IBM sits out Office document standards effort

TalkBack 40 of 48:

Next »

« Previous

• Thread View
• Flat View

IBM's good choice

Today's Microsoft Office XML format is proprietary, subject to restrictive licences, not open to competitors. Trying to converge the two formats nowwould undermine the openness of the OpenDocument format.

Let's hope that Microsoft will not subvert this openness by requiring royaltees on part of its specifications, even if it opens the specification of its Office XML formats. It's best to develop OpenDocument using a royaltee licencing model, which will be stable, backward compatible, interoperable, with progressively more features (like in the Unicode/ISO10646 evolution of their standard).

OpenDocument needs not integrate all possible features currently allowed in oneof their implementation, extensions shouldbe possible but within their own schema, and should notmake the document unusable without them, so experimentation will remain possible, before standardization, and each vendor will support the common extensions in the upgraded version of the standard.

Things that are highly undesirable in MS OfficeXML extensions is the whole set of "mso-*" custom CSS properties. See how SVG is being developed, and howSVG graphic tools can interoperate to reuse the documents (even if theirreuse is complicated only when modifying them in a different software, their edition is still possible). OpenDocument should follow the same evolution path. Already it ishighly usable for lots of things, without even needing active scripts like in MS Office. OpenOffice is much cleaner without any script, and without opening the can to Windows-specific ActiveX components.

If one wants to be able to save in MS Office format from OpenOffice, onewillneed to use a specific external convertor on Windows,but let's not integrate this bridge into OpenDocument itself. IT's best that these bridging tools be developed separately, possibly by third parties which have bought the MS Office development kit and licence. OpenOffice must remain usable without such integration and must continue to work on free versions of Linux.

Posted by: PhilippeV   Posted on: 12/21/05 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

Alert moderator to an offensive message

Subscribe to this discussion via Email or RSS

SponsoredWhite Papers, Webcasts, and Downloads

• Reducing Server Total Cost of Ownership with VMware Virtualization Software VMware VMware virtualization enables customers to reduce their server TCO and ... Download Now
• Three Steps You Need to Know to Stop Data Loss Varonis Sensitive data exposed to misuse or loss... it is the stuff of nightmares ... Download Now
• Five Steps to Determine When to Virtualize YourServers VMware Server virtualization isn't just for big companies. Entry-level ... Download Now