Compatibility LO/MSO

users
#1

Hi,

thank you all for your answers. In fact I take part in a larger scale
testing of interoperability of formats, since open source software is
currently considered by Slovak administration as and alternative to the
standard MS stuff. If everything goes really well, there will be a
transition period when open source (say, LO) and proprietary
applications will be used in parallel and documents in various formats
will be interchanged. Therefore, we want to understand the situation and
prepare a guide (use this feature, avoid that feature), which would help
in creating documents which can safely be opened by the other tool.

I am aware of the fact that "open" standards like OOXML, which are
more-or-less in hands of only one company (even if it is an ISO
standard) will always be a problem. Simultaneously, MS support of ODF
will probably never be perfect. But a state administration does not need
complex features and formatting - therefore we want to prepare the guide
which would tell them, what is safe to use.

The discrepancies between rendering of odt and docx files by the other
applications are really big. Jean-Francois pointed to "Styles. Or lack
of. " I've heard this also from other people. So, is it really possible,
that a program, when opening a document, applies some additional
formating, which can change appearance in comparison to the original?
Should this be considered as a bug, or is it a feature (which can be
eventually switched off) ?

As an example I created a simple document in LO40 (MS2013), stored as
odt (docx) and opened and printed in MS2013 (LO40) :
http://ubuntuone.com/1lkbhsT9veT24B9a9jPUpr
In the pdf (overlay of rendering in bork applications) you can see that
the major difference resides in interline spacing. Do you have and idea,
where is the reason?
ODF 1.1 and OOXML transitional were used, the used fonts were available
on both computers. Line spacing does not seem to be a big issue, but one
can see inconsistent line spacing nearly everywhere. So, from the point
of view of interoperability it is perhaps a blocker, since the
displacement is sometimes a couple of lines per page.

If this is a bug in LO I will file a bug in its Bugzilla. If it is a bug
in MS2013, we will ask MS to correct that (there is a guy from Microsoft
in our team who promised to do that). If they do not correct it, it will
be a nice argument against using MSO at all.

I will be grateful for each advice on how to analyze the problem and how
to sort out the reason.

With best regards
Milos

Dňa 06.05.2013 18:31, Regina Henschel wrote / napísal(a):

#2

Hi :slight_smile:

Ok, several points;  (again just my own personal opinions which often put me at risk of being thrown off the mailing-lists for being too blunt) (err, and i'm English not US)

1.  To analyse you might find it better to add 2 programs into the mix.

1.a.  On the OpenSource side perhaps Calligra/KOffice or AbiWord (AbiWord is smaller and faster but Calligra is more fully featured) or any other OpenSource office programs.  So, just 1 of these 2 would help;

http://www.calligra-suite.org/
http://www.abisource.com/

1.b.  On the MS side a lot of companies are still on MS Office 2003 while a lot of others are on MS Office 2010 now or moving to it now that 2013 has been released.  It's still very rare to be using 2013 or 365 and will be for the next couple of years.  Perhaps add MS Office 2003 to the analysis.

Even a quick analysis between the different versions of MSO will flag up a lot of differences in the handling of their ooxml formats and even some in their handling of their older formats.  By contrast even an in-depth analysis of the 2 different OpenSource programs (LibreOffice and whichever other) will show that both Doc and Odt are handled very much the same by both OpenSource programs.  Also a Doc created by any OpenSource program will also look very much the same in both versions of MS Office.

A few people have reported that when MS Office users have troubles sharing documents because the formatting has gone too strange then it's the LibreOffice user that is able to fix it so that all 3 sides can read it the same way.

2.  So, during the migration and for external communications in the near(ish) future you will see that it is best to use the older MS formats

Doc, Xls, Ppt

and so on.  NOT the ooxml ones.

DocX, XlsX, PptX

The ISO standard as registered with the ISO committees does NOT seem to be the same as any of  their implementations of it.  I guess they have a legitimate argument in saying that "accidents happen", as they tried to use in the court-case over their RTF (=Rich Text Format).  Actually even if you decide to stick with MS then it's still probably better to use the older formats for greater interoperability even between the different versions of MS Office (even between 2007, 2010, 2013 & 365).  In the mid-term future an increasing number of external people will be using ODF but it's a little way off yet.  I think almost every single one of the responses agreed on using the older formats for greater interoperability.

3. Are you only getting advice from MS about the migration?  Do you have people from the Free Software Foundation involved in the process?  If you are only accepting advice from MS then their lack of understanding about OpenSource will typically steer you into as many problems as they can manage to find.  That would explain your current difficulties.  We have seen this over and over again.

4.  The promise from MS sounds good BUT if it would be that easy for them then why haven't they done it already?  Why don't they just do it rather than make promises which may or may not happen?  In the case of the RTF court cases it seemed that MS were better at making promises and blaming other people than actually delivering the results they promised.  For a successful migration you need to involve OpenSource experts such as the people at FSF.

Actually the "lining up" issue looks like a styles or a fonts thing to me, but any editable format is going to look different on different machines or in different programs.  It's only Pdf that is meant to look the same on all and the main reason for that is that it is not meant to be editable and is meant to ignore all local conditions.  Just because fonts have the same name doesn't mean they are identical.

I think there are 2 ways of generating Pdfs in LibreOffice.

1.  File - "Export to Pdf" or "Save as"

2.  File - Print - "to file" and change the format from ".Ps" to ".Pdf"
The 2nd way embeds the fonts into the document.  The first way has more flexibility about the configurations&settings used in the Pdf, such as if you want it to be improved for screen-readers or have different amounts of, or type of, compression (do you want a lot of swirls and a very light-weight document for emailing or do you want it print-quality).  The 2nd way is not easy to find&use.

I hope this helps!
Regards from

Tom :slight_smile:

#3

Hi :slight_smile:
Errr, one of the classic moves from MS is to get people to do an all or nothing approach.

They will try to tell you that you can't have MS Office and LibreOffice on the same machine.  Going that way is disastrous and requires huge amounts of training and leads to immense dissatisfaction.  Users hate this route and fight against the new toys.

Almost every OpenSource advocate recommends keeping whichever MS Office happens to be on existing machines but to install LibreOffice alongside.

After that point-of-agreement is where we all start disagreeing.  Some say to do something like;
1.  keep installing MS Office on newer installs of Windows or on refurbished machines (refurbs) but only for the first 6 months to 1 year or so
2.  let people keep using primarily MS Office but encourage them to play around with LibreOffice so they can figure it out for themselves
3.  Use training courses to bring 2 or a few people from each office up-to-speed with LibreOffice.  It helps if those individuals are the ones people usually seek advice from and includes the office manager.  There are online courses (mostly in English though and just the basics so far i think) but i think it's best to collect people together away from the regular office space and give them "proper" training.
4.  Start encouraging greater use of LibreOffice and roll out training to the rest of the staff. 
5.  Keep any existing versions of MS Office on machines even well into the future, evn if everyone has fully moved over o LibreOffice and seems happy with it.  Just don't install on any refurbs or newer machines.

Some OpenSource experts recommend skipping one or 2 steps or slightly different order or different time-scales or even adding a step (or few) or cover it in more detail.

The aim is gentle migration NOT revolution.  Give people time to adapt but not too much time because those older versions of MS Office get out-dated.  If people are to continue meeting deadlines and remain productive they need access to the tools they are familiar with.  They will become more familiar with LibreOffice but it takes time. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#4

Hi :slight_smile:
Most newer versions of MS Office have ODF support built-in.  Unfortunately it's only the 2013 and 365 that use the same version of ODF as everyone else.  2007 and 2010 use the old 1.1 which is not great for spreadsheets!
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#5

Tom Davies wrote:

Hi:)
Most newer versions of MS Office have ODF support built-in. Unfortunately it's only the 2013 and 365 that use the same version of ODF as everyone else. 2007 and 2010 use the old 1.1 which is not great for spreadsheets!
Regards from
Tom:)

It's been a while since I've had occasion to use it, but, IIRC, you could choose whether to use the Sun plugin or built in ODF support even on the later versions of office. Of course, with the older versions, there wasn't any native support at all. Either way, the Sun plugin should be used in my opinon.

#6

Milos,

I'm no expert, nor can I tell you why you're having those issues, but I can confirm that there are many differences in the way Word and LO Writer work. I use a lot of outline styles and they just don't translate well between the two programs. For me the differences seem to be in the spacing between the outline number/letter and the following text. I see the same issue with footnotes that also have automatic numbering. I think the difference lay in the way each program inserts space after bullets or automatic numbers. I think that Word inserts a <tab> character whereas LO inserts space using a different method (but I could be wrong).

Also, there are fundamental differences in page structure that I have noticed.

LO uses page styles to distinguish between different types of page formatting, whereas with Word, you use section breaks and format the pages directly. This doesn't translate well between programs. I have used both for years.

I would absolutely love to see Open Source software become much more successful, but I fear that will only happen when the ODT file format becomes the industry standard. If your primary concern is being compatible with the MS "standard," I fear that Open Source will always come up short because there are just too many differences between file formats. I have long given up trying to use LO and/or OO any time I am sharing documents with a Word user. It just don't work.

But, Tom is correct in saying that even within the MS world, there are significant differences between different versions of the same program. In 2007, when MS adopted the DOCX format, my employer's older Word program couldn't open the newer files.

Virgil

#7

Hi Milos,

Milos Sramek schrieb:

[..]

ODF 1.1 and OOXML transitional were used, the used fonts were available
on both computers. Line spacing does not seem to be a big issue, but one
can see inconsistent line spacing nearly everywhere. So, from the point
of view of interoperability it is perhaps a blocker, since the
displacement is sometimes a couple of lines per page.

And another reason not to use ODF1.1:
If you save from LO to ODF1.1, then the old kind of lists are used. These do not know tabs for indenting.

When you will write a new list in the current LO, it will get the interface for the actual kind of lists, but its settings will be lost when saving to ODF1.1.

Reopening such document will have different list formatting than those before saving. That will likely confuse average users.

Kind regards
Regina

#8

Hi :slight_smile:
There is an add-on for older versions of MS Office that do now allow it to open the newer ooxml formats such as DocX.  Somewhere in microsoft.com but i'm not sure where.  The problem is that it's a bit variable depending on which version of MSO created the document.

With Open Source, one option that a few large organisations go for is to use some of the saving on license fees to establish their own devs.  Those are then directed to work on the bugs the organisation or government wants fixed.

So, for a 30 million Euro saving then maybe put 3 million of that into employing some devs to get some control.  Various organisations already do this.  Another option might be to pay TDF to employ people but then that becomes less easy for the external organisation/government to control.  So far TDF only directly employs 1 person and that is not for coding work.

So each organisation develops LibreOffice as though it was an in-house project but shares the infrastructure and the process with other organisations and volunteers.  Redhat, SUSE and others directly employ their own devs to work on LibreOffice using the systems set up here.  So Redhat benefit from work that SUSE does (and that volunteers do), likewise SUSE benefits from Redhat's work. 
Regard from
Tom :slight_smile:

#9

Hi,

thank you all for your answers. In fact I take part in a larger scale
testing of interoperability of formats, since open source software is
currently considered by Slovak administration as and alternative to the
standard MS stuff. If everything goes really well, there will be a
transition period when open source (say, LO) and proprietary
applications will be used in parallel and documents in various formats
will be interchanged. Therefore, we want to understand the situation and
prepare a guide (use this feature, avoid that feature), which would help
in creating documents which can safely be opened by the other tool.

I am aware of the fact that "open" standards like OOXML, which are
more-or-less in hands of only one company (even if it is an ISO
standard) will always be a problem. Simultaneously, MS support of ODF
will probably never be perfect. But a state administration does not need
complex features and formatting - therefore we want to prepare the guide
which would tell them, what is safe to use.

You may want to review the following guide published by m$:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/differences-between-the-opendocument-text-odt-format-and-the-word-docx-format-HA010355788.aspx

If this is a bug in LO I will file a bug in its Bugzilla. If it is a bug
in MS2013, we will ask MS to correct that (there is a guy from Microsoft
in our team who promised to do that). If they do not correct it, it will
be a nice argument against using MSO at all.

Could you also ask your m$ guy to ask that m$ publish in public domain
all their bugs? :slight_smile:

#10

Hi :slight_smile:
Welcome back e-letter!  I can get back to my normal role now safely knowing the extreme anti-MS points wont be missed
Regards from

Tom :slight_smile: