Hello Marco and all,
Please let me point out a few subtle points - on some of them I'm afraid I'll
disagree with Marco:
the sooner ODF becomes the de-facto standard the better.
I 100% agree with that.
it becomes increasingly critical that we *quickly* migrate from binary
Microsoft documents... directly to ODF
who is "we" in this sentence? We private citizens, each one converting
his or her own private files? But those files are private, so it really
doesn't matter, society-wise, what format they are in or if and when each
one of us converts them. Or do you mean "we" as in "the companies we work
in"? In that case, unless one is in a CTO position, I don't see what would
change. And if by "we" you mean "our Public Administrations"...:
"We", in this sentence, means all people that have no particular interest in
sharing Microsoft views - be it individual or companies.
Here I must disagree a little with Marco. I have a pretty long experience as a
Network Administrator in a Romanian big company, as well as OpenOffice supporter
and "evangelist" among my people. From this experience, I noted that:
Many non-technical people don't give a damn on the format they use. They simply
work with programs that are provided for them, be it at work or at home. At
home, they will continue to send Microsoft files by e-mail if this is what they
have at hand (please see sentence below where you've said that old files are
"neutral" in this game). On the contrary: statistically, on a computer where a
system administrator installed OpenOffice.org and converted all files to ODF,
they *never* return to MS Office. They simply get habituated with the new
program and work with it, even if they don't like it 100%.
At work, you took only the case of American-style, well-organised companies
where *a CTO has the administrative right (in written decision by upper
management) to decide what file format is being used*. In *many* countries is
simply not so: they uniformly use Microsoft Word because they have various boxes
at hand, which they connect to the company's network. And MS Office is
preinstalled, so it becomes the de-facto standard. A Network Administrator
(which is merely an IT service provider, helpful person, not a "ruler" mandated
by upper management to enforce norms) must either convince them to use other
software, or decide for them, installthe new software and convert all files
without even asking (explain afterwards). Again, the upper management don't give
a damn about what file format employees use, as long as anyone can open and
share it with minimal costs. Most of managers don't even know ! If they reject
or dislike a program (particularly OpenOffice.org), they do it because it has a
different UI than MS Office on which they are accustomised.
1) When it comes to existing documents, what matters is to push so that
those administration take the decision to do the conversion out of political
reasons. Once that happens, they will surely find the money to make
development happen.
The vast majority of Romanian network administrators I know don't have nether
this ethical stature nor "political" motivation to change formats. They will
simply choose what's simpler for them - implies less work. As for the upper
management, they simply are oil-and-water-mixture with IT. They will invest
money for development only in strict amounts, to resolve some particular issues
- for example, *if absolutely needed by business*, pay a temporary programmer
employee to export data from program A to program B.
2) But what really, really matters, much more than conversion of what
exists, as far as PAs are concerned, is that they stop as soon as possible
to demand or publish NEW office files in any formats different from ODF
(or PDF/A in some cases). But this is again a law-making/regulatory issue,
not a technical one (or it is only in a minimal part). And once that
happens, everybody else will follow suit.
In my company, I have a hard time convincing architects and designers that work
in Corel Draw! not to send (proprietary) .cdr files by e-mail to others, even if
*they know perfectly well* that no other one around has Corel Draw! installed.
They simply ignore the issue, rudely. The unhappy recipient simply calls IT
department desperately OR installs/use pirated Corel Draw! without asking no one.
when it comes to private (people or companies) collection of documents it
is only their business to decide when and how to migrate existing files
(which may be totally useless, regardless of the format...)
Here I disagree. The World is made by people, companies or individuals, most of
them non-technical. You will never achieve the desired goal (large ODF adoption)
if you don't (gently) *push* users in that direction. If you *only* count on
their ethical desire for freedom, it will be a total failure.
when it is public documents, or documents that private entities must
exchange with a public administration (that is when it _is_ a matter
of equal opportunities, fair competition, saving tax money, public data
ownership in the long term and so on), then you only, or mainly, care
of making it mandatory that such files are in odf format.
In Romania, democracy is far from perfect yet. No politician is prepared to show
up before his electorate with speeches about such a technical matter as file
formats as source of budget savings. The prove that democracy is childish here
is that Tax Administration post *mandatory* MS-DOS (??!!) programs on their
site, for every accountant to download and use month by month. No Romanian still
uses MS-DOS, but is hard to break the private & official mob surrounding public
bids for this software. So State *forces* you to use Microsoft software, at
least from time to time.
Also, a bunch of Microsoftists here (Ministry, private Microsoft partners and a
few "well-informed" old professors from universities) unanimously voted for
OOXML, without any public consultation, press article or debate, Internet forum
or maillist. They simply met at ASRO (our NB), as official members, and
expressed a YES vote in Romania's name, without asking no one else. The news
spreaded *afterwards* on various mailing lists and produced much anger. And? No
one shot them yet: Sun still raises, birds sing... :-(
This is despite the fact we have a *large* Linux community, with no political
influence.
I'm sure Romania is by no way a particular case.
So do you expect officials or politicians like these to met and, by their
initiative, decide to enforce free formats in public administration, for ethical
motivation? Please be serious...
- maybe we can use the existing converter code to obtain a plugin for
amavisd-new (http://www.ijs.si/software/amavisd/) that will convert, on
the fly, Microsoft e-mail attachements to their ODF counterparts, when
passsing through an e-mail server (similar to virus scanning).
Frankly, I don't see the point in such a proposal:
1) If John sends a private .doc file to Jane, their ISPs have NO right
to mess with their private email
Of course not - we are not talking about *public*, regular ISPs here.
2) About corporate servers filtering incoming mail: if what you want
is to make ODF the only format worldwide (and I agree on this) it
is much more technically sound and light on the server to just
*reject* such email messages. In this way, you avoid all the risks
of automatic conversion that you yourself described, and put the
burden of generating documents in decent formats where it belongs:
on those who produce them
That's OK and this is the right way it should be, in a perfect world. But, in
the mean time, would you mind if only ask for the *technical possibility* to
convert those attachements on the fly ?
Please think what happens if, in a company where upper management is not
interested at all in IT matters, a network administrator choses to *reject*
CEO's incoming mail because it's Microsoft format. I allow him other 5 seconds
before being fired.
On the other hand, if CEO's secretary receives an .odt file instead of .doc, she
will probably call IT deparment only because she's not familiar with "these
damned OpenOffice.org menus" or have no OpenOffice.org installed at all on her
laptop. In a happier case, she won't even notice. But in both cases the goal is
reached: only ODF files enter in the company, creating a critical mass of *new*,
useful ODF files in a short time.
That's why I'll need an (optional !) amavisd-new plugin...
I would suggest pairs of Unix-like command-line utilities like "doc2odt"
or "odt2doc" (with command-line configuration parameters) and/or a
standalone GUI version.
docvert is already usable in this way, or on the way of being usable, but
again, the most helpful and effective thing that we non-programmers can
do to spread ODF remains to make clear to our administrations that we
don't want our money to be spent in any other way.
I didn't even knew that an utility called "docvert" exist. Is it on Windows? On
Linux? May I install and use it easily (in .rpm form) on my Fedora ?
The general idea is to develop and distribute such
utilities ASAP, to help people migrate as many Microsoft documents as
possible till February 2008 and create a huge, critical mass of ODF files
90% of that huge "critical" mass is stuff that won't be distributed anymore.
It's neutered. If you convert them all, but let people create and send
around new oxml files with Office 2007, it won't make any difference.
Of course *new* files have priority, but - for the reasons stated above - I'm
not so sure that old files are so "neutral". I would like *very much* a
possibility to convert them really easily - even if it won't be needed to
actually use this tool very much.
This said, I suggest everybody who want to help on the technical side to
try docvert with as many documents as possible, in order to help its
developer to improve it.
I will *certainly* do that and I'll be pleased to contribute in all ways I can -
MANY THANKS to the developers of docvert and OpenOffice.org !
Then there is also the fact that ODF in and by itself is not enough to
free us from proprietary formats (1), but that's another issue.
I've read the article you've pointed us to and I find it true and very
interesting
(http://robertogaloppini.net/2007/04/01/file-format-hidden-traps-in-opendocument-or-any-other-open-standard-and-how-to-avoid-them/
)
I also think that people at the FSF, Richard Stallman and their lawyers would be
the best persons to give us some advices on what to do to avoid the patents
issue in this area.
Marco
Răzvan
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
