Gary Edwards's Bookmarks tagged cdf →  View Popular

CDF is one of the very many useful projects that W3C has been laboring on, but not one that you would have been likely to have heard much about. Until recently, that is, when Gary Edwards, Sam Hiser and Marbux, the management (and perhaps sole remaining members) of the OpenDocument Foundation decided that CDF was the answer to all of the problems that ODF was designed to address. This announcement gave rise to a flurry of press attention that Sam Hiser has collected here. As others (such as Rob Weir) have already documented, these articles gave the OpenDocument Foundation’s position far more attention than it deserved.

The most astonishing piece was written by ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley. Early on in her article she stated that, “the ODF camp might unravel before Microsoft’s rival Office Open XML (OOXML) comes up for final international standardization vote early next year.” All because Gary, Sam and Marbux have decided that ODF does not meet their needs. Astonishing indeed, given that there is no available evidence to support such a prediction.

To find out the facts, I interviewed Chris Lilley, the W3C lead for the CDF
project, and his answer couldn't have been more clear: "The one thing I'd
really want your readers to know is that CDF was not created to be, and
isn't suitable for use as, an office format." In fact, it isn't even an
format at all - although it has been matched for export purposes with
another W3C specification, called WICD - but WICD is a non-editable format
intended for viewing only. Moreover, no one from the Foundation has joined
W3C, nor explained to W3C what the Foundation's founders have in mind.

It is highly unfortunate that the founders of a tax exempt organization
that solicited donations, "To support the community of volunteers in
promoting, improving and providing user assistance for ODF and software
designed to operate on data in this format," should publicly announce that
it believes that ODF will fail. By endorsing a standard that has no
rational relationship to office formats at all, they can only serve to
confuse the marketplace and undermine the efforts of the global community
they claimed to serve.

So, there you have it, straight from the horse's mouth. CDF can't replace ODF, according to Lilley. It wasn't designed to be used as an office format. It's good for other things.

So, was all this media push really about ODF? Or about damaging it with FUD and giving support to Microsoft's assertion that the world craves more than one office format standard so we can all struggle with interoperability complexity for the rest of our born days? And is it a coincidence it all happened on the eve of the next vote in February on Microsoft's competing MSOOXML? Was Microsoft behind this? Or did they just get lucky? Microsoft representatives, like Jason Matusow, certainly gave support to what the 3-man crew was saying, so much so that ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley wrote that, "the ODF camp might unravel before Microsoft’s rival Office Open XML (OOXML) comes up for final international standardization vote early next year." Dream on. ODF is doing fine. It's the OpenDocument Foundation that is shutting down.

But here's my question: did the Microsoft reps not understand the tech, that CDF can't replace ODF? How trust-inspiring do you find that? Or did they think that *we'd* never figure it out? Whatever the story might be, unfortunately for Microsoft, people aren't as dumb as Microsoft needs them to be. FUD has a very limited shelf life in the Internet age. There is always somebody who knows better. And they'll tell the world.

Just because we are garage challenged doesn't mean we can't find the back door to the big house :)

The larger issue at stake here is not whether or not we have a garage, or what our contribution to ODF has been over the course of five years as active members of OASIS ODF. What it really comes down to is the implementation of ODF in the real world.

HTML Formatting Instructions - Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)

By default, when you save your document as an HTML file, AbiWord places all formatting instructions into one block at the beginning.  These formatting instructions use the Cascading Style Sheet language, and are in the <style> tag in the <head> of your document.  From here it is easy to move the styles as a whole (copy and paste) into a new document which can then be externally linked or integrated with your web-site's style sheet.

At this time, some nine different versions of HTML (including its successor,
XHTML) are supported as W3C standards, with the most up-to-date being XHTML
1.1. Although some versions are very old and lack some of the newer versions'
capabilities, others are reasonably contemporaneous. In particular, HTML 4.01
and XHTML 1.0 both have "transitional" and "strict" versions.
Clearly, the W3C's intent is to provide a pathway to move from HTML 4.01 to
XHTML 1.1, and the transitional versions are steps on that path. It also aims
to develop XHTML standards that support device independence (everything from
desktops to cell phones), accessibility, and internationalization. As part of
this effort, HTML 4.01's presentational elements (used to adjust the appearance
of a page for older browsers that don't support style sheets) are eliminated in
XHTML 1.1.

Our concern is that Web site designers might decline to follow the newer
versions' more stringent formatting requirements and will instead keep using
transitional versions. To determine if this is likely, we surveyed the top
100,000 most popular Web sites to discover what versions of HTML are in
widespread use.

IMHO, the key to Microsoft's OOXML strategy can be seen in the recently released MSOffice SDK. The SDK provides a component for the fluid conversion of OOXML to something called fixed/flow. The fixed part of this interesting conjunction is also known as XPS, which is designed as a proprietary alternative to PDF. The flow part is a fascinating and highly proprietary replacement for (X)HTML - CSS.

Reading further through the MSOffice SDK, one can't help but be amazed at the lack of W3C technologies; especially (X)HTML, CSS, XForms and SVG. What we have instead is an entangling cascade of stuff like OOXML, fixed/flow, silverlight, XAML, and WPF. And then there is that recent promise of other high volume API's probably delivered through future Exchange, SharePoint, and MS SQL Server SDK's.

So, at the end of the day, what are we looking at here? IMHO, Microsoft has figured out that the smart thing to do is leverage and extend their existing desktop monopoly into the next generation of cloud computing where the Internet platform rules.

To pull this off, they have a number of problems to overcome; not the least of which is that they need to catch a break on anti trust, and, get OOXML through ISO. And oh yeah, there's that little problem that Windows can't do cloud computing.

In late 2007, an article by OASIS attorney Andy Updegrove claimed that W3C Compound Document Formats: [i] are non-editable formats; [ii] are not designed for conversions to other formats; and [iii] are therefore unsuitable as office formats. Updegrove could not have been more wrong.

But unfortunately, the erroneous Updegrove article was widely publicized by the usual occupants of the IBM cheering section ⁽¹⁾ in the stadium where the latest big vendor game for the Incompatible File Format Cup is being played, IFFC Games Stadium.

What you've posted are examples of MSOffice ”compatibility settings” used to establish backwards compatibility with older documents, and, for the conversion of alien file formats (such as various versions of WordPerfect .wpd). These compatibility settings are unspecified in that we know the syntax but have no idea of the semantics. And without the semantic description there is no way other developers can understand implementation. This of course guarantees an unacceptable breakdown of interoperability.

But i would be hesitant to make my stand of rejecting OOXML based on this issue. It turns out that there are upwards of 150 unspecified compatibility settings used by OpenOffice/StarOffice. These settings are not specified in ODF, but will nevertheless show up in OpenOffice ODF documents – similarly defying interoperability efforts!

Since the compatibility settings are not specified or even mentioned in the ODF 1.0 – ISO 26300 specification, we have to go to the OOo source code to discover where this stuff comes from. Check out lines 169-211. Here you will find interesting settings such as, “UseFormerLineSpacing, UseFormerObjectPositioning, and UseFormerTextWrapping”.

Under a strategy called "Beyond Office," IBM is developing several technologies to make Symphony an extensible development platform for business applications and Web-based document editors.

Rather than compete head-to-head with Microsoft Office, IBM's strategy is to make documents act like "containers" for information within workflow and collaboration applications, according to IBM executives.

The plan also calls for IBM to make documents based on the Open Document standard available through Web browsers using Adobe Flash or HTML. On Wednesday, IBM opened a Web site called Bluehouse where small business people can access hosted Web applications for sharing documents.

On the revelation that some of IBM's products would support a document format that it officially, adamantly opposes, Hiser is not surprised one bit. IBM and Sun have both had "the magic blueprints" to Microsoft's document formats, including Open XML, for the past several years, Hiser said.

With that key technical interoperability information, "how could you not expect IBM to start coding around OOXML?" he asked.

Events have played out in the media and in the blogosphere over the last couple of weeks that represent a breakdown of some of those anti-OpenXML arguments that have been played back so frequently over the last year.

Arguments that there is a lack of demand for Open XML, the specification is too complex to implement, the specification can’t be deployed cross platform and the long running but baseless claim that the Ecma-376 specification might be encumbered by IPR and patent threats all appear to have been cast aside as big blue steps up to meet the demands of their own customers and the market in general.

Here is a blow by blow review of the relevant activity over the last two weeks…

Well, if that's IBM's plan they're going to need more than ODF, that's for sure - and that brings us to the announcement I've been wondering about:

IBM favors ODF as a file format because it is "truly open" and technically elegant, Heintzman said.

But IBM will support Open XML, which is the current document format in Office 2007, in its Lotus collaboration and portal products. IBM already supports older versions of Office.

I feel a Pamela Jones moment coming on .... there it is, as plain as day for the world to see, Doug Heintzman breaks through all IBM's doublespeak and hypocrisy and admits it.

I don't know about "Beyond Office" as a plan, I think the real game here is "Beyond ODF"

In e-mailed comments, Heintzman said his criticisms about the situation have been made openly.

"We think that Open Office has quite a bit of potential and would love to see it move to the independent foundation that was promised in the press release back when Sun originally announced OpenOffice," he said. "We think that there are plenty of existing models of communities, [such as] Apache and Eclipse, that we can look to as models of open governance, copyright aggregation and licensing regimes that would make the code much more relevant to a much larger set of potential contributors and implementers of the technology....

"Obviously, by joining we do believe that the organization is important and has potential," he wrote. "I think that new voices at the table, including IBM's, will help the organization become more efficient and relevant to a greater audience.... Our primary reason for joining was to contribute to the community and leverage the work that the community produces.... I think it is true there are many areas worthy of improvement and I sincerely hope we can work on those.... I hope the story coming out of Barcelona isn't a dysfunctional community story, but rather a [story about a] potentially significant and meaningful community with considerable potential that has lots of room for improvement...."