The future is forming up....
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1863060,00.asp
The state of Massachusetts Friday made it official: It will use only nonproprietary document formats in state-affiliated offices effective Jan. 1, 2007. Although state CIO Peter Quinn has said repeatedly that this issue does not represent "the state versus Microsoft Corp. —or any one company," adoption of the long-debated plan may result in all versions of Microsoft's Office productivity suite being phased out of use throughout the state's executive branch agencies.
Massachusetts posted the final version of its Enterprise Technical Reference Model on its Web site. As part of this new policy, the state will support the newly ratified Open Document Format for Office Applications, or OpenDocument, and PDFs (portable document format) as the standards for its office documents.
Quinn told DesktopLinux.com earlier this month that he challenged Microsoft and other companies who sell software that uses proprietary document formats to consider enabling open-format options as soon as possible. Quinn said that "government is creating history at a rapidly increasing rate, and all documents we save must be accessible to everybody, without having to use 'closed' software to open them now and in the future."
Quinn said the state runs a "vast majority" of its office and system computers on Windows and that "only a very small percentage of them run Linux and other open source software at this time. This is in tune with the general market in the U.S. But we like to 'eat our own cooking,' in that we are using OpenOffice.org and Linux more and more as time goes along, because it produces open format documents."
In contrast, Microsoft's Office creates Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and other documents that are accessible only by Microsoft products, making them ineligible for use, the state said. "Microsoft has remade the desktop world," Quinn said. "But if you've watched history, there's a slag heap of proprietary companies who have fallen by the wayside because they were stuck in their ways. Just look at the minicomputer business, for example. The world is about open standards and open source. I can't understand why anybody would want to continue making closed-format documents anymore."
Microsoft's answer to that is simple. MS Office, which is upgraded about every three years and includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, brought in more than $11 billion last year, or about 28 percent of Microsoft's total revenue, according to the company's recently filed annual report.
"We've had an active, ongoing conversation with Microsoft since January about this, and they've been open to hearing our position," Quinn said. "But I don't know one way or the other how they're ultimately going to react to this. Also, this isn't just about Microsoft. We're focusing on the formats here, not necessarily the software."
Unless Microsoft starts supporting OO.org, Quinn said, the state will gradually phase out Microsoft Office in favor of OO.org.
Fajar Priyanto wrote:
The future is forming up....
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1863060,00.asp
The state of Massachusetts Friday made it official: It will use only nonproprietary document formats in state-affiliated offices effective Jan. 1, 2007. Although state CIO Peter Quinn has said repeatedly that this issue does not represent "the state versus Microsoft Corp. —or any one company," adoption of the long-debated plan may result in all versions of Microsoft's Office productivity suite being phased out of use throughout the state's executive branch agencies.
Or MS could "open" its document format...
[snip]
Mike
Mike McCarty wrote:
Fajar Priyanto wrote:
The future is forming up....
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1863060,00.asp
The state of Massachusetts Friday made it official: It will use only nonproprietary document formats in state-affiliated offices effective Jan. 1, 2007. Although state CIO Peter Quinn has said repeatedly that this issue does not represent "the state versus Microsoft Corp. —or any one company," adoption of the long-debated plan may result in all versions of Microsoft's Office productivity suite being phased out of use throughout the state's executive branch agencies.
Or MS could "open" its document format...
[snip]
Mike
Not in a hundred years will MS do any such thing.
Actually, the Massachusetts decision is a bigger boon to the OpenOffice project than to Linux alone--because after all, OpenOffice is available in any OS you can name. I've recommended OO to a client when MS Office crashed and burned on his Windows 98SE system.
Temlakos
Temlakos wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
Fajar Priyanto wrote:
The future is forming up....
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1863060,00.asp
The state of Massachusetts Friday made it official: It will use only nonproprietary document formats in state-affiliated offices effective Jan. 1, 2007. Although state CIO Peter Quinn has said repeatedly that this issue does not represent "the state versus Microsoft Corp. —or any one company," adoption of the long-debated plan may result in all versions of Microsoft's Office productivity suite being phased out of use throughout the state's executive branch agencies.
Or MS could "open" its document format...
[snip]
Mike
Not in a hundred years will MS do any such thing.
Only time will tell.
[snip]
Mike
On 9/28/05, Temlakos temlakos@gmail.com wrote:
Not in a hundred years will MS do any such thing.
The whole antitrust trial was a complete waste of money. It was just a big welfare check for lawyers. If the federal government had simply said it would not be buying any software that didn't use open file formats, Microsoft would have open up their formats or complied with some standard before the end of the week. Users have to understand they own their data, not the software vendor.
-- Jiann-Ming Su "I have to decide between two equally frightening options. If I wanted to do that, I'd vote." --Duckman
On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 15:52 -0400, Jiann-Ming Su wrote:
On 9/28/05, Temlakos temlakos@gmail.com wrote:
Not in a hundred years will MS do any such thing.
The whole antitrust trial was a complete waste of money. It was just a big welfare check for lawyers.
...snip... I agree with that 100%. Nothing has changed, other than the Legal profession getting a cash infusion.
On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 09:31, Guy Fraser wrote:
The whole antitrust trial was a complete waste of money. It was just a big welfare check for lawyers.
...snip... I agree with that 100%. Nothing has changed, other than the Legal profession getting a cash infusion.
Not _just_ the legal profession. The trial actually was following a reasonable course until some large political contributions were made and the judge was dismissed for accurately describing the defense team before he imposed a sentence. Of course we can't assume any of those events were related.
On Thursday 29 September 2005 11:27, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 09:31, Guy Fraser wrote:
The whole antitrust trial was a complete waste of money. It was just a big welfare check for lawyers.
...snip... I agree with that 100%. Nothing has changed, other than the Legal profession getting a cash infusion.
Not _just_ the legal profession. The trial actually was following a reasonable course until some large political contributions were made and the judge was dismissed for accurately describing the defense team before he imposed a sentence. Of course we can't assume any of those events were related.
-- Les Mikesell lesmikesell@gmail.com
The hell we can't, Les. nuff said.
On Wed, Sep 28, 2005 at 12:33:37PM -0400, Temlakos wrote:
Mike McCarty wrote:
Fajar Priyanto wrote:
The future is forming up....
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1863060,00.asp
The state of Massachusetts Friday made it official: It will use only nonproprietary document formats in state-affiliated offices effective Jan. 1, 2007. Although state CIO Peter Quinn has said repeatedly that this issue does not represent "the state versus Microsoft Corp. —or any one company," adoption of the long-debated plan may result in all versions of Microsoft's Office productivity suite being phased out of use throughout the state's executive branch agencies.
Or MS could "open" its document format...
[snip]
Mike
Not in a hundred years will MS do any such thing.
Actually, the Massachusetts decision is a bigger boon to the OpenOffice project than to Linux alone--because after all, OpenOffice is available in any OS you can name.
To play devil's advocate:
MS-DOS, Apple-DOS, RT-11, VMS, RSTS-11, AIX, Xenix,...
I don't think it runs on those! :-)
Mike McCarty wrote:
Fajar Priyanto wrote:
The future is forming up....
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1863060,00.asp
The state of Massachusetts Friday made it official: It will use only nonproprietary document formats in state-affiliated offices effective Jan. 1, 2007. Although state CIO Peter Quinn has said repeatedly that this issue does not represent "the state versus Microsoft Corp. —or any one company," adoption of the long-debated plan may result in all versions of Microsoft's Office productivity suite being phased out of use throughout the state's executive branch agencies.
Or MS could "open" its document format...
[snip]
Mike
If you have read the whole discussion over the past couple of weeks, MS did try convincing Mass. that it's XML specification was "open". The problem is that it isn't open enough to meet the requirements of Mass.
Of course, MS only has to support OASIS to be an accepted program. Not much of a problem since MS has been involved with the OASIS project. Of course they have already written the OASIS organization about their intent "not to support" OASIS. Heck, Microsoft is a sponsor to the OASIS project as you can see from the OASIS site.
http://www.oasis-open.org/home/index.php
Microsoft's comments all come down to money.
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 11:14 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Or MS could "open" its document format...
Or, they additionally support some open format, but not as good as their own formats. Giving you the, "you can be compatible, or be full of features, but not both," lie.
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 11:57, Tim wrote:
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 11:14 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Or MS could "open" its document format...
Or, they additionally support some open format, but not as good as their own formats. Giving you the, "you can be compatible, or be full of features, but not both," lie.
I think I'm missing a piece of history here. Long ago, back in the early days of AT&T unix, many (most?) US government contracts required multiple vendors to be able to supply any item used and in most cases competitive bids had to be taken. In an effort to show that other vendors could theoretically supply a working unix replacement (back when they really couldn't), AT&T published the SYSVID - an api specification for unix SysV. And eventually there actually were competing versions.
Meanwhile the government use seems to have switched to Microsoft, a completely monopolistic player. How was that possible, and what happened to the multiple vendor requirement that drove AT&T to publish its specification to a level that permitted competition? (There was, of course, the problem that AT&T never got the idea of personal computers and charged at least $1000 a copy for their unix version plus extra for X and a compiler...).
Les Mikesell wrote:
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 11:57, Tim wrote:
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 11:14 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Or MS could "open" its document format...
Or, they additionally support some open format, but not as good as their own formats. Giving you the, "you can be compatible, or be full of features, but not both," lie.
I think I'm missing a piece of history here. Long ago, back in the
You know what? You make a very good point, here, Les.
early days of AT&T unix, many (most?) US government contracts required multiple vendors to be able to supply any item used and in most cases competitive bids had to be taken. In an effort to show that other vendors could theoretically supply a working unix replacement (back when they really couldn't), AT&T published the SYSVID - an api specification for unix SysV. And eventually there actually were competing versions.
Meanwhile the government use seems to have switched to Microsoft, a completely monopolistic player. How was that possible, and
Umm, not completely monopolistic. The API was completely published. And the FAT file system was completely described.
BUT...........
How about NTFS, which AFAIK is completely closed? And the closed file formats their tools (like Word, Excel, etc.) use?
what happened to the multiple vendor requirement that drove AT&T to publish its specification to a level that permitted competition? (There was, of course, the problem that AT&T never got the idea of personal computers and charged at least $1000 a copy for their unix version plus extra for X and a compiler...).
Very good question. I'd like to know the answer...
Mike
On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 11:14 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Fajar Priyanto wrote:
The future is forming up....
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1863060,00.asp
The state of Massachusetts Friday made it official: It will use only nonproprietary document formats in state-affiliated offices effective Jan. 1, 2007. Although state CIO Peter Quinn has said repeatedly that this issue does not represent "the state versus Microsoft Corp. —or any one company," adoption of the long-debated plan may result in all versions of Microsoft's Office productivity suite being phased out of use throughout the state's executive branch agencies.
Or MS could "open" its document format...
[snip]
Mike
If you read the articles on this, that is not an option. Massachusetts has adopted the Open Document Format and expects the vendors to support that format. All documents used by the state must use ODF or PDF format, so that they are "future safe". The Open Document Format was developed by an international committee, and was intended to be openly defined and available for use without restriction or royalty.
Even if MS opened their formats, it is unlikely they would have given up all legal claims and patents to anyone who wanted to use it for their own products. Besides there is already an available set of formats that provide the features and requirements desired. If MS supports the format they will be able to contend for software contracts, if they don't then they will not be allowed.
The notion that features are tied to the document format hold little value. Most features are just designed to make manual tasks simpler, but do not affect the well known and defined methods for typesetting and laying out documents. Having not read the ODF specs I can not comment on how it deals with linked data from other documents, but it would be fair to presume that considerations were made for linked and embedded data.
I can only hope that all levels of Government everywhere do the same thing. Contrary to Microsofts spin, this will improve competition and be good for all effected economies.
Guy Fraser wrote:
On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 11:14 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Fajar Priyanto wrote:
The future is forming up....
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1863060,00.asp
The state of Massachusetts Friday made it official: It will use only nonproprietary document formats in state-affiliated offices effective Jan. 1, 2007. Although state CIO Peter Quinn has said repeatedly that this issue does not represent "the state versus Microsoft Corp. —or any one company," adoption of the long-debated plan may result in all versions of Microsoft's Office productivity suite being phased out of use throughout the state's executive branch agencies.
Or MS could "open" its document format...
[snip]
Mike
If you read the articles on this, that is not an option.
I did read the articles.
Massachusetts has adopted the Open Document Format and expects the vendors to support that format. All documents
Yes, but if MicroSoft opened up their formats, then they could push to get them adopted as well.
used by the state must use ODF or PDF format, so that they are "future safe". The Open Document Format was developed by an international committee, and was intended to be openly defined and available for use without restriction or royalty.
Even if MS opened their formats, it is unlikely they would have given up all legal claims and patents to anyone who wanted to use it for their own products. Besides there
Only time will tell on this one. If MS sniffs out money to be made by putting their formats in the public domain, they might do it. I'm inclined to agree that it does not seem very likely.
is already an available set of formats that provide the features and requirements desired. If MS supports the format they will be able to contend for software contracts, if they don't then they will not be allowed.
The notion that features are tied to the document format hold little value. Most features are just designed to make
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. When I use OpenOffice, and want to save something that I created using MS Office, I find that it frequently wants to warn me that I may be losing some special features. For this reason, I have abandoned using OO for editing stuff created with MSO.
I don't know enough about these things to know whether anything in the files are actually at risk, but rather than lose them, I re-boot to Windows and do the editing there. A friend of mine helped me do my resume, using MSO, and recently I needed to update it. OO warned me that it might be discarding some information, so I rebooted Windows, and edited with more confidence.
Are you arguing against tying the feature to a file format, or are you arguing that the feature is not tied to the file format? If the latter, then why does OO warn?
manual tasks simpler, but do not affect the well known and defined methods for typesetting and laying out documents. Having not read the ODF specs I can not comment on how it deals with linked data from other documents, but it would be fair to presume that considerations were made for linked and embedded data.
I can only hope that all levels of Government everywhere do the same thing. Contrary to Microsofts spin, this will improve competition and be good for all effected economies.
I suppose that just about anyone here who cares shares your hopes.
Mike
On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 14:26 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Guy Fraser wrote:
...snip...
If you read the articles on this, that is not an option.
I did read the articles.
Massachusetts has adopted the Open Document Format and expects the vendors to support that format. All documents
Yes, but if MicroSoft opened up their formats, then they could push to get them adopted as well.
That was why they decided to do what they did, they wanted a single uniform format. Not a bunch of similar yet competing formats.
used by the state must use ODF or PDF format, so that they are "future safe". The Open Document Format was developed by an international committee, and was intended to be openly defined and available for use without restriction or royalty.
Even if MS opened their formats, it is unlikely they would have given up all legal claims and patents to anyone who wanted to use it for their own products. Besides there
Only time will tell on this one. If MS sniffs out money to be made by putting their formats in the public domain, they might do it. I'm inclined to agree that it does not seem very likely.
is already an available set of formats that provide the features and requirements desired. If MS supports the format they will be able to contend for software contracts, if they don't then they will not be allowed.
The notion that features are tied to the document format hold little value. Most features are just designed to make
I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. When I use OpenOffice, and want to save something that I created using MS Office, I find that it frequently wants to warn me that I may be losing some special features. For this reason, I have abandoned using OO for editing stuff created with MSO.
I don't know enough about these things to know whether anything in the files are actually at risk, but rather than lose them, I re-boot to Windows and do the editing there. A friend of mine helped me do my resume, using MSO, and recently I needed to update it. OO warned me that it might be discarding some information, so I rebooted Windows, and edited with more confidence.
Are you arguing against tying the feature to a file format, or are you arguing that the feature is not tied to the file format? If the latter, then why does OO warn?
Microsoft uses proprietary macros, that can not be supported by OO for many reasons. Macros are not a necessary feature for most documents, and have often been used to pass viruses. Macros are generally used only by advanced document creators to access dynamic data. OO supports macros, but not Visual Basic and ActiveX macros. I believe OO macros use Python.
OO is likely warning that when importing or exporting a document, that it is unable to convert the macros if there were any or that some formatting may not be preserved exactly the same. If the format MS used was open and accessible without restriction, it is very likely that all conversions could be made with full confidence, as long as it did not contain macros written in proprietary restricted languages.
As for Resumes, my organization prefers to receive them either printed or via email in ascii text format. But we are an IT company not a publishing company. We consider the content to be more important that the esoteric appearance. Many other organizations take the opposite stance and want the esoterically presented Word Document, and consider a well done presentation as a sign of attention to detail. I would prefer to not receive a Word document and if I was unable to open it in OO, I would either file it in bin 13 or would request that it be resubmitted in ascii text or rtf. If the person didn't know how to provide it as such without question, they would be considered unqualified, but then I require technically resourceful and flexible staff.
manual tasks simpler, but do not affect the well known and defined methods for typesetting and laying out documents. Having not read the ODF specs I can not comment on how it deals with linked data from other documents, but it would be fair to presume that considerations were made for linked and embedded data.
I can only hope that all levels of Government everywhere do the same thing. Contrary to Microsofts spin, this will improve competition and be good for all effected economies.
I suppose that just about anyone here who cares shares your hopes.
Guy Fraser wrote:
On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 14:26 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Guy Fraser wrote:
[snip]
As for Resumes, my organization prefers to receive them either printed or via email in ascii text format. But we are an IT company not a publishing company. We consider the content to be more important that the esoteric appearance. Many other organizations take the opposite stance and want the esoterically presented Word Document, and consider a well done presentation as a sign of attention to detail. I would prefer to not receive a Word document and if I was unable to open it in OO, I would either file
OO opens it. And edits it. But when I try to save it, OO gives a warning. Odd?
it in bin 13 or would request that it be resubmitted in ascii text or rtf. If the person didn't know how to provide it as such without question, they would be considered unqualified, but then I require technically resourceful and flexible staff.
I'm not a documentation expert, and don't want to become one. I'm a software developer. I've used Word, Frame, and several other systems for writing documentation on various pieces of software, but I'm more interested in being expert at writing software than being expert at using Word etc. But I do recognize their value.
I like plain ASCII text, myself. But diagrams in documents can go a long way in helping understand how a complicated piece of software works (like a multi-processor debugger I wrote a few years ago: two separate programs, five threads communicating via messages). Nice diagrams are difficult with ASCII text :-)
Hey, I don't even like HTML in mail messages!
Mike
On Wed, 28 Sep 2005, Mike McCarty wrote:
I'm not a documentation expert, and don't want to become one. I'm a software developer. I've used Word, Frame, and several other systems for writing documentation on various pieces of software, but I'm more interested in being expert at writing software than being expert at using Word etc. But I do recognize their value.
I like plain ASCII text, myself. But diagrams in documents can go a long way in helping understand how a complicated piece of software works (like a multi-processor debugger I wrote a few years ago: two separate programs, five threads communicating via messages). Nice diagrams are difficult with ASCII text :-)
PDF allows diagrams. dia can help you produce them.
Hey, I don't even like HTML in mail messages!
Likewise. On my FC3, man dia produces HTML for some reason. I googled to find http://www.gnome.org/projects/dia/ .
On Wed, 28 Sep 2005, Mike McCarty wrote:
Guy Fraser wrote:
On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 14:26 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Guy Fraser wrote:
[snip]
As for Resumes, my organization prefers to receive them either printed or via email in ascii text format. But we are an IT company not a publishing company. We consider the content to be more important that the esoteric appearance. Many other organizations take the opposite stance and want the esoterically presented Word Document, and consider a well done presentation as a sign of attention to detail. I would prefer to not receive a Word document and if I was unable to open it in OO, I would either file
OO opens it. And edits it. But when I try to save it, OO gives a warning. Odd?
I always took this to be boilerplate for saving in non-native formats. The warning says it's *possible* that by not saving in native OOo format, you will lose special features of OOo that are not available in Word format. That's not surprising, but if your documents are simple, it's not a huge risk.
You get the same warning saving in ASCII format. Not too surprising there either.
Matthew Saltzman wrote:
On Wed, 28 Sep 2005, Mike McCarty wrote:
[snip]
OO opens it. And edits it. But when I try to save it, OO gives a warning. Odd?
I always took this to be boilerplate for saving in non-native formats.
I supposed the same thing. But since I didn't *know*, and it's not hard for me to boot Windows...
The warning says it's *possible* that by not saving in native OOo format, you will lose special features of OOo that are not available in Word format. That's not surprising, but if your documents are simple, it's not a huge risk.
You get the same warning saving in ASCII format. Not too surprising there either.
yah.
Mike
On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 15:47 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
...snip...
I like plain ASCII text, myself. But diagrams in documents can go a long way in helping understand how a complicated piece of software works (like a multi-processor debugger I wrote a few years ago: two separate programs, five threads communicating via messages). Nice diagrams are difficult with ASCII text :-)
I'll agree with that.
I just checked and OO can import many graphic formats including DXF and EPS and can create formulae.
My point being ; If documents were all stored in a uniform format then anybody who has access to them should be able to read them without having to use proprietary software. If you were to write a technical document and send it to a customer who does not have access to a version of word that will open your document then you either need save it in a different format, and word may tell you that something may be lost, or the customer has to upgrade to a version that will read your document. If the document was saved in ODF then there is free {as in beer} software he can get to read your document, and once all vendors support ODF, you will no longer have to worry what software your customers use.
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 14:31 -0600, Guy Fraser wrote:
On Wed, 2005-28-09 at 14:26 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Guy Fraser wrote:
...snip...
If you read the articles on this, that is not an option.
I did read the articles.
Massachusetts has adopted the Open Document Format and expects the vendors to support that format. All documents
Yes, but if MicroSoft opened up their formats, then they could push to get them adopted as well.
That was why they decided to do what they did, they wanted a single uniform format. Not a bunch of similar yet competing formats.
I think rather that they are tired of being FORCED to use a particular piece of software and tied to a particular vendor because the documents are in a proprietary format.
Using open formats means that there are many different tools to choose from. It also means that anyone using the open formats can use the document regardless of what OS or document processing software is in use.
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 14:26 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
When I use OpenOffice, and want to save something that I created using MS Office, I find that it frequently wants to warn me that I may be losing some special features. For this reason, I have abandoned using OO for editing stuff created with MSO.
I don't know enough about these things to know whether anything in the files are actually at risk, but rather than lose them, I re-boot to Windows and do the editing there.
Do a test... Usually, the warnings about things like how some document formats mightn't support some styling effects, might not do tabs or margins in the same way, etc.
On Thu, 2005-29-09 at 22:50 +0930, Tim wrote:
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 14:26 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
When I use OpenOffice, and want to save something that I created using MS Office, I find that it frequently wants to warn me that I may be losing some special features. For this reason, I have abandoned using OO for editing stuff created with MSO.
I don't know enough about these things to know whether anything in the files are actually at risk, but rather than lose them, I re-boot to Windows and do the editing there.
Do a test... Usually, the warnings about things like how some document formats mightn't support some styling effects, might not do tabs or margins in the same way, etc.
Precisely why a standard format was needed.
Tim wrote:
Usually, the warnings about things like how some document formats mightn't support some styling effects, might not do tabs or margins in the same way, etc.
Guy Fraser:
Precisely why a standard format was needed.
Oh, I agree. One of the things I liked about the concept of HTML was a document that could be read on nearly anything. Of course we all know who buggered that up. Mostly one organisation, though their main competitor was just about as bad.
My personal computer background was pre-Windows. I remember the plethora of different personal computers, with almost no possibility of data interchange between them. At first, Windows seemed hopeful, but they just never got the idea of what "compatible" meant (not even within themselves).
I still have word processor documents stored in about 6 or 7 unreadable formats on various discs. About my only chance of conversion, with layout, is scanning and OCR. If I just wanted content, and didn't mind re-laying out the content, I could save as plain text. It really is a stupid situation to still be in.
On Fri, 2005-30-09 at 08:23 +0930, Tim wrote:
Tim wrote:
Usually, the warnings about things like how some document formats mightn't support some styling effects, might not do tabs or margins in the same way, etc.
Guy Fraser:
Precisely why a standard format was needed.
Oh, I agree. One of the things I liked about the concept of HTML was a document that could be read on nearly anything. Of course we all know who buggered that up. Mostly one organisation, though their main competitor was just about as bad.
My personal computer background was pre-Windows. I remember the plethora of different personal computers, with almost no possibility of data interchange between them. At first, Windows seemed hopeful, but they just never got the idea of what "compatible" meant (not even within themselves).
I still have word processor documents stored in about 6 or 7 unreadable formats on various discs. About my only chance of conversion, with layout, is scanning and OCR. If I just wanted content, and didn't mind re-laying out the content, I could save as plain text. It really is a stupid situation to still be in.
Exactly.
I started working for Xerox in 1987, and being "The Document Company", I had to become familiar with many systems and environments. In 1988 I started working with Centralized Laser Printers with both direct connections to mainframes and with 9-Track Tape systems. For some projects I had to create ASCII to EBCDIC converters, HPGL and PCL to Interpres and XES and Decoding RLE and Huffman encoded data from CCIT G3 fax machines to various graphics formats including the .img format used by centralized printers. Eventually I had to learn to read and write PostScript and designed a number of full color diagnotic test patterns by hand for aligning and testing digital color laser printers. Fortunately, through out the years I have transfered all my private files and technology and media changed. It helps that I have a background in document translation services.
<sniped> History of how many different types of media, and document formats that were one standard, are now extinct, and the underdogs that still linger due to an open defined standard. </sniped>
Needless to say most of the standard formats I used to work with are gone. Some of the formats I used to work with are still around, even though many of the standard formats of that era are not.
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Tim wrote:
[snip]
I still have word processor documents stored in about 6 or 7 unreadable formats on various discs. About my only chance of conversion, with layout, is scanning and OCR. If I just wanted content, and didn't mind re-laying out the content, I could save as plain text. It really is a stupid situation to still be in.
This is one reason why I prefer the tex/latex model of typesetting documents, and avoid Office.
My LaTeX documents, written in the beginning of the '90, will probably compile under today's tex/latex without any modifications. If not -- changes to only few lines should be enough to redeem most documents (there is no problem in doing the modifications since the latex source is just plain ascii file). Which means that I could always read the document's _contents_.
Itay
On Sun, 2005-10-02 at 10:16 +0300, Itay Furman wrote:
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Tim wrote:
[snip]
I still have word processor documents stored in about 6 or 7 unreadable formats on various discs. About my only chance of conversion, with layout, is scanning and OCR. If I just wanted content, and didn't mind re-laying out the content, I could save as plain text. It really is a stupid situation to still be in.
This is one reason why I prefer the tex/latex model of typesetting documents, and avoid Office.
My LaTeX documents, written in the beginning of the '90, will probably compile under today's tex/latex without any modifications. If not -- changes to only few lines should be enough to redeem most documents (there is no problem in doing the modifications since the latex source is just plain ascii file). Which means that I could always read the document's _contents_.
Itay
One obvious advantage of open source is that no matter what happens to the binaries, you always have the source code. In the situation where the program is no longer available or you need to convert from an old format, you have the code to look at or alternatly recompile the source code. Has anyone got a copy of Visicalc these days? I know its not a word processor, but the principle is the same. SO if when you store all your documents in a particular format, make sure you have a copy of the source code to save with them.
At 10:50 PM +0930 9/29/05, Tim wrote:
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 14:26 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
When I use OpenOffice, and want to save something that I created using MS Office, I find that it frequently wants to warn me that I may be losing some special features. For this reason, I have abandoned using OO for editing stuff created with MSO.
I don't know enough about these things to know whether anything in the files are actually at risk, but rather than lose them, I re-boot to Windows and do the editing there.
Do a test... Usually, the warnings about things like how some document formats mightn't support some styling effects, might not do tabs or margins in the same way, etc.
As a programmer, foolish warnings such as the above "All might not be safe" disgust me. If the code thinks that something might not work, the author is responsible for making it do the right thing. In this case, make the file in a temporary place (and this is the only responsible way to do it ever) and notice if anything didn't make it through the export process. If that happens, /then/ warn the user, tell them what got lost, and ask what to do. Such a warning actually means something that the user might care about. If they don't use any non-exportable feature in a document, they won't get any warning; if they do, they can at least decide whether to keep using the feature. ____________________________________________________________________ TonyN.:' mailto:tonynelson@georgeanelson.com ' http://www.georgeanelson.com/
Tony Nelson wrote:
At 10:50 PM +0930 9/29/05, Tim wrote:
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 14:26 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
When I use OpenOffice, and want to save something that I created using MS Office, I find that it frequently wants to warn me that I may be losing some special features. For this reason, I have abandoned using OO for editing stuff created with MSO.
I don't know enough about these things to know whether anything in the files are actually at risk, but rather than lose them, I re-boot to Windows and do the editing there.
Do a test... Usually, the warnings about things like how some document formats mightn't support some styling effects, might not do tabs or margins in the same way, etc.
As a programmer, foolish warnings such as the above "All might not be safe" disgust me. If the code thinks that something might not work, the author is responsible for making it do the right thing. In this case, make the file in a temporary place (and this is the only responsible way to do it ever) and notice if anything didn't make it through the export process. If that happens, /then/ warn the user, tell them what got lost, and ask what to do. Such a warning actually means something that the user might care about. If they don't use any non-exportable feature in a document, they won't get any warning; if they do, they can at least decide whether to keep using the feature.
I started to reply to his message, but you said it soooo much better!
Why should I follow around after OO when I can just boot Windows in about a minute and a half, and be assured that the doc is ok? If OO knows there is a problem, then it should tell me. If there is no problem, it shouldn't frighten me. If it doesn't know, then why should I use it?
Mike
On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 15:22, Mike McCarty wrote:
Why should I follow around after OO when I can just boot Windows in about a minute and a half, and be assured that the doc is ok? If OO knows there is a problem, then it should tell me. If there is no problem, it shouldn't frighten me. If it doesn't know, then why should I use it?
If you don't save it in a portable format yourself, you are participating in forcing others to join the same proprietary lock-in. Its a battle you can't win every time and not worth fighting if you don't have a chance of winning. But, now that an open standard exists the chances of winning sometimes just got better. There is no way that OO can guarantee that everything will be correct when saved to a format that had to be reverse engineered and is in fact not consistent across the proprietary programs using it. Remember that when you play the game, you don't just boot windows and run word, you have to run approximately the same versions as all the other players.
Les Mikesell wrote:
On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 15:22, Mike McCarty wrote:
Why should I follow around after OO when I can just boot Windows in about a minute and a half, and be assured that the doc is ok? If OO knows there is a problem, then it should tell me. If there is no problem, it shouldn't frighten me. If it doesn't know, then why should I use it?
If you don't save it in a portable format yourself, you are participating in forcing others to join the same proprietary
This statement is on the face of it ridiculous.
I needed to write a resume a couple of years ago. I asked my girlfriend, who is very familiar with Word, to take my text version and wite it up, because the fellow I wanted to send my resume to specifically asked for Word format. She did that, and I have a copy of my resume in Word format.
I then decided recently to update my resume. I'm not a documentation expert, and don't want to become one. I loaded up my resume, and edited it with OO. OO didn't say anything when it loaded my resume, and it seemed to edit my resume just fine. When I went to save my resume, it said "WARNING WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! ALERT! YOU MAY BE LOSING IMPORTANT INFORMATION! ARE YOU *REALLY* *REALLY* _*REALLLY*_ SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?" (Or words to that effect.)
So I decided that I didn't really really want to use OO. I rebooted under Windows, used Word to edit the document, saved it, and e-mailed it away.
And so now I'm part of a vast conspiracy, a contributor to monopoly, tyranny, and other evil practices intended to subjugate the peoples of the third world, because I saved my resume in Word format instead of OO format, when OO itself warned me that it might not be a good idea.
Grow up and give me a break.
If there *was* a problem, OO should have told me, WHEN IT LOADED THE DOCUMENT, that the document contained things that it couldn't or wouldn't preserve if I saved it. If there *wasn't* a problem, it should have said NOTHING. If the document contained things that it could preserve, but only by changing file format, then it should have warned me WHEN IT LOADED THE DOCUMENT. And the messages should have been specific enough that I could, at that moment, made an informed decision about whether to continue.
It appears that OO is simply remembering what the format it loaded was, and noticing that it is different from the format it is going to use to save in, and then issuing a lazy-bones message which MAY OR MAY NOT MEAN ANYTHING.
The only way to describe this is LAZY, SLOPPY PROGRAMMING.
lock-in. Its a battle you can't win every time and not worth fighting if you don't have a chance of winning. But, now that an open standard exists the chances of winning sometimes just got better. There is no way that OO can guarantee that everything will be correct when saved to a format that had to be reverse engineered and is in fact not consistent across the proprietary programs using it. Remember that when you play the game, you don't just boot windows and run word, you have to run approximately the same versions as all the other players.
Oh bull. It read the document. If it found something it didn't understand, then it *knows* that and can say something.
I'll never ever understand people defending crappy poorly written software just because it's not MicroSoft.
NB: I'm not complaining that OO is gerally crappy and poorly written. I'm complaining that this one aspect of it is crappy and poorly written.
Mike
On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 17:22 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 15:22, Mike McCarty wrote:
Why should I follow around after OO when I can just boot Windows in about a minute and a half, and be assured that the doc is ok? If OO knows there is a problem, then it should tell me. If there is no problem, it shouldn't frighten me. If it doesn't know, then why should I use it?
If you don't save it in a portable format yourself, you are participating in forcing others to join the same proprietary
This statement is on the face of it ridiculous.
I needed to write a resume a couple of years ago. I asked my girlfriend, who is very familiar with Word, to take my text version and wite it up, because the fellow I wanted to send my resume to specifically asked for Word format. She did that, and I have a copy of my resume in Word format.
I then decided recently to update my resume. I'm not a documentation expert, and don't want to become one. I loaded up my resume, and edited it with OO. OO didn't say anything when it loaded my resume, and it seemed to edit my resume just fine. When I went to save my resume, it said "WARNING WILL ROBINSON! DANGER! ALERT! YOU MAY BE LOSING IMPORTANT INFORMATION! ARE YOU *REALLY* *REALLY* _*REALLLY*_ SURE YOU WANT TO DO THIS?" (Or words to that effect.)
So I decided that I didn't really really want to use OO. I rebooted under Windows, used Word to edit the document, saved it, and e-mailed it away.
And so now I'm part of a vast conspiracy, a contributor to monopoly, tyranny, and other evil practices intended to subjugate the peoples of the third world, because I saved my resume in Word format instead of OO format, when OO itself warned me that it might not be a good idea.
Grow up and give me a break.
If there *was* a problem, OO should have told me, WHEN IT LOADED THE DOCUMENT, that the document contained things that it couldn't or wouldn't preserve if I saved it. If there *wasn't* a problem, it should have said NOTHING. If the document contained things that it could preserve, but only by changing file format, then it should have warned me WHEN IT LOADED THE DOCUMENT. And the messages should have been specific enough that I could, at that moment, made an informed decision about whether to continue.
It appears that OO is simply remembering what the format it loaded was, and noticing that it is different from the format it is going to use to save in, and then issuing a lazy-bones message which MAY OR MAY NOT MEAN ANYTHING.
The only way to describe this is LAZY, SLOPPY PROGRAMMING.
lock-in. Its a battle you can't win every time and not worth fighting if you don't have a chance of winning. But, now that an open standard exists the chances of winning sometimes just got better. There is no way that OO can guarantee that everything will be correct when saved to a format that had to be reverse engineered and is in fact not consistent across the proprietary programs using it. Remember that when you play the game, you don't just boot windows and run word, you have to run approximately the same versions as all the other players.
Oh bull. It read the document. If it found something it didn't understand, then it *knows* that and can say something.
I'll never ever understand people defending crappy poorly written software just because it's not MicroSoft.
NB: I'm not complaining that OO is gerally crappy and poorly written. I'm complaining that this one aspect of it is crappy and poorly written.
---- of course you are ignoring the fact that if you use Word and save the file in a foreign format, you get the same type of warnings.
I guess I don't see the distinction except that the warnings in OO only come when you save files in .DOC format and in Word, when you don't save in .DOC format.
Craig
Craig White wrote:
On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 17:22 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
[snip big quote which didn't get referenced]
of course you are ignoring the fact that if you use Word and save the file in a foreign format, you get the same type of warnings.
When did I say that Word was well-written? I don't recall saying that. I don't recall defending Word at all.
I guess I don't see the distinction except that the warnings in OO only come when you save files in .DOC format and in Word, when you don't save in .DOC format.
I don't recall trying to compare the quality of OO with the quality of Word in any respect.
Lazy programming is lazy programming, whoever does it.
One distinction is that OO can *know* when it loads in that it cannot save out without either (1) losing information, or (2) changing to a different format, or (3) both. Word doesn't have to warn about that until saving the output because it *can* write out in the original format. If one saves to a format which cannot store the original, but that cannot be known until that time, then it is reasonable to warn (if info *will* be lost) that this is going to occur. If OO waits until I tell it to export my document in plain ASCII to say that I'm definitely going to lose some stuff, and asks whether I want to continue, that's fine, and it's also fine for Word to wait until one exports into a foreign format that something is definitely going to be lost. If a generic "YOU MAY LOSE SOMETHING" gets displayed just because of change of format, but nothing is actually going to get lost, then that's bad, whoever did it.
Perhaps you are right. The only distinction between the crap MS puts out and OO is that OO is open source crap. :-)
[take that as a very BIG smiley!]
Mike
On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 17:53 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Perhaps you are right. The only distinction between the crap MS puts out and OO is that OO is open source crap. :-)
[take that as a very BIG smiley!]
---- considering that I think their target was a drop-in replacement for Microsoft Office, they saw the methods Word used and duplicated it (along with warnings for saving files in foreign document formats). Perhaps they didn't set their goals high enough, I don't know.
The thing that strikes me is that this is open source, and participation in the decisions is entirely possible, in many different ways, one of the less effective way being a mailing list. But consider that a user is part of the community that drives the programming decisions.
In the topic itself, this is the user community (in the case, the state of Massachusetts) trying to drive the document format - pretty much the same thing.
Craig
On Thu, 29 Sep 2005, Mike McCarty wrote:
Craig White wrote:
On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 17:22 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
[snip big quote which didn't get referenced]
of course you are ignoring the fact that if you use Word and save the file in a foreign format, you get the same type of warnings.
When did I say that Word was well-written? I don't recall saying that. I don't recall defending Word at all.
I guess I don't see the distinction except that the warnings in OO only come when you save files in .DOC format and in Word, when you don't save in .DOC format.
I don't recall trying to compare the quality of OO with the quality of Word in any respect.
Lazy programming is lazy programming, whoever does it.
One distinction is that OO can *know* when it loads in that it cannot save out without either (1) losing information, or (2) changing to a different format, or (3) both. Word doesn't have to warn about that until saving the output because it *can* write out in the original format. If one saves to a format which cannot store the original, but that cannot be known until that time, then it is reasonable to warn (if info *will* be lost) that this is going to occur. If OO waits until I tell it to export my document in plain ASCII to say that I'm definitely going to lose some stuff, and asks whether I want to continue, that's fine, and it's also fine for Word to wait until one exports into a foreign format that something is definitely going to be lost. If a generic "YOU MAY LOSE SOMETHING" gets displayed just because of change of format, but nothing is actually going to get lost, then that's bad, whoever did it.
But that's not the use case that matters.
You can load a document in any format (.doc, txt, OOo format) and oowriter will do its best to preserve the formatting while converting to OOo format. You now have the document open in font of you, and you can see for yourself if the formatting is acceptable. (OK agreed, if oowriter had to drop information on import, it could warn you then.)
Now you are presumably going to modify the document. (Otherwise, what's the point of saving it? You already have the unmodified document in the format you want.) So you make changes. Certainly all of those changes can be preserved in OOo format--after all, that's what you are editing.
Now you want to save the modified document in .doc or .txt format. oowriter can't tell until it actually carries out the conversion if anything you've done could not be preserved in the external format. (Well, for txt format, it knows for sure that information will be lost, but it can't know if you care.) You might also have created a document from scratch in oowriter, and oowriter would never have had the opportunity to analyse any version in an external format. Your creation would be in OOo format with no possibility of knowing what formatting information might be lost on conversion until the conversion is carried out.
One way to proceed would be to export the document anyway and warn you ex post that formatting information was lost during the conversion. But that doesn't seem to be the convention. The convention seems to be to warn you in advance if the conversion might fail and ask if that's what you want. You could argue that an ex post warning would be better, but you can't argue that oowriter can always know ex ante precisely when the warning is needed.
Perhaps you are right. The only distinction between the crap MS puts out and OO is that OO is open source crap. :-)
[take that as a very BIG smiley!]
Mike
On Thu, 29 Sep 2005 10:42 pm, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
On Thu, 29 Sep 2005, Mike McCarty wrote:
Craig White wrote:
On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 17:22 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
[snip big quote which didn't get referenced]
of course you are ignoring the fact that if you use Word and save the file in a foreign format, you get the same type of warnings.
When did I say that Word was well-written? I don't recall saying that. I don't recall defending Word at all.
I guess I don't see the distinction except that the warnings in OO only come when you save files in .DOC format and in Word, when you don't save in .DOC format.
I don't recall trying to compare the quality of OO with the quality of Word in any respect.
Lazy programming is lazy programming, whoever does it.
One distinction is that OO can *know* when it loads in that it cannot save out without either (1) losing information, or (2) changing to a different format, or (3) both. Word doesn't have to warn about that until saving the output because it *can* write out in the original format. If one saves to a format which cannot store the original, but that cannot be known until that time, then it is reasonable to warn (if info *will* be lost) that this is going to occur. If OO waits until I tell it to export my document in plain ASCII to say that I'm definitely going to lose some stuff, and asks whether I want to continue, that's fine, and it's also fine for Word to wait until one exports into a foreign format that something is definitely going to be lost. If a generic "YOU MAY LOSE SOMETHING" gets displayed just because of change of format, but nothing is actually going to get lost, then that's bad, whoever did it.
But that's not the use case that matters.
You can load a document in any format (.doc, txt, OOo format) and oowriter will do its best to preserve the formatting while converting to OOo format. You now have the document open in font of you, and you can see for yourself if the formatting is acceptable. (OK agreed, if oowriter had to drop information on import, it could warn you then.)
Now you are presumably going to modify the document. (Otherwise, what's the point of saving it? You already have the unmodified document in the format you want.) So you make changes. Certainly all of those changes can be preserved in OOo format--after all, that's what you are editing.
Now you want to save the modified document in .doc or .txt format. oowriter can't tell until it actually carries out the conversion if anything you've done could not be preserved in the external format. (Well, for txt format, it knows for sure that information will be lost, but it can't know if you care.) You might also have created a document from scratch in oowriter, and oowriter would never have had the opportunity to analyse any version in an external format. Your creation would be in OOo format with no possibility of knowing what formatting information might be lost on conversion until the conversion is carried out.
One way to proceed would be to export the document anyway and warn you ex post that formatting information was lost during the conversion. But that doesn't seem to be the convention. The convention seems to be to warn you in advance if the conversion might fail and ask if that's what you want. You could argue that an ex post warning would be better, but you can't argue that oowriter can always know ex ante precisely when the warning is needed.
I would think it would be fairly easy, when exporting to any format to know what of the OOo formating can't be saved properly, then check if the document about to be saved has any of these. And put up a requester only if something in the formating can't be saved correctly.
create a test.txt file using $ echo "this is a test" > test.txt
Start OpenOffice.org 1.1 Open a test.txt (OK) Save as test.doc (OK) Add an empty line to the end of the document Save (Got requester)
I know that there isn't anything that can't be saved correctly in this plain text document but I still got the requester saying there might be. I don't think this is wise.
Perhaps you are right. The only distinction between the crap MS puts out and OO is that OO is open source crap. :-)
[take that as a very BIG smiley!]
Mike
-- Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences mjs AT clemson DOT edu http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs
fedora@butterflystitches.com.au wrote:
I would think it would be fairly easy, when exporting to any format to know what of the OOo formating can't be saved properly, then check if the document about to be saved has any of these. And put up a requester only if something in the formating can't be saved correctly.
Exactly my point.
create a test.txt file using $ echo "this is a test" > test.txt
Start OpenOffice.org 1.1 Open a test.txt (OK) Save as test.doc (OK) Add an empty line to the end of the document Save (Got requester)
And this is exactly my complaint. IT IS LAZY-BONES PROGRAMMING.
There is no excuse for it. Well, in a programming class where no- one doing the programming claims to be anything like an expert software professional, yes, that's an excuse for a student- produced program. But for something which purports to be produced for professional, serious use, this is just unacceptable.
BTW, "But the OTHER OS's product does the same thing!" is *also* not an excuse.
I know that there isn't anything that can't be saved correctly in this plain text document but I still got the requester saying there might be. I don't think this is wise.
You are being kind.
Kinda getting into topic drift, here :-)
Mike
Matthew Saltzman wrote: SNIP
Now you want to save the modified document in .doc or .txt format. oowriter can't tell until it actually carries out the conversion if anything you've done could not be preserved in the external format. (Well, for txt format, it knows for sure that information will be lost, but it can't know if you care.) You might also have created a document from scratch in oowriter, and oowriter would never have had the opportunity to analyse any version in an external format. Your creation would be in OOo format with no possibility of knowing what formatting information might be lost on conversion until the conversion is carried out.
One way to proceed would be to export the document anyway and warn you ex post that formatting information was lost during the conversion. But that doesn't seem to be the convention. The convention seems to be to warn you in advance if the conversion might fail and ask if that's what you want. You could argue that an ex post warning would be better, but you can't argue that oowriter can always know ex ante precisely when the warning is needed.
Perhaps you are right. The only distinction between the crap MS puts out and OO is that OO is open source crap. :-)
[take that as a very BIG smiley!]
Mike
Now if MS would only warn that it's closed format isn't that transportable across versions of Word. One reason that business my wife works for moved to OOo. To much time wasted re-formatting documents between Mac and Windows Word. At least OOo works the same between Linux, Mac and Windows with only minor differences.
And as my wife said today, OOo files are so much smaller than Word files.
On Thu, 2005-29-09 at 15:28 -0700, Craig White wrote: ...snip...
of course you are ignoring the fact that if you use Word and save the file in a foreign format, you get the same type of warnings.
I guess I don't see the distinction except that the warnings in OO only come when you save files in .DOC format and in Word, when you don't save in .DOC format.
Well said.
The last time I updated my resume was at least 5 years ago. I believe it was in Word format, so I exported it and reformatted it in Applix which I no longer have, but fortunately I had the foresight to also save it in standard ascii text and RTF. It turns out we did not go public and I did not have to bid for my job, so it was never used.
My point here is if I had only saved it in Applix I may have had to redo it from scratch. Lets just pretend that MSFT went bust, after being sued for mental pain and anguish by millions of people in a class action suite, and word was no longer available ; How would Massachusetts citizens gain access to state documents stored in word format that they needed when they had no way of running word anymore.
...
PS: Would like to start a class action suite against MSFT for the mental pain and anguish they have suffered from the use their products. If you would then sign me up. ;^)
"... and word was no longer available ; How would ..."
Wouldn't you just install the old version of Word, the one the file(s) were created with? Wait a minute, we're pretending aren't we.
Never mind.
Visit tepy @ http://tepy-at-houston-lake.blogspot.com/
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Tom Pangborn wrote:
"... and word was no longer available ; How would ..."
Wouldn't you just install the old version of Word, the one the file(s) were created with? Wait a minute, we're pretending aren't we.
We weren't pretending when higher ups decided that we would now all be on a Word standard. This required all official documents for our office to be produced in Word format. After 18 years of a Word Perfect standard, there were a lot of legacy documents to be converted to Word. Neither Word nor Word Perfect was able to convert complex documents from one format to the other. Many hours were spent (by others) converting documentation from WP to Word. There are now less than a dozen licenses for WP in the division, so finding someone to convert a legacy document can be difficult.
When OOo announced its upgraded Word Perfect filter about 18 months ago, I was experimenting with it and a co-worker mentioned a document with tables that he had tried to convert with no success. He e-mailed me the document, I opened it in OOo, saved it in Word format and e-mailed it back. It may not have been perfect, but he was very happy.
With OOo, I'm no longer concerned about loosing access to my Word Perfect Documents. Also, I can read Word docs, without having to send $ to M$ for the privilege. (It is provided at work, but I don't even have to use it there.)
My point is that sometimes old versions of the software are not available, having been removed for security purposes, non-renewal of the license, or the only remaining copy of the software died on a dead hard drive.
Nancy
-------------------------------------------------------------- nancym@charm.net ..... (future) http://www.charm.net/~nancym/ The Kitties Page ........... http://members.aol.com/Mysnats/ My Sister's Karaoke Site ............ http://karaokeklub.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------
On Sat, 2005-10-01 at 23:16 -0400, Nancy Merckle wrote:
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Tom Pangborn wrote:
"... and word was no longer available ; How would ..."
Wouldn't you just install the old version of Word, the one the file(s) were created with? Wait a minute, we're pretending aren't we.
We weren't pretending when higher ups decided that we would now all be on a Word standard. This required all official documents for our office to be produced in Word format. After 18 years of a Word Perfect standard, there were a lot of legacy documents to be converted to Word. Neither Word nor Word Perfect was able to convert complex documents from one format to the other. Many hours were spent (by others) converting documentation from WP to Word. There are now less than a dozen licenses for WP in the division, so finding someone to convert a legacy document can be difficult.
When OOo announced its upgraded Word Perfect filter about 18 months ago, I was experimenting with it and a co-worker mentioned a document with tables that he had tried to convert with no success. He e-mailed me the document, I opened it in OOo, saved it in Word format and e-mailed it back. It may not have been perfect, but he was very happy.
With OOo, I'm no longer concerned about loosing access to my Word Perfect Documents. Also, I can read Word docs, without having to send $ to M$ for the privilege. (It is provided at work, but I don't even have to use it there.)
My point is that sometimes old versions of the software are not available, having been removed for security purposes, non-renewal of the license, or the only remaining copy of the software died on a dead hard drive.
Nancy
And that scenario IMHO is what using an open document format is expected to eliminate. Using one proprietary format (WP) and having to convert to another (M$) is a nightmare. If the format were open then it would not matter which work processing tool you were using. They all could read/write it.
nancym@charm.net ..... (future) http://www.charm.net/~nancym/ The Kitties Page ........... http://members.aol.com/Mysnats/ My Sister's Karaoke Site ............ http://karaokeklub.com/
Jeff Vian wrote:
On Sat, 2005-10-01 at 23:16 -0400, Nancy Merckle wrote:
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Tom Pangborn wrote:
"... and word was no longer available ; How would ..."
Wouldn't you just install the old version of Word, the one the file(s) were created with? Wait a minute, we're pretending aren't we.
We weren't pretending when higher ups decided that we would now all be on a Word standard. This required all official documents for our office to be produced in Word format. After 18 years of a Word Perfect standard, there were a lot of legacy documents to be converted to Word. Neither Word nor Word Perfect was able to convert complex documents from one format to the other. Many hours were spent (by others) converting documentation from WP to Word. There are now less than a dozen licenses for WP in the division, so finding someone to convert a legacy document can be difficult.
When OOo announced its upgraded Word Perfect filter about 18 months ago, I was experimenting with it and a co-worker mentioned a document with tables that he had tried to convert with no success. He e-mailed me the document, I opened it in OOo, saved it in Word format and e-mailed it back. It may not have been perfect, but he was very happy.
With OOo, I'm no longer concerned about loosing access to my Word Perfect Documents. Also, I can read Word docs, without having to send $ to M$ for the privilege. (It is provided at work, but I don't even have to use it there.)
My point is that sometimes old versions of the software are not available, having been removed for security purposes, non-renewal of the license, or the only remaining copy of the software died on a dead hard drive.
Nancy
And that scenario IMHO is what using an open document format is expected to eliminate. Using one proprietary format (WP) and having to convert to another (M$) is a nightmare. If the format were open then it would not matter which work processing tool you were using. They all could read/write it.
We are working on a new archival system for our work. Not only documentation but data files and many other file types. I pushed from day one that all saved and archived formats must be open formats for just the reason you post.
- Robin Laing
On Mon, 2005-03-10 at 11:58 -0600, Robin Laing wrote:
Jeff Vian wrote:
On Sat, 2005-10-01 at 23:16 -0400, Nancy Merckle wrote:
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Tom Pangborn wrote:
"... and word was no longer available ; How would ..."
Wouldn't you just install the old version of Word, the one the file(s) were created with? Wait a minute, we're pretending aren't we.
We weren't pretending when higher ups decided that we would now all be on a Word standard. This required all official documents for our office to be produced in Word format. After 18 years of a Word Perfect standard, there were a lot of legacy documents to be converted to Word. Neither Word nor Word Perfect was able to convert complex documents from one format to the other. Many hours were spent (by others) converting documentation from WP to Word. There are now less than a dozen licenses for WP in the division, so finding someone to convert a legacy document can be difficult.
When OOo announced its upgraded Word Perfect filter about 18 months ago, I was experimenting with it and a co-worker mentioned a document with tables that he had tried to convert with no success. He e-mailed me the document, I opened it in OOo, saved it in Word format and e-mailed it back. It may not have been perfect, but he was very happy.
With OOo, I'm no longer concerned about loosing access to my Word Perfect Documents. Also, I can read Word docs, without having to send $ to M$ for the privilege. (It is provided at work, but I don't even have to use it there.)
My point is that sometimes old versions of the software are not available, having been removed for security purposes, non-renewal of the license, or the only remaining copy of the software died on a dead hard drive.
Nancy
And that scenario IMHO is what using an open document format is expected to eliminate. Using one proprietary format (WP) and having to convert to another (M$) is a nightmare. If the format were open then it would not matter which work processing tool you were using. They all could read/write it.
We are working on a new archival system for our work. Not only documentation but data files and many other file types. I pushed from day one that all saved and archived formats must be open formats for just the reason you post.
Robin Laing
We could only wish to have management that could understand these issues. I know from experience, that management bought the MSFT propaganda, and ignored what the IT department proposed. I am the only person left in the office that is not using MS Office. The only thing that allows me to keep a Linux workstation is that I am the senior network administrator. As long as I export my documents in Excel or Word formats management doesn't care. I just don't make ripples anymore, because last time I brought it up I was almost forced to switch to windows. I saved myself using the, catastrophic virus vulnerability scenario, where all the windows machines could crash, but we would still have one workstation to maintain the system. I am not sure if they bought it or just gave in, but my Linux machine survived that gauntlet.
On Mon, 2005-10-03 at 15:01 -0600, Guy Fraser wrote:
I saved myself using the, catastrophic virus vulnerability scenario, where all the windows machines could crash, but we would still have one workstation to maintain the system. I am not sure if they bought it or just gave in, but my Linux machine survived that gauntlet.
It's a good argument, nonetheless. I know of one business that only stayed in business when their computer system crashed, because their computer wasn't the only thing with their accounts on.
Having some alternatives is a good idea for various reasons. As well as what's just been mentioned, it gives you experience in alternatives should you need to change in a hurry. Perhaps it gives you a foot in the door, perhaps it teaches you one more avenue that should be avoided before you get into it.
Why is it that marketing seems keen on exploring new avenues, but IT seems intent on closing off options?
On Tue, 4 Oct 2005, Tim wrote:
Why is it that marketing seems keen on exploring new avenues, but IT seems intent on closing off options?
They probably think that it saves them work and reduces the expertise required of them. Also, IT might not take rejection well.
On Tue, 2005-04-10 at 07:57 -0500, Michael Hennebry wrote:
On Tue, 4 Oct 2005, Tim wrote:
Why is it that marketing seems keen on exploring new avenues, but IT seems intent on closing off options?
They probably think that it saves them work and reduces the expertise required of them. Also, IT might not take rejection well.
In many cases management has dictated the limits and the IT staff have no choice.
Guy Fraser wrote:
On Mon, 2005-03-10 at 11:58 -0600, Robin Laing wrote:
<snip>
We could only wish to have management that could understand these issues. I know from experience, that management bought the MSFT propaganda, and ignored what the IT department proposed. I am the only person left in the office that is not using MS Office. The only thing that allows me to keep a Linux workstation is that I am the senior network administrator. As long as I export my documents in Excel or Word formats management doesn't care. I just don't make ripples anymore, because last time I brought it up I was almost forced to switch to windows. I saved myself using the, catastrophic virus vulnerability scenario, where all the windows machines could crash, but we would still have one workstation to maintain the system. I am not sure if they bought it or just gave in, but my Linux machine survived that gauntlet.
We are lucky here in the fact that the IS people still use Solaris on many machines. We have Linux clusters that have replaced Alpha's and many people are using Linux for development. :)
We still have the MS document issue but many are using LaTex or OOo because of formatting problems and issues with MS office. It is not a pleasant experience hearing someone scream that the paper they need in 20 minutes just got reformatted automatically by MS Office as they deleted one line.
Heck, I worked on a macro application that the "Head Office" wanted tested and it crashed terribly every time I tried to use it on an XP machine. I spent an hour on the phone with one of the development teams and they even had to admit that they were seeing more Linux, LaTex and OOo usage. We even have Corporate LaTex templates now.
And of course the virus issue is always fun as this took down the exchange server for many days. Of course all the sendmail servers kept working. Unfortunately, the exchange servers are now the major gateway.
Of course we now have contracts written that state software or hardware will be able to run and support Linux.
We have the issue of importing old documents and data files that are in proprietor file formats from past work. It isn't much fun.
On Sat, 2005-01-10 at 23:16 -0400, Nancy Merckle wrote:
On Fri, 30 Sep 2005, Tom Pangborn wrote:
"... and word was no longer available ; How would ..."
Wouldn't you just install the old version of Word, the one the file(s) were created with? Wait a minute, we're pretending aren't we.
We weren't pretending when higher ups decided that we would now all be on a Word standard. This required all official documents for our office to be produced in Word format. After 18 years of a Word Perfect standard, there were a lot of legacy documents to be converted to Word. Neither Word nor Word Perfect was able to convert complex documents from one format to the other. Many hours were spent (by others) converting documentation from WP to Word. There are now less than a dozen licenses for WP in the division, so finding someone to convert a legacy document can be difficult.
When OOo announced its upgraded Word Perfect filter about 18 months ago, I was experimenting with it and a co-worker mentioned a document with tables that he had tried to convert with no success. He e-mailed me the document, I opened it in OOo, saved it in Word format and e-mailed it back. It may not have been perfect, but he was very happy.
With OOo, I'm no longer concerned about loosing access to my Word Perfect Documents. Also, I can read Word docs, without having to send $ to M$ for the privilege. (It is provided at work, but I don't even have to use it there.)
My point is that sometimes old versions of the software are not available, having been removed for security purposes, non-renewal of the license, or the only remaining copy of the software died on a dead hard drive.
Nancy
That is exactly the scenario that caused the problems. In this case your company decided to standardize on Word, and your suppliers and customers who needed to exchange information with you also needed to be able to read and write documents that your company could use, so they had to switch as well... and so on... and so on ad infinitum. It was a well planned and orchestrated move by MSFT to persuade some high profile organizations to standardize on their products in such a way that other organizations affiliated with them would be forced to switch at full cost in order to comply.
That is what capitalism is all about, not just getting the biggest piece of the pie, but getting all the pies. I'm not suggesting their is anything intrinsically wrong with capitalism but unregulated it is the root cause of monopolistic forces, and white collar corruption.
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On 29 Sep 2005 at 15:22, Mike McCarty wrote:
Date sent: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 15:22:42 -0500 From: Mike McCarty mike.mccarty@sbcglobal.net To: For users of Fedora Core releases fedora-list@redhat.com Subject: Re: OT: Massachusetts Verdict: MS Office Formats Out Send reply to: For users of Fedora Core releases fedora-list@redhat.com mailto:fedora-list-request@redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe mailto:fedora-list-request@redhat.com?subject=subscribe
Tony Nelson wrote:
At 10:50 PM +0930 9/29/05, Tim wrote:
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 14:26 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
When I use OpenOffice, and want to save something that I created using MS Office, I find that it frequently wants to warn me that I may be losing some special features. For this reason, I have abandoned using OO for editing stuff created with MSO.
I don't know enough about these things to know whether anything in the files are actually at risk, but rather than lose them, I re-boot to Windows and do the editing there.
Do a test... Usually, the warnings about things like how some document formats mightn't support some styling effects, might not do tabs or margins in the same way, etc.
As a programmer, foolish warnings such as the above "All might not be safe" disgust me. If the code thinks that something might not work, the author is responsible for making it do the right thing. In this case, make the file in a temporary place (and this is the only responsible way to do it ever) and notice if anything didn't make it through the export process. If that happens, /then/ warn the user, tell them what got lost, and ask what to do. Such a warning actually means something that the user might care about. If they don't use any non-exportable feature in a document, they won't get any warning; if they do, they can at least decide whether to keep using the feature.
I started to reply to his message, but you said it soooo much better!
Why should I follow around after OO when I can just boot Windows in about a minute and a half, and be assured that the doc is ok? If OO knows there is a problem, then it should tell me. If there is no problem, it shouldn't frighten me. If it doesn't know, then why should I use it?
Mike
But I've seen the problem with documents being different if it is sent to someone also using MicroSoft, but having a different printer or fonts. It doesn't print the same. We use to make forms available in Word format, but they would print differently on different system, with different page breaks. PDF files worked with all printers. The only problem was that users couldn't edit the forms, but that wasn't a big issue in our case.
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On Fri, 2005-09-30 at 17:30 +1000, Michael D. Setzer II wrote:
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On 29 Sep 2005 at 15:22, Mike McCarty wrote:
Date sent: Thu, 29 Sep 2005 15:22:42 -0500 From: Mike McCarty mike.mccarty@sbcglobal.net To: For users of Fedora Core releases fedora-list@redhat.com Subject: Re: OT: Massachusetts Verdict: MS Office Formats Out Send reply to: For users of Fedora Core releases fedora-list@redhat.com mailto:fedora-list-request@redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe mailto:fedora-list-request@redhat.com?subject=subscribe
Tony Nelson wrote:
At 10:50 PM +0930 9/29/05, Tim wrote:
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 14:26 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Why should I follow around after OO when I can just boot Windows in about a minute and a half, and be assured that the doc is ok? If OO knows there is a problem, then it should tell me. If there is no problem, it shouldn't frighten me. If it doesn't know, then why should I use it?
Mike
But I've seen the problem with documents being different if it is sent to someone also using MicroSoft, but having a different printer or fonts. It doesn't print the same. We use to make forms available in Word format, but they would print differently on different system, with different page breaks. PDF files worked with all printers. The only problem was that users couldn't edit the forms, but that wasn't a big issue in our case.
Yes, but historically the idea with PDFs was to have a document that could not be changed. Often people would make the PDF expecting it to be a permanent document. Now, however, even a PDF can be edited/parsed/searched so there is no "fixed" form of electronic document any more that I know of.
The biggest problem I have recently had with PDFs is that they may be created for one page size (A4) and printed on another (letter) so the laser printer complains for every page being printed. That is something I would like to see managed but is not really the document or the creators fault.
Michael D. Setzer II wrote:
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On 29 Sep 2005 at 15:22, Mike McCarty wrote:
I started to reply to his message, but you said it soooo much better!
Why should I follow around after OO when I can just boot Windows in about a minute and a half, and be assured that the doc is ok? If OO knows there is a problem, then it should tell me. If there is no problem, it shouldn't frighten me. If it doesn't know, then why should I use it?
Mike
But I've seen the problem with documents being different if it is sent to someone also using MicroSoft, but having a different printer or fonts. It doesn't print the same. We use to make forms available in Word format, but they would print differently on different system, with different page breaks. PDF files worked with all printers. The only problem was that users couldn't edit the forms, but that wasn't a big issue in our case.
This is a different topic, seems to me. PDF is intended to solve a different problem, that of printing documents, not editing them.
Mike
On Fri, 2005-30-09 at 12:52 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
Michael D. Setzer II wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
On 29 Sep 2005 at 15:22, Mike McCarty wrote:
I started to reply to his message, but you said it soooo much better!
Why should I follow around after OO when I can just boot Windows in about a minute and a half, and be assured that the doc is ok? If OO knows there is a problem, then it should tell me. If there is no problem, it shouldn't frighten me. If it doesn't know, then why should I use it?
Mike
But I've seen the problem with documents being different if it is sent to someone also using MicroSoft, but having a different printer or fonts. It doesn't print the same. We use to make forms available in Word format, but they would print differently on different system, with different page breaks. PDF files worked with all printers. The only problem was that users couldn't edit the forms, but that wasn't a big issue in our case.
This is a different topic, seems to me. PDF is intended to solve a different problem, that of printing documents, not editing them.
Although most of the discussion has been about editing documents, the actual legislation is more about the storage, retrieval and display of documents not necessarily the editing of the documents. However a vendor that can create and edit documents as well as store, retrieve and display them will have a big advantage over those that can't.
Massachusetts did not adopt the OO format, the adopted the Open Document Format, which OO has also adopted support for also.
On Thu, 2005-29-09 at 14:09 -0400, Tony Nelson wrote:
At 10:50 PM +0930 9/29/05, Tim wrote:
On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 14:26 -0500, Mike McCarty wrote:
When I use OpenOffice, and want to save something that I created using MS Office, I find that it frequently wants to warn me that I may be losing some special features. For this reason, I have abandoned using OO for editing stuff created with MSO.
I don't know enough about these things to know whether anything in the files are actually at risk, but rather than lose them, I re-boot to Windows and do the editing there.
Do a test... Usually, the warnings about things like how some document formats mightn't support some styling effects, might not do tabs or margins in the same way, etc.
As a programmer, foolish warnings such as the above "All might not be safe" disgust me. If the code thinks that something might not work, the author is responsible for making it do the right thing. In this case, make the file in a temporary place (and this is the only responsible way to do it ever) and notice if anything didn't make it through the export process. If that happens, /then/ warn the user, tell them what got lost, and ask what to do. Such a warning actually means something that the user might care about. If they don't use any non-exportable feature in a document, they won't get any warning; if they do, they can at least decide whether to keep using the feature.
Gotta agree with that. I don't know how stuff that works well gets written with such poor error reporting. I personally find that good error reporting and warnings make the job of programming easier, at least you can have an idea where to look to fix a problem or add a feature if there is a modicum of detail in the message. For instance, if I were writing something that may loose some advanced formatting, that is what I would report and may even provide a help link to explain what formatting is not supported for that type of file format. It would also be helpful to only report the problem if an incompatible feature was detected.
On Thu, 2005-09-29 at 14:09 -0400, Tony Nelson wrote:
As a programmer, foolish warnings such as the above "All might not be safe" disgust me.
Same here. I particularly hate misleading ones like MSIE's "scripts are probably safe" (or word to that effect), when it's probably unsafe; and error messages which are completely ambiguous or utterly useless (they might as well just say, "forget it, start again...".
Generally, I've only noticed some programs warn me that I might lose something saving in a different format if it were true. If it could save the data without loss, even if there was some sort of conversion, it just saved it.
If the code thinks that something might not work, the author is responsible for making it do the right thing. In this case, make the file in a temporary place (and this is the only responsible way to do it ever) and notice if anything didn't make it through the export process. If that happens, /then/ warn the user, tell them what got lost, and ask what to do. Such a warning actually means something that the user might care about. If they don't use any non-exportable feature in a document, they won't get any warning; if they do, they can at least decide whether to keep using the feature.
I think a big problem is that for some formats you are going to unavoidably lose some features. It just won't be possible to do what you wanted in the other format. A more sensible "publish file for other users" feature, that exported in generally usable formats (PDF, HTML, RTF, open document formats, etc.), would be a good addition to software that works with proprietary formats.
But I've always considered word processors to be a means to an end of getting something typed on my PC onto paper. Not a program for giving someone else a file to read. There's so many problems with just that angle, never mind hoping that they can print it (they'll need the fonts, the same size paper, a printer capable of printing out to the margins I used, etc.).
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