OpenOffice to be dumped in Freiburg ?

users
#21

Jay wrote:

"ODF formats are the international standard so technically MS is not
being standards compliant. This may be very useful if someone where to
sue MS for monopolistic practices."

I think there's a difference between "standards" as declared by computer developers and societies and "standards" determined by the marketplace. In the business marketplace, DOC and DOCX are the standard as they are what the vast number of business users use.

And, in the market place, standards can change. Twenty years ago, the standard for word processors was WordPerfect (WPD). Over time that changed to Word, but even then, in the legal profession, WordPerfect held on a little longer. Now, WordPerfect is a footnote.

MS may not be "standards compliant" but as long as they are the biggest game in town, what they do IS the standard.

Virgil

#22

What a discussion has been started. Great!

As for doing revers engineering on binary files, I know how difficult it is. However, it is not impossible. Should the great devs of AOO and LibO be enabled to join forces, there is a tremendous know-how and manpower available. I just hope that people in both organizations start thinking about joining forces and act ASAP.

EU and the law suit is definitely something which can help us.

This reminds me to discussions on highest management level in a multinational company of some 8000 - 10000 employees world wide. Management was "not very happy" with the way MS used their power.

This means that also larger corporations could switch to a highly bug free LibO. As for new features of MSO and an productivity increase in large corporation it is actually close to zero. The introduction of ribbons caused a huge productivity loss in large corporations and cost a lot of money for ribbon training. Such a switch could also be accelerated by MS new policy to offer their products on subscription base. Huge regular bills will be eye-catchers...

I keep fingers crossed and will contribute when I can do so.

#23

Hi Carl,

Thanks, Regina. I know there are other ways to contribute, but I don't
necessarily know what they are. Templates is one way, but the real
issue I see is going from MSO to LO/OO. We can't control the other end.

So is there a simple list of SPECIFIC ways users can contribute
(templates is a good example) that is easily found? I've seen some
general lists of how to contribute, but I haven't searched much for more
specifics. In any case it should probably be front and center on the
website (again, not the develop, donate $$, etc. generic list, but more
specifics).

Carl

Our contributions are team driven. Usually, if an individual is seriously interested in contributing:

* she/he will go to the "Get Involved" section of our website[1]
* read through the different categories for contribution
* choose/join an area of interest
* announce her/himself to the list
* state their particular interest in that section
* members will then direct them to their project needs

If unsure of where you would best fit:

* the "user" or the "discuss" mailing lists are where you could leave questions with regards to contributing
* someone from the project will ask you about your interests, after which, guide you to the right contributor-section that suits you best
* once you have joined the team and announced yourself, the team members will help guide you to their project needs.

Feel free to let us know in what way you could help out the project, and, we will help you find the right section. You will find that we will gladly accept your help in whatever section you decide to join.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Marc
Marketing Team Member

http://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/

#24

I was one of the one who sent a direct email to you (should have kept it on
list, my apologies) about contributing. QA is actively trying to grow and
requires very little (if any) programming skills. If you'd like to help out
with QA (triaging mostly right now), let us know and we'll help you get
started. Devs can't start fixing problems until they are appropriately
prioritized so there may be hundreds of bugs about interoperability with
MSO but Devs can't look at it until our small team of QA'ers get to them
and verify the bugs and then prioritize.

Regards,
Joel

#25

I think the issue becomes there is a recognized international standard. In a lawsuit the issue becomes why does one not fully support the international standard or if you refuse why do not fully publish your standard. In the 80's I do not remember an international standard for anything other that text documents so everyone made their own.

#26

Hi Everyone,

When the Microsoft formats were approved as an ISO standard, wasn't that supposed to make the information on their formats available to everyone else? From what I've read through the years, they have failed to implement their own ISO standards. Shouldn't there be some way to enforce the ISO standards approval on Microsoft so they can become inter-operable with LibreOffice?

Don

#27

Hi Everyone,

Don C. Myers schrieb:

Hi Everyone,

When the Microsoft formats were approved as an ISO standard, wasn't that
supposed to make the information on their formats available to everyone
else?

You can get the OOXML standard from http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm

You can get the binary file format description from
http://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications/en/us/programs/osp/office-file-formats/default.aspx

  From what I've read through the years, they have failed to

implement their own ISO standards.

The ECMA standard is available in MSO 2013 as "OOXML strict", but LO fails to read it.

  Shouldn't there be some way to

enforce the ISO standards approval on Microsoft so they can become
inter-operable with LibreOffice?

MSO 2013 supports ODF 1.2.

If an authority demands standards or even demands ODF, this can all be fulfilled with MSO, no need to use LO.

Kind regards
Regina

#28

You can get the OOXML standard from
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm

Are you actually suggesting that this is either complete or accurate?

You can get the binary file format description from
http://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications/en/us/programs/osp/office-file-formats/default.aspx

Ditto... a 'description of a file format' doesn't equate to somethinhg that can be used/relied upon to build something that accurately renders and/or recreates said format.

The ECMA standard is available in MSO 2013 as "OOXML strict", but LO
fails to read it.

So, I've heard, does MSO...

MSO 2013 supports ODF 1.2.

Really? Have you tested this? How accurately does it render ODF 1.2 files created with LibO?

If an authority demands standards or even demands ODF, this can all be
fulfilled with MSO, no need to use LO.

Rotflmao!

#29

The docx, xslx, pptx formats and others are OOXML. There are deviations as well as features (such as encryption) that are not part of OOXML. But most of the non-support claims about Microsoft honoring OOXML are based on the fact that early implementations supported the transitional flavor of OOXML. The move to the strict flavor, a separation created in the ISO process, has been made over time along with continuing support of transitional OOXML.

My experience is that deviations with respect to the OOXML standard are documented better in Microsoft on-line implementation notes than is done by any implementations of ODF-based software.

Microsoft Office also supports ODF 1.1 since Office 2007 SP2 and ODF 1.2 is supported in the new Office 2013. There are public, on-line implementation notes and documentation of deviations for those too. I've also heard that European versions of Microsoft Office can be set to have ODF as the default format. I have no way to confirm that and I am not certain that is new with Office 2013 or is also the case for Office 2010.

The main binary formats, and RTF (a text-carried format) are now all documented and that has been true for a few years. All of the specifications are freely downloadable.

- Dennis

#30

That's correct - on a fresh install of Office 2010 it asks whether you want ODF or OOXML as the default document type.

#31

The OOXML specifications are at least as complete and rigorous as the ODF ones.

Every indication is that the ODF 1.2 support in Office 2013 is quite good. Of particular importance to many users is that OpenFormula is now supported, and this will provide a tremendous improvement in interop between LibreOffice Calc and MSO 2013. Whether this becomes a preferable path between Office and LibreOffice instead of relying on OOXML conversion in LO is an open question.

You can test the support yourself using the in-browser support of documents via Web applications in Microsoft SkyDrive. Not all features are supported on SkyDrive (for either Microsoft OOXML or ODF), but this should provide an initial smell test.

Yes, more detailed testing and comparison is a good idea.

- Dennis

#32

I remember this discussion a few years back, when MSO was the defacto
standard, and a moving target. One of the most important things for any
agency, company government, or individual is backward compatibility. I have
many documents that are difficult for me to retrieve, and I wrote them less
than 20 years ago, using DOS programs. I can only imagine what things will
be like in 30 years for those "old" files. I believe it's of paramount
importance, even in this age of rapid development and change, to realize
that electronic storage of documents is the wave of the future. They must
all be stored in a simple-to-access format that any program can read, not
just the latest flavor of the "big boy." I am actually fairly concerned
about this, since the concept of proprietary file types has never been
addressed by any government agency (it would be easy, for example, for the
USGovt to mandate that all files be maintained with the formatting in a
separate file. If a large govt (China, the US, EU) mandated that simple
change, then all files would cease to be proprietary, except for formatting
changes. One might lose the formats, but the file itself would have a
permanence that most files do not now have. I might also suggest that the
file formatting be subject to some sort of regulation (yes, they CAN do
that!), which makes all formatting retrievable, no matter how long it's
been since the file was created.
Otherwise, we'll all lose a huge amount of information.
That's my opinion. YMMV....
Steve Bradley

#33

Thanks, all. My resources are such that it'd be hard for me to contribute much, but it's helpful to know there are small ways I could pitch in. I will see if I can make room to contribute in some way. And the specific suggestions are indeed helpful.

Carl

#34

Add to file formats, ability to read the old media (floppies, zip-disks, etc). Back to your point, it will probably take government action to force the use of ODF or similar standard formats over any proprietary formats. I am waiting for the MSO version that drops support for doc and related formats.

<snip>

#35

At the risk of getting political, the last thing I want is my government dictating to me what kind of file format to use on my documents.

Virgil

#36

At the risk of getting political, the last thing I want is a multi-national
corporation, responsible to no one save a few major shareholders and/or top
executives, which, due to its domination of the market, can effectively
render it manditory for me to use its proprietary file format....

Regulation of markets, so that they remain as free and accessible as
possible, is one of the principle tasks of government....

Henri

#37

Steven Bradley wrote:

I remember this discussion a few years back, when MSO was the defacto
standard, and a moving target. One of the most important things for any
agency, company government, or individual is backward compatibility. I have
many documents that are difficult for me to retrieve, and I wrote them less
than 20 years ago, using DOS programs. I can only imagine what things will
be like in 30 years for those "old" files. I believe it's of paramount
importance, even in this age of rapid development and change, to realize
that electronic storage of documents is the wave of the future. They must
all be stored in a simple-to-access format that any program can read, not
just the latest flavor of the "big boy." I am actually fairly concerned
about this, since the concept of proprietary file types has never been
addressed by any government agency (it would be easy, for example, for the
USGovt to mandate that all files be maintained with the formatting in a
separate file. If a large govt (China, the US, EU) mandated that simple
change, then all files would cease to be proprietary, except for formatting
changes. One might lose the formats, but the file itself would have a
permanence that most files do not now have. I might also suggest that the
file formatting be subject to some sort of regulation (yes, they CAN do
that!), which makes all formatting retrievable, no matter how long it's
been since the file was created.
Otherwise, we'll all lose a huge amount of information.
That's my opinion. YMMV....
Steve Bradley

+10
Girvin Herr

<snip>

#38

Well said Henri!!!!!

#39

M Henri Day wrote:

At the risk of getting political, the last thing I want is my government
dictating to me what kind of file format to use on my documents.

Virgil

At the risk of getting political, the last thing I want is a multi-national
corporation, responsible to no one save a few major shareholders and/or top
executives, which, due to its domination of the market, can effectively
render it manditory for me to use its proprietary file format....

Regulation of markets, so that they remain as free and accessible as
possible, is one of the principle tasks of government....

Henri

+2
Girvin Herr

#40

You can get the OOXML standard from
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm

Are you actually suggesting that this is either complete or accurate?

You can get the binary file format description from
http://www.microsoft.com/openspecifications/en/us/programs/osp/office-file-formats/default.aspx

Ditto... a 'description of a file format' doesn't equate to somethinhg that can be used/relied upon to build something that accurately renders and/or recreates said format.

The ECMA standard is available in MSO 2013 as "OOXML strict", but LO
fails to read it.

So, I've heard, does MSO...

The new OOXML works only with MSO 2013. So this is another time they make their new version's OOXML not compatible with their previous versions of MSO. 2010 cannot read the new 2013 version, 2007 cannot read the one that came out with 2010. That is why I stick with .doc for Word 97/2000/XP/2003. Then everyone I know that uses Word will be able to use my files.

SO, it only makes sense that it will be a bit till LO gets the needed import/export filters to work with this newest version of MSO. I wonder if the format is actually finalized yet. Last I heard it was not, as well as MSO 2013 was in beta testing.