__/ [ High Plains Thumper ] on Saturday 26 August 2006 12:39 \__
> "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?articl
>> 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?
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | Vista: as the reputation of "Longhorn" was mucked
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
5:05pm up 37 days 5:17, 8 users, load average: 0.19, 0.49, 0.50
http://iuron.com - Open Source knowledge engine project
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