the program to them.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't realize that Word documents will be formatted depending on the local printer, do you? You do NOT have absolute control over the look of your
Re: (Score:2)
On screen formatting in MS Office programs (I've noticed this more in Excel than Word) varies considerably based on View Zoom as well. I'm not sure if this is the same in OOo (it may be, since I suspect at least part of it is how Windows renders fonts.)
Re: (Score:2)
PDF is the answer when you don't want anybody to change it. I am surprised by the number of contracts in word or excel - leaving things open to change by the unscrupulous.
Time for a rant. Ever since Word97 could not open documents produced by a revision of Word97 that came in an identical box it has been clear to me that "simple" document sharing is over rated and not as simple as it ap
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Those ways don't include startup time (amazingly slow even on my Core Duo T2600 system with 2GB RAM and thus no over-paging problem), being reliable, et cetera. And while I haven't done this experiment in Writer, opening an Excel spreadsheet, removing some data from it, and re-saving as excel grew a fairly simple sheet from 26kB to over 160kB. So clearly there are some issues to be worked out of OO.o.
Re: (Score:2)
Both Word 2003 and Open Office Writer 2.2 open too quickly for me to measure on my Athlon 64/4600 with 2GB RAM, likewise Calc and Excel open almost instantly.
If it's amazingly slow, there's something wrong with your system.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd be looking at DMA - openoffice does a lot of disk access at startup and on machines with DMA turned off on the disks it took a very long time to start up. Version 2 is a lot faster to start than version 1 - on an old laptop with vectorlinux the most recent openoffice was usable while earlier versions vere not.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm using intel SATA. This is a compaq nw9440 running Ubuntu 7.04, previously running Windows XP, on which the same program had the same problem. OO.o is slow, it just don't want to go, and other such doggerel.
And yes, 2 is better than 1 IME.
Re: (Score:2)
First, none of those is really a stunning advantage. Its a few areas of sm
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
That one feature is a total deal-breaker for Microsoft.
Re: (Score:1)
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.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
A single format would be beneficial so long as there was a single format which everyone could agree was suitable for their own purposes. It's not clear to me whether that could happen. If you include all the features in the spec that anyone could possibly want, there might be someone else who complains that it's too complicated and bloated for their purposes.
And besides the technical features of the format, it's clear to me that, if you want everyone to use it, it needs to meet certain requirements. It
Re: (Score:1)
in the case of odf vs ooxml (i'm tempted to call ooxml msooxml, but i might get flamed), odf is sort of linked to how openoffice/staroffice is designed. ooxml is _very_ closely linked to how ms office is designed. essentially, there are two formats and they're not that similar though they have very similar purposes. both sides would want theirs to be chos
Re: (Score:2)
We've been through this before, but why would the user benefit from multiple graphics formats when they are essentially equivalent? The user does not interact with the image data on the disk. He interacts with a computer program.
OSPC? (Score:5, Funny)
Open Standards are great!
Re: (Score:1)
Re:hey retard ./ editors, it's != its (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1, Funny)
retard
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
It's easy to loose perspective given the persistant grammar errors.
---
Cry Havoc! and set lose the dogs of war!
Re: (Score:2)
"Ooooooh if it's possessive, it's just I-T-S, buuuuuut ifit'ssupposedtobeacontraction then it's I-T-Apostrophe-S!"
The Churchill quote (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Why would that be surprising? Microsoft starts "interoperability" projects all the time! It's the first third of "embrace, extend, extinguish" you know...
Re: (Score:1)
The entrenched ones are definitely the bad guys.
Re: (Score:2)
"... Wäre die deutsche Wehrmacht nicht in der Lage, die Gefahr aus dem Osten zu brechen, so wäre damit das Reich und in kurzer Folge ganz Europa dem Bolschewismus verfallen.
"... The way the license is written, if you use any open-source software, you have to make the rest of your software open source. [...] Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everythin
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There is no way I would take anything that puts that quote in seriously unless it is actually on the topics of fighting against invasion or Churchill himself. Otherwise it indicates IMHO either a tenous grip on reality / a complete misunderstanding of the circumstances described in the quote / an attempt at argument by emotional manipulation / other bullshit I have not considered.
Nothing new here... (Score:2)
Note, in particular, Bill Gates' notorious "Pearl Harbor" speech of December 7th 1995, in which he warned of the emerging global threat from Java and Netscape. The author of the page cited above, Doc Searls, seemed to think that all the warlike references were just good clean fun. Gates began his speech as follows:
MR. GATES: Well, good morning. I was realizing this morning that December 7th is kind of a famous day. (Laughter.) Fifty-four years ago or something. And I was trying
Benefits to MS (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What's the big problem? (Score:4, Funny)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<gandunifieddocumentformat xmlns="...">
<ODF>
<!-- ODF stuff -->
</ODF>
<OOXML>
<!-- OOXML stuff -->
</OOXML>
<UOF>
<!-- UOF stuff -->
</UOF>
</gandunifieddocumentformat>
DONE!!!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Does this mean that a document can be composed of multiple elements from the different formats?
I would suggest that wat you would achieve with this is a format a file that does not work with any application that only supports any one format, which would be most of them.
Oh and if you are suggesting a format whereby the file is stored in a manner that is acceptable under all three standards, then you
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, it's not any worse than OOXML, where for an application to support it, it has to understand the old binary format from Word 95!
Re: (Score:2)
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)
OOXML-UOF! (Score:1)
That's the great thing about standards... (Score:1)
I, for one welcome our Sino-Corporate overlords (Score:1)
There never will be a standard document format (Score:2)
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 compat
244? (Score:2)
It's deja vu all over again.... (Score:1)