Chad Smith wrote:
On 9/22/05, Johan Vromans <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Robin Laing <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
[...] you miss one point about standards. They are documented and
readable.
Standards are there for information exchange. Therefore, good practice
requires that there are (at least) two independent implementations of
the standard.
(This is what is severely missing with the OpenDoc (OOo2) standard.)
-- Johan
That's what I mean, we've got, what? Two office suites using
OpenDocument?
And really, neither one is using them for real yet. OOo 2.0 (that great
mythilogical beast) *will* use it, but KOffice doesn't yet, and OOo
doesn't
yet.
And when they do, what is that - maybe 10% of the market share (which I
highly doubt, but that number was quoted to me eariler). But that just
means
10% of the market share will have access to it - not actually use it in
everyday life. And, in fact, that is assuming that everyone who uses
KOffice
and OOo now instantly updates to the latest version (which, historically
speaking, not nearly all of them will - how many still have MSO 97 or
OOo
1.0?).
Single digit market share does not a standard make.
-Chad
You are missing the point.
OASIS is new and as such hasn't had the time to build the base that has
used DOC. As I asked, where is the documentation on the format if *.doc
files? All the threads and my own experience have shown that *.doc
formats are not perfectly supported in OOo or other non-licensing
applications. Heck, around here, the windows users find that *.doc
doesn't even work properly between different versions of Word.
Now my experiences with OOo opening *.doc files has not always been that
great. Many times the formatting was lost or weird things happened. I
do agree that OOo2.0 beta is much better than 1.1.4 is but again, it is
great reverse engineering, not documentation that has lead to this
success. Can you honestly tell me that OpenOffice supports the *.doc
format 100%? If you export a OOo document to *.doc, is it 100%
successful 100% of the time? Heck even importing from *.doc into
WordPerfect isn't 100% and Corel pays for the rights to support *.doc.
Now the interesting thing is if (when) OASIS becomes an ISO standard,
how will that affect companies that support ISO standards and work
internationally? ISO standards, such as date format are mandated in
many organizations around the world. This could force many to adopt
OASIS as their default documentation format. Of course Microsoft is
trying to do anything possible to stop the growth and spread of OASIS.
Look at their comments posted and linked off of the OASIS site to see
evidence of this.
As an example that hits close to home, my wife's organization has moved
to OOo from Word after finding that documents created on Word for Mac
and Word for Windows would not format the same. At least with OOo, the
formatting and interoperability between OS's was consistent. Now they
can use Linux, Mac or Windows as they wish.
Now your support of *.doc as a standard is about to change as Office 12
moves from *.doc format to *.xml format or what ever Microsoft will call
it. Now will Microsoft provide support for their XML files within older
versions of Word?
Here is a thread on slashdot and there are links off of it regarding the
changes.
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/21/1242224&tid=109&tid=218
Of course the State of Massachusetts support for Open Standards because
Microsoft refuses to open their file standard covers this discussion.
There is another point to this whole discussion. Many organizations are
working towards automated and integrated operations. XML formats are
more accessible to other applications. This allow better integration.
Microsoft has learned this and is moving to XML file formats in Office
12. My question is why not support OASIS and save developers allot of
headaches? Because they want to sell more software.
XML is the future file format whether you like it or not. *.doc is on
it's last years as a default format.
FWIW, I don't send *.doc files to anyone. I send either OASIS or *.pdf
files.
--
Robin Laing
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