Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> High Plains Thumper on Saturday
>> "nessuno" wrote:
>>
>>> Quote:
>>> -------------
>>> Massachusetts will start rolling out the Open Document
>>> Format (ODF) in a handful of "early adopter" agencies by
>>> January 1, 2007, according to a statement released this
>>> week by the state's Information Technology Division.
>>
>> <SNIP>
>>
>>> Critics said the use of Microsoft Office applications
>>> locked the agencies into a one-vendor solution because of
>>> file incompatibilities with outside programs. In the
>>> past, there were even incompatibilities between various
>>> versions of Office.
>>
>> <SNIP>
>>
>>> http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?arti
>>> cl eID=192300284&subSection=All+Stories
>>
>> User friendly version:
>>
>> http://tinyurl.com/hnaj6
>>
>> I liked these specific quotes:
>>
>> | Not surprisingly, the Open Document Alliance lauded
>> | Massachusetts' stick-to-it-ive-ness. And "hailed
>> | progress in incorporating accessibility into the ODF
>> | standard." The Washington D.C.-based alliance members
>> | include Sun Microsystems, Google and other non-Microsoft
>> | players.
>>
>> | In May, IBM jumped on the bandwagon, promising ODF
>> | support in its Notes client.
>>
>> | Meanwhile Microsoft is pushing its own interoperability
>> | solution, maintaining that its own Open Office XML
>> | format meets the requirement for open systems. And the
>> | Open Document Foundation last spring announced its own
>> | ODF plug in for Office.
>>
>> That Open Document Foundation ODF plug-in goes to show
>> that there is no reason ODF cannot be implemented now with
>> Microsoft Office. It breaks the proprietary lock-in
>> chain. ODF allows departure from proprietary lock-in.
>
> XML is powerful and versatile for a whole bunch of other
> reasons. Among them: the ability to quickly extract files
> such as images and videos without having an application
> that 'glues' all th bits together. While it might seem a
> useless trait at present, it could prove to be important
> 10-20 years down the line. Oh, wait. Microsoft has just
> created a proprietary image format, adding that to its
> proprietary video and audio formats (which, fortunately,
> Real Networks and Novell are bound to make easily readable
> in Linux). I am not sure about the use of DRM in all of
> these formats though... what happens when DRM finds its way
> into Office files (or a component thereof), for example?
A standard is always obsolete, but it allows for easy,
consistent reproduction and presentation of data. There will
always be other promising formats. WordStar 3.0 was a
standard in the early '80s and continued for a time, but is
hardly used now. RS-232 is a very old standard and obsolete,
but for a long time it allowed connectivity between
peripherals and computers, and still does to a limited
extent.
The greatest need for Government is to have a standard for
documentation that can be retrieved by use of any supplier's
software capable of reproducing a document coded in that
standard, not necessarily only from one manufacturer.
Government needs to remain neutral and encourage open
competition and growth.
I think ODF does this nicely and is a step in the right
direction.
--
HPT
|
|
