You are viewing a plain text version of this content. The canonical link for it is here.
Posted to dev@openoffice.apache.org by Andrew Douglas Pitonyak <an...@pitonyak.org> on 2013/01/07 23:01:14 UTC
Is there consensus on latest MS Office formats?
I can read these formats in AOO, but I cannot write them. Although I
remember seeing discussion on this, my current understanding is that
there are no current plans to add this capability into AOO, is this
correct? (or did I totally miss something and it is currently available).
--
Andrew Pitonyak
My Macro Document: http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odt
Info: http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php
RE: Is there consensus on latest MS Office formats?
Posted by "Dennis E. Hamilton" <or...@apache.org>.
In Office 2007 (and the compatibilty pack provided for Office 2003), the only OOXML was essentially the pre-ISO ECMA version, essentially what later became defined as Transitional OOXML. In Office 2010, Transitional OOXML is produced and consumed. Strict OOXML (they are both official ISO OOXML, don't play word games), is consumed by Office 2010 but not produced.
The forthcoming release of Office 2013 will produce either and consume both. For example, the Save As ... dialog in Excel 2013 (Preview) has, among many others, these three options:
Excel Workbook (*.xlsx)
Strict Open XML Spreadsheet (*.xlsx)
OpenDocument Spreadsheet (*.ods)
And in Europe at least, the OpenDocument formats can be made the default.
You'll also find that Office 2013 supports ODF 1.2 rather than ODF 1.1. I suspect that the greatest impact will be from the improved interoperability between Excel and Calc based on the ODF OpenFormula.
I have no calibration on the quality of all of that standardized-format support and the quality of conversions in any direction by any producer (Microsoft Office or OpenOffice lineage). I am confident there are discrepancies and deviations on all sides.
I do know that the ability to produce as well as consume OOXML is a differentiator for LibreOffice and that some people who would like to use Apache OpenOffice are unable to because of that feature disparity.
It is my considered opinion that a continued asymmetry in format interchange is unsustainable. I predict that symmetric support will win out. Sooner is better than later.
I have no skin in this game. I shall nevertheless observe how the situation evolves with considerable interest.
- Dennis
-----Original Message-----
From: Hagar Delest [mailto:hagar.delest@laposte.net]
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2013 14:00
To: dev@openoffice.apache.org
Subject: Re: Is there consensus on latest MS Office formats?
Hello all,
I'm back on the dev mailing list because there are some interesting topics sometimes. But no further involvement in the AOO project anymore.
Before AOO starts to try such OOXML filter, I think it would be interesting to have a global consensus about what is intended about OOXML.
The OOXML compatibility was a rather frequent question in the Google Moderator session, same in the forums.
If AOO offers the possibility to save in OOXML, what is the future of ODF then? Why users should bother with a still rather unknown format if they can save in OOXML for compatibility with MS Office users?
So what is exactly the rationale to implement the export filter?
Do we really want to go this way and then handle the users ranting because of the glitches of such a format?
I guess that it is still easy to get a pirated copy of MS Office nowadays. So if someone wants MSO for free, this should not really be a big deal (and MS would certainly let it be so that its OOXML still expands). And the numbers show that AOO has not lost its leverage compared to LibreOffice for example (the only other to propose the OOXML export filter). So the sub-question is: do really our users need that OOXML export filter?
This is a political question. The previous OOo team took a decision. What is the AOO team position on that now? This could have long term consequences.
And by the way, what flavor of the OOXML would be supported? Transient or ISO?
Hagar
Le 08/01/2013 22:17, Andrea Pescetti a écrit :
> On 07/01/2013 Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote:
>> I can read these formats in AOO, but I cannot write them. Although I
>> remember seeing discussion on this, my current understanding is that
>> there are no current plans to add this capability into AOO, is this
>> correct? (or did I totally miss something and it is currently available).
>
> I've heard for a long time (since version 3.3, and perhaps earlier) that OpenOffice does contain OOXML-writing code, but that it is commented out (not simply disabled at build time). Is this correct?
>
> If the code indeed exists and can be compiled, maybe we could start by compiling it and doing some tests to see how (in)complete it is...
>
> Regards,
> Andrea.
Re: Is there consensus on latest MS Office formats?
Posted by Dave Fisher <da...@comcast.net>.
On Jan 8, 2013, at 4:07 PM, Rob Weir wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Hagar Delest <ha...@laposte.net> wrote:
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I'm back on the dev mailing list because there are some interesting topics
>> sometimes. But no further involvement in the AOO project anymore.
>>
>> Before AOO starts to try such OOXML filter, I think it would be interesting
>> to have a global consensus about what is intended about OOXML.
>> The OOXML compatibility was a rather frequent question in the Google
>> Moderator session, same in the forums.
>>
>> If AOO offers the possibility to save in OOXML, what is the future of ODF
>> then? Why users should bother with a still rather unknown format if they can
>> save in OOXML for compatibility with MS Office users?
>>
>> So what is exactly the rationale to implement the export filter?
>
> There was a time, back 5 years ago, when it was not certain whether
> OOXML would survive or not. I, and many others, spent a lot of energy
> trying to prevent that from happening. We knew that if OOXML was
> standardized and accepted that it would perpetuate Microsoft's lock-in
> advantage and make extra work for competitors like OpenOffice. We
> knew that if OOXML survived we'd waste resources implementing it,
> rather than other, more useful features that users want. We were
> right to have this concern, but we lost that battle, and these things
> have now come to pass. IMHO it is time to make the best of the
> situation we find ourselves in.
There is the Java based Apache POI which includes OOXML4J. I am on the POI PMC. Two of the Mentors for ODFToolkit are also on the POI PMC.
I have always thought that one needs to be in the MIDDLE of this position.
If the following is possible - xlsx -> ods -> xlsx -> ods OR pdf -> pptx -> odf -> pdf then the software that enables such interop will be what people in institutions will use. No institution with 2,000 desktops is going to seriously think of Apache OpenOffice as a viable solution to test unless it can do a reasonably accurate job converting.
> OOXML is the default format in MS Office 2007, 2010 and 2013. Office
> 2003, which defaulted to the binary formats, hits end of support next
> year. So, whether we like it or not, our users will be receiving
> OOXML documents from people, and when they collaborate they will want
> to be able to return modified OOXML documents.
>
> OOXML is the new DOC format. We wouldn't think of not supporting DOC,
> would we? But even as we support DOC we know that ODF, as the native
> format for OpenOffice, will give the best fidelity and preservation.
> Everything else other than ODF is a "foreign language" to OpenOffice
> that we speak imperfectly.
Differences in conversions due to the file format should be well documented. After all a choice is being made.
>
>> Do we really want to go this way and then handle the users ranting because
>> of the glitches of such a format?
>>
>
> This is an excellent point. We don't want users to be frustrated by a
> partial implementation. So maybe it could be exposed as an
> "experimental" feature?
With enough samples and the knowledge of standards people like Rob we can certainly highlight the INHERENT superiority.
>
>
>> I guess that it is still easy to get a pirated copy of MS Office nowadays.
>> So if someone wants MSO for free, this should not really be a big deal (and
>> MS would certainly let it be so that its OOXML still expands). And the
>> numbers show that AOO has not lost its leverage compared to LibreOffice for
>> example (the only other to propose the OOXML export filter). So the
>> sub-question is: do really our users need that OOXML export filter?
>>
>
> As we saw in the Google Moderator counts, this feature was near the top.
>
>> This is a political question. The previous OOo team took a decision. What is
>> the AOO team position on that now? This could have long term consequences.
>>
>
> I hope we can avoid the politics. For example, with the license we
> have taken a pragmatic view rather than follow the copyleft purists.
> Where other projects have stripped all non-GPL extensions from their
> extensions repository, we're happy for our users to have a choice and
> decide for themselves.
>
> So maybe a good compromise would:
>
> 1) Aim to provide the industry's best support for ODF
>
> 2) Continue to explain the value and advantage of ODF to our users
>
> 3) Support whatever formats that our users need to be productive with
> OpenOffice in real-world work.
Exactly. People need Interop. Without interop it will be either Microsoft Office or OpenOffice, but NOT both.
>
>> And by the way, what flavor of the OOXML would be supported? Transient or
>> ISO?
>>
>
> Presumably we would implement "Microsoft OpenXML", what they actually can read.
Microsoft has fixed problems when they have deviated from the ISO spec. I know of one significant instance on the initial release of Mac PowerPoint 2008. They had a patch in one month. It helped that Lawrence Livermore Labs was the one reporting the trouble.
Microsoft claims to support the standard. We should support the standard, but also we should allow for deviations.
Alternatively someone could develop extensions...
Best Regards,
Dave
>
> Regards,
>
> -Rob
>
>> Hagar
>>
>>
>> Le 08/01/2013 22:17, Andrea Pescetti a écrit :
>>
>>
>>> On 07/01/2013 Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I can read these formats in AOO, but I cannot write them. Although I
>>>> remember seeing discussion on this, my current understanding is that
>>>> there are no current plans to add this capability into AOO, is this
>>>> correct? (or did I totally miss something and it is currently available).
>>>
>>>
>>> I've heard for a long time (since version 3.3, and perhaps earlier) that
>>> OpenOffice does contain OOXML-writing code, but that it is commented out
>>> (not simply disabled at build time). Is this correct?
>>>
>>> If the code indeed exists and can be compiled, maybe we could start by
>>> compiling it and doing some tests to see how (in)complete it is...
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>> Andrea.
Re: Is there consensus on latest MS Office formats?
Posted by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>.
On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 4:59 PM, Hagar Delest <ha...@laposte.net> wrote:
> Hello all,
>
> I'm back on the dev mailing list because there are some interesting topics
> sometimes. But no further involvement in the AOO project anymore.
>
> Before AOO starts to try such OOXML filter, I think it would be interesting
> to have a global consensus about what is intended about OOXML.
> The OOXML compatibility was a rather frequent question in the Google
> Moderator session, same in the forums.
>
> If AOO offers the possibility to save in OOXML, what is the future of ODF
> then? Why users should bother with a still rather unknown format if they can
> save in OOXML for compatibility with MS Office users?
>
> So what is exactly the rationale to implement the export filter?
There was a time, back 5 years ago, when it was not certain whether
OOXML would survive or not. I, and many others, spent a lot of energy
trying to prevent that from happening. We knew that if OOXML was
standardized and accepted that it would perpetuate Microsoft's lock-in
advantage and make extra work for competitors like OpenOffice. We
knew that if OOXML survived we'd waste resources implementing it,
rather than other, more useful features that users want. We were
right to have this concern, but we lost that battle, and these things
have now come to pass. IMHO it is time to make the best of the
situation we find ourselves in.
OOXML is the default format in MS Office 2007, 2010 and 2013. Office
2003, which defaulted to the binary formats, hits end of support next
year. So, whether we like it or not, our users will be receiving
OOXML documents from people, and when they collaborate they will want
to be able to return modified OOXML documents.
OOXML is the new DOC format. We wouldn't think of not supporting DOC,
would we? But even as we support DOC we know that ODF, as the native
format for OpenOffice, will give the best fidelity and preservation.
Everything else other than ODF is a "foreign language" to OpenOffice
that we speak imperfectly.
> Do we really want to go this way and then handle the users ranting because
> of the glitches of such a format?
>
This is an excellent point. We don't want users to be frustrated by a
partial implementation. So maybe it could be exposed as an
"experimental" feature?
> I guess that it is still easy to get a pirated copy of MS Office nowadays.
> So if someone wants MSO for free, this should not really be a big deal (and
> MS would certainly let it be so that its OOXML still expands). And the
> numbers show that AOO has not lost its leverage compared to LibreOffice for
> example (the only other to propose the OOXML export filter). So the
> sub-question is: do really our users need that OOXML export filter?
>
As we saw in the Google Moderator counts, this feature was near the top.
> This is a political question. The previous OOo team took a decision. What is
> the AOO team position on that now? This could have long term consequences.
>
I hope we can avoid the politics. For example, with the license we
have taken a pragmatic view rather than follow the copyleft purists.
Where other projects have stripped all non-GPL extensions from their
extensions repository, we're happy for our users to have a choice and
decide for themselves.
So maybe a good compromise would:
1) Aim to provide the industry's best support for ODF
2) Continue to explain the value and advantage of ODF to our users
3) Support whatever formats that our users need to be productive with
OpenOffice in real-world work.
> And by the way, what flavor of the OOXML would be supported? Transient or
> ISO?
>
Presumably we would implement "Microsoft OpenXML", what they actually can read.
Regards,
-Rob
> Hagar
>
>
> Le 08/01/2013 22:17, Andrea Pescetti a écrit :
>
>
>> On 07/01/2013 Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote:
>>>
>>> I can read these formats in AOO, but I cannot write them. Although I
>>> remember seeing discussion on this, my current understanding is that
>>> there are no current plans to add this capability into AOO, is this
>>> correct? (or did I totally miss something and it is currently available).
>>
>>
>> I've heard for a long time (since version 3.3, and perhaps earlier) that
>> OpenOffice does contain OOXML-writing code, but that it is commented out
>> (not simply disabled at build time). Is this correct?
>>
>> If the code indeed exists and can be compiled, maybe we could start by
>> compiling it and doing some tests to see how (in)complete it is...
>>
>> Regards,
>> Andrea.
Re: Is there consensus on latest MS Office formats?
Posted by Hagar Delest <ha...@laposte.net>.
Hello all,
I'm back on the dev mailing list because there are some interesting topics sometimes. But no further involvement in the AOO project anymore.
Before AOO starts to try such OOXML filter, I think it would be interesting to have a global consensus about what is intended about OOXML.
The OOXML compatibility was a rather frequent question in the Google Moderator session, same in the forums.
If AOO offers the possibility to save in OOXML, what is the future of ODF then? Why users should bother with a still rather unknown format if they can save in OOXML for compatibility with MS Office users?
So what is exactly the rationale to implement the export filter?
Do we really want to go this way and then handle the users ranting because of the glitches of such a format?
I guess that it is still easy to get a pirated copy of MS Office nowadays. So if someone wants MSO for free, this should not really be a big deal (and MS would certainly let it be so that its OOXML still expands). And the numbers show that AOO has not lost its leverage compared to LibreOffice for example (the only other to propose the OOXML export filter). So the sub-question is: do really our users need that OOXML export filter?
This is a political question. The previous OOo team took a decision. What is the AOO team position on that now? This could have long term consequences.
And by the way, what flavor of the OOXML would be supported? Transient or ISO?
Hagar
Le 08/01/2013 22:17, Andrea Pescetti a écrit :
> On 07/01/2013 Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote:
>> I can read these formats in AOO, but I cannot write them. Although I
>> remember seeing discussion on this, my current understanding is that
>> there are no current plans to add this capability into AOO, is this
>> correct? (or did I totally miss something and it is currently available).
>
> I've heard for a long time (since version 3.3, and perhaps earlier) that OpenOffice does contain OOXML-writing code, but that it is commented out (not simply disabled at build time). Is this correct?
>
> If the code indeed exists and can be compiled, maybe we could start by compiling it and doing some tests to see how (in)complete it is...
>
> Regards,
> Andrea.
Re: Is there consensus on latest MS Office formats?
Posted by Andrea Pescetti <pe...@apache.org>.
On 07/01/2013 Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote:
> I can read these formats in AOO, but I cannot write them. Although I
> remember seeing discussion on this, my current understanding is that
> there are no current plans to add this capability into AOO, is this
> correct? (or did I totally miss something and it is currently available).
I've heard for a long time (since version 3.3, and perhaps earlier) that
OpenOffice does contain OOXML-writing code, but that it is commented out
(not simply disabled at build time). Is this correct?
If the code indeed exists and can be compiled, maybe we could start by
compiling it and doing some tests to see how (in)complete it is...
Regards,
Andrea.
Re: Is there consensus on latest MS Office formats?
Posted by Andrew Douglas Pitonyak <an...@pitonyak.org>.
On 01/07/2013 05:01 PM, Andrew Douglas Pitonyak wrote:
>
> I can read these formats in AOO, but I cannot write them. Although I
> remember seeing discussion on this, my current understanding is that
> there are no current plans to add this capability into AOO, is this
> correct? (or did I totally miss something and it is currently available).
>
>
OK, that answers my primary question....
I agree with Dennis Hamilton that if we read but cannot write the
formats, market share will be lost. For casual interactions with people,
there is certainly no problems with sending the older document formats
or even PDF, but I frequently have no option but to produce an OOXML
document for delivery.
Does Symphony support OOXML? I know that it could read the format, but
unsure if it can write it. LibreOffice certainly writes the formats
sufficiently well for the majority of my documents.
--
Andrew Pitonyak
My Macro Document: http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odt
Info: http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php
Re: Is there consensus on latest MS Office formats?
Posted by Andrew Douglas Pitonyak <an...@pitonyak.org>.
On 01/08/2013 08:19 PM, Regina Henschel wrote:
> Addition: Wasn't there a talk about it on ApacheCon Europe 2012 by
> Matthias Stürmer?
>
http://www.apachecon.eu/schedule/presentation/46/
--
Andrew Pitonyak
My Macro Document: http://www.pitonyak.org/AndrewMacro.odt
Info: http://www.pitonyak.org/oo.php
Re: Is there consensus on latest MS Office formats?
Posted by Regina Henschel <rb...@t-online.de>.
Addition: Wasn't there a talk about it on ApacheCon Europe 2012 by
Matthias Stürmer?
Re: Is there consensus on latest MS Office formats?
Posted by Regina Henschel <rb...@t-online.de>.
Hi all,
Andrew Douglas Pitonyak schrieb:
>
> I can read these formats in AOO, but I cannot write them. Although I
> remember seeing discussion on this, my current understanding is that
> there are no current plans to add this capability into AOO, is this
> correct? (or did I totally miss something and it is currently available).
>
>
I don't know if code already exists. But LibreOffice has an OOXML
export. And there exist the project "Layout-getreue Darstellung von
OOXML-Dokumenten in Open Source Office Applikationen" of the Open Source
Business Alliance.
http://www.osb-alliance.de/working-groups/office-interoperability/
[For an English information use
http://www.osb-alliance.de/fileadmin/specificationooxmlimprovements_en_v06.pdf]
If it has been done as planed, the code is under AL2 license and Apache
OpenOffice may use it.
Kind regards
Regina