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Posted to dev@openoffice.apache.org by Lawrence Rosen <lr...@rosenlaw.com> on 2012/08/15 00:04:50 UTC

FW: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)

FYI. /Larry

 

Lawrence Rosen

Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm ( <http://www.rosenlaw.com> www.rosenlaw.com)

3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482

Office: 707-485-1242

 

From: Andy Updegrove [mailto:Andrew.Updegrove@gesmer.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 8:53 AM
To: andrew.updegrove@gesmer.com
Subject: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)

 


Between 2005 and 2008, an unparalleled standards war was waged between
Microsoft, on the one hand, and IBM, Google, Oracle and additional
companies on the other hand. At the heart of the battle were two document
formats, one called ODF, developed by OASIS, a standards development
consortium, and Open XML, a specification developed by Microsoft. Both
were submitted to, and adopted by, global standards groups ISO/IEC.

But after the dust settled, Microsoft did not fully implement the standard
that it had fought so vigorously to have become a global standard.
Instead, it implemented what it called "Transitional Open XML," which was
better adapted for use in connection with documents created using older
versions of Office.

According to a blog posted yesterday by Jim Thatcher at the Office Next Web
site, Office 13 will - finally - permit users to open, edit and save
documents in the format that ISO/IEC approved. Thatcher says that Office
13 will also provide similar capabilities for the latest version of ODF,
approved by OASIS in January of this year (ODF 1.2), as well as for PDF.

Much has changed since the great format wars of the last decade, and
perhaps this is why, one day after the announcement, the announcement has
been mentioned in only two brief articles in the trade press. That’s a
shame, because document interoperability and vendor neutrality matter more
now than ever before as paper archives disappear and literally all of human
knowledge is entrusted to electronic storage.

Only if documents can be easily exchanged and reliably accessed down ton an
ongoing basis will desktop competition in the present be preserved, and the
availability of knowledge down through the ages be assured.  Without
robust, universally adopted document formats, both of those goals are
impossible to attain.

Read the entire story here: http://tinyurl.com/czwwke9 

As always, please let me know if you would like to be removed from this
list.

Andy

Andrew Updegrove
Gesmer Updegrove LLP
40 Broad Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02109
T: 617/350-6800
F: 617/350-6878
www.gesmer.com 
www.consortiuminfo.org 

Have you discovered The
Alexandria Project? http://amzn.to/xo00rn 

  _____  

Any tax information or written tax advice contained herein (including any attachments) is not intended to be and cannot be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding tax penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer. (The foregoing legend has been affixed pursuant to U.S. Treasury Regulations governing tax practice.)

Electronic mail from Gesmer Updegrove LLP, 40 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02109. Voice: (617) 350-6800, Fax: (617) 350-6878. This communication is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named as the addressee. It may contain information which is privileged and/or confidential under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or such recipient's employee or agent, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, copy or disclosure of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify Christopher O'Sullivan at (617) 350-6800 and notify the sender by electronic mail. Please expunge this communication without making any copies. Thank you for your cooperation. 


Re: FW: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)

Posted by Fernando Cassia <fc...@gmail.com>.
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 7:04 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lr...@rosenlaw.com> wrote:
> Between 2005 and 2008, an unparalleled standards war was waged between
> Microsoft, on the one hand, and IBM, Google, Oracle and additional
> companies on the other hand.

Heh, no mention of Sun Microsystems? They were one of the main pushers of ODF.

Next think we know, someone will say Oracle invented Java, not Sun.

FC

RE: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)

Posted by "Dennis E. Hamilton" <de...@acm.org>.
Is it similar to the way that RTF 1.6 is now frozen but there are extension mechanisms that don't require change to the RTF specification itself?

It was startling for me to notice that RTF anticipated the functionality of OOXML Markup Compatibility and Extensibility (MCE).

 - Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Fisher [mailto:dave2wave@comcast.net] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 16:09
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)


On Aug 14, 2012, at 3:59 PM, Rob Weir wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 6:04 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lr...@rosenlaw.com> wrote:
>> FYI. /Larry
>> 
> 
> It is great to read about the improved ODF support, including ODF 1.2,
> with OpenFormula and digital signature support.  Those are two of the
> major additions we made in ODF 1.2.  The other was adding RDFa/RDF XML
> support, which neither OpenOffice nor MS Office support. ( But there
> is some support in Calligra Suite).
> 
> OOXML Strict was a concession to ISO National Bodies, a last ditch
> effort invented in a conference room in Geneva to pacify delegates at
> the Ballot Resolution Meeting.  I was there.  I saw it.  There may be
> specialized applications where OOXML Strict support is useful, such as
> a format that a document generation application can target.  But for
> AOO, and for any other editor that cannot control the formats of input
> documents,  we need to be prepared to handle whatever users toss to
> us, and that includes OOXML from Office 2007 and 2010, as well as
> 2013.

Along with the changes that happen in "parallel" in the Mac Office 2008 and 2011 ...

BTW - MSFT has been sneaking OOXML into the Binary formats in "interesting" ways ...

Regards,
Dave

> 
> -Rob
> 
> 
>> 
>> 
>> Lawrence Rosen
>> 
>> Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm ( <http://www.rosenlaw.com> www.rosenlaw.com)
>> 
>> 3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482
>> 
>> Office: 707-485-1242
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> From: Andy Updegrove [mailto:Andrew.Updegrove@gesmer.com]
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 8:53 AM
>> To: andrew.updegrove@gesmer.com
>> Subject: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Between 2005 and 2008, an unparalleled standards war was waged between
>> Microsoft, on the one hand, and IBM, Google, Oracle and additional
>> companies on the other hand. At the heart of the battle were two document
>> formats, one called ODF, developed by OASIS, a standards development
>> consortium, and Open XML, a specification developed by Microsoft. Both
>> were submitted to, and adopted by, global standards groups ISO/IEC.
>> 
>> But after the dust settled, Microsoft did not fully implement the standard
>> that it had fought so vigorously to have become a global standard.
>> Instead, it implemented what it called "Transitional Open XML," which was
>> better adapted for use in connection with documents created using older
>> versions of Office.
>> 
>> According to a blog posted yesterday by Jim Thatcher at the Office Next Web
>> site, Office 13 will - finally - permit users to open, edit and save
>> documents in the format that ISO/IEC approved. Thatcher says that Office
>> 13 will also provide similar capabilities for the latest version of ODF,
>> approved by OASIS in January of this year (ODF 1.2), as well as for PDF.
>> 
>> Much has changed since the great format wars of the last decade, and
>> perhaps this is why, one day after the announcement, the announcement has
>> been mentioned in only two brief articles in the trade press. That’s a
>> shame, because document interoperability and vendor neutrality matter more
>> now than ever before as paper archives disappear and literally all of human
>> knowledge is entrusted to electronic storage.
>> 
>> Only if documents can be easily exchanged and reliably accessed down ton an
>> ongoing basis will desktop competition in the present be preserved, and the
>> availability of knowledge down through the ages be assured.  Without
>> robust, universally adopted document formats, both of those goals are
>> impossible to attain.
>> 
>> Read the entire story here: http://tinyurl.com/czwwke9
>> 
>> As always, please let me know if you would like to be removed from this
>> list.
>> 
>> Andy
>> 
>> Andrew Updegrove
>> Gesmer Updegrove LLP
>> 40 Broad Street
>> Boston, Massachusetts 02109
>> T: 617/350-6800
>> F: 617/350-6878
>> www.gesmer.com
>> www.consortiuminfo.org
>> 
>> Have you discovered The
>> Alexandria Project? http://amzn.to/xo00rn
>> 
>>  _____
>> 
>> Any tax information or written tax advice contained herein (including any attachments) is not intended to be and cannot be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding tax penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer. (The foregoing legend has been affixed pursuant to U.S. Treasury Regulations governing tax practice.)
>> 
>> Electronic mail from Gesmer Updegrove LLP, 40 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02109. Voice: (617) 350-6800, Fax: (617) 350-6878. This communication is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named as the addressee. It may contain information which is privileged and/or confidential under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or such recipient's employee or agent, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, copy or disclosure of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify Christopher O'Sullivan at (617) 350-6800 and notify the sender by electronic mail. Please expunge this communication without making any copies. Thank you for your cooperation.
>> 


Re: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)

Posted by Dave Fisher <da...@comcast.net>.
On Aug 14, 2012, at 3:59 PM, Rob Weir wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 6:04 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lr...@rosenlaw.com> wrote:
>> FYI. /Larry
>> 
> 
> It is great to read about the improved ODF support, including ODF 1.2,
> with OpenFormula and digital signature support.  Those are two of the
> major additions we made in ODF 1.2.  The other was adding RDFa/RDF XML
> support, which neither OpenOffice nor MS Office support. ( But there
> is some support in Calligra Suite).
> 
> OOXML Strict was a concession to ISO National Bodies, a last ditch
> effort invented in a conference room in Geneva to pacify delegates at
> the Ballot Resolution Meeting.  I was there.  I saw it.  There may be
> specialized applications where OOXML Strict support is useful, such as
> a format that a document generation application can target.  But for
> AOO, and for any other editor that cannot control the formats of input
> documents,  we need to be prepared to handle whatever users toss to
> us, and that includes OOXML from Office 2007 and 2010, as well as
> 2013.

Along with the changes that happen in "parallel" in the Mac Office 2008 and 2011 ...

BTW - MSFT has been sneaking OOXML into the Binary formats in "interesting" ways ...

Regards,
Dave

> 
> -Rob
> 
> 
>> 
>> 
>> Lawrence Rosen
>> 
>> Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm ( <http://www.rosenlaw.com> www.rosenlaw.com)
>> 
>> 3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482
>> 
>> Office: 707-485-1242
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> From: Andy Updegrove [mailto:Andrew.Updegrove@gesmer.com]
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 8:53 AM
>> To: andrew.updegrove@gesmer.com
>> Subject: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Between 2005 and 2008, an unparalleled standards war was waged between
>> Microsoft, on the one hand, and IBM, Google, Oracle and additional
>> companies on the other hand. At the heart of the battle were two document
>> formats, one called ODF, developed by OASIS, a standards development
>> consortium, and Open XML, a specification developed by Microsoft. Both
>> were submitted to, and adopted by, global standards groups ISO/IEC.
>> 
>> But after the dust settled, Microsoft did not fully implement the standard
>> that it had fought so vigorously to have become a global standard.
>> Instead, it implemented what it called "Transitional Open XML," which was
>> better adapted for use in connection with documents created using older
>> versions of Office.
>> 
>> According to a blog posted yesterday by Jim Thatcher at the Office Next Web
>> site, Office 13 will - finally - permit users to open, edit and save
>> documents in the format that ISO/IEC approved. Thatcher says that Office
>> 13 will also provide similar capabilities for the latest version of ODF,
>> approved by OASIS in January of this year (ODF 1.2), as well as for PDF.
>> 
>> Much has changed since the great format wars of the last decade, and
>> perhaps this is why, one day after the announcement, the announcement has
>> been mentioned in only two brief articles in the trade press. That’s a
>> shame, because document interoperability and vendor neutrality matter more
>> now than ever before as paper archives disappear and literally all of human
>> knowledge is entrusted to electronic storage.
>> 
>> Only if documents can be easily exchanged and reliably accessed down ton an
>> ongoing basis will desktop competition in the present be preserved, and the
>> availability of knowledge down through the ages be assured.  Without
>> robust, universally adopted document formats, both of those goals are
>> impossible to attain.
>> 
>> Read the entire story here: http://tinyurl.com/czwwke9
>> 
>> As always, please let me know if you would like to be removed from this
>> list.
>> 
>> Andy
>> 
>> Andrew Updegrove
>> Gesmer Updegrove LLP
>> 40 Broad Street
>> Boston, Massachusetts 02109
>> T: 617/350-6800
>> F: 617/350-6878
>> www.gesmer.com
>> www.consortiuminfo.org
>> 
>> Have you discovered The
>> Alexandria Project? http://amzn.to/xo00rn
>> 
>>  _____
>> 
>> Any tax information or written tax advice contained herein (including any attachments) is not intended to be and cannot be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding tax penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer. (The foregoing legend has been affixed pursuant to U.S. Treasury Regulations governing tax practice.)
>> 
>> Electronic mail from Gesmer Updegrove LLP, 40 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02109. Voice: (617) 350-6800, Fax: (617) 350-6878. This communication is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named as the addressee. It may contain information which is privileged and/or confidential under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or such recipient's employee or agent, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, copy or disclosure of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify Christopher O'Sullivan at (617) 350-6800 and notify the sender by electronic mail. Please expunge this communication without making any copies. Thank you for your cooperation.
>> 


RE: FW: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)

Posted by "Dennis E. Hamilton" <de...@acm.org>.
Rob is correct.

The carve-out for strict was done as he says, with it not working that way in the original ECMA-376 (1st edition) specification that was brought to ISO/IEC JTC1.

There were also some technical disconnects created in the way the carve-out was executed, although my perception is that the most clumsy of those have been resolved in maintenance.

One would no more cease accepting transitional than Office Next (also dubbed 365/2013) does.  When one would decide to produce strict (or have an option to do so) as well as produce transitional is also a matter for careful consideration.

 - Dennis

PS: Since there is no support for embedded RDF in OOXML by Office Next, I can't imagine it being handled in the Office Next support for ODF.  There is some degree of parity with ODF digital signatures but I doubt any for ODF encryption.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Rob Weir [mailto:robweir@apache.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 16:00
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
Subject: Re: FW: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)

On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 6:04 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lr...@rosenlaw.com> wrote:
> FYI. /Larry
>

It is great to read about the improved ODF support, including ODF 1.2,
with OpenFormula and digital signature support.  Those are two of the
major additions we made in ODF 1.2.  The other was adding RDFa/RDF XML
support, which neither OpenOffice nor MS Office support. ( But there
is some support in Calligra Suite).

OOXML Strict was a concession to ISO National Bodies, a last ditch
effort invented in a conference room in Geneva to pacify delegates at
the Ballot Resolution Meeting.  I was there.  I saw it.  There may be
specialized applications where OOXML Strict support is useful, such as
a format that a document generation application can target.  But for
AOO, and for any other editor that cannot control the formats of input
documents,  we need to be prepared to handle whatever users toss to
us, and that includes OOXML from Office 2007 and 2010, as well as
2013.

-Rob

[ ... ]


Re: FW: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)

Posted by Rob Weir <ro...@apache.org>.
On Tue, Aug 14, 2012 at 6:04 PM, Lawrence Rosen <lr...@rosenlaw.com> wrote:
> FYI. /Larry
>

It is great to read about the improved ODF support, including ODF 1.2,
with OpenFormula and digital signature support.  Those are two of the
major additions we made in ODF 1.2.  The other was adding RDFa/RDF XML
support, which neither OpenOffice nor MS Office support. ( But there
is some support in Calligra Suite).

OOXML Strict was a concession to ISO National Bodies, a last ditch
effort invented in a conference room in Geneva to pacify delegates at
the Ballot Resolution Meeting.  I was there.  I saw it.  There may be
specialized applications where OOXML Strict support is useful, such as
a format that a document generation application can target.  But for
AOO, and for any other editor that cannot control the formats of input
documents,  we need to be prepared to handle whatever users toss to
us, and that includes OOXML from Office 2007 and 2010, as well as
2013.

-Rob


>
>
> Lawrence Rosen
>
> Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm ( <http://www.rosenlaw.com> www.rosenlaw.com)
>
> 3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482
>
> Office: 707-485-1242
>
>
>
> From: Andy Updegrove [mailto:Andrew.Updegrove@gesmer.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 8:53 AM
> To: andrew.updegrove@gesmer.com
> Subject: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)
>
>
>
>
> Between 2005 and 2008, an unparalleled standards war was waged between
> Microsoft, on the one hand, and IBM, Google, Oracle and additional
> companies on the other hand. At the heart of the battle were two document
> formats, one called ODF, developed by OASIS, a standards development
> consortium, and Open XML, a specification developed by Microsoft. Both
> were submitted to, and adopted by, global standards groups ISO/IEC.
>
> But after the dust settled, Microsoft did not fully implement the standard
> that it had fought so vigorously to have become a global standard.
> Instead, it implemented what it called "Transitional Open XML," which was
> better adapted for use in connection with documents created using older
> versions of Office.
>
> According to a blog posted yesterday by Jim Thatcher at the Office Next Web
> site, Office 13 will - finally - permit users to open, edit and save
> documents in the format that ISO/IEC approved. Thatcher says that Office
> 13 will also provide similar capabilities for the latest version of ODF,
> approved by OASIS in January of this year (ODF 1.2), as well as for PDF.
>
> Much has changed since the great format wars of the last decade, and
> perhaps this is why, one day after the announcement, the announcement has
> been mentioned in only two brief articles in the trade press. That’s a
> shame, because document interoperability and vendor neutrality matter more
> now than ever before as paper archives disappear and literally all of human
> knowledge is entrusted to electronic storage.
>
> Only if documents can be easily exchanged and reliably accessed down ton an
> ongoing basis will desktop competition in the present be preserved, and the
> availability of knowledge down through the ages be assured.  Without
> robust, universally adopted document formats, both of those goals are
> impossible to attain.
>
> Read the entire story here: http://tinyurl.com/czwwke9
>
> As always, please let me know if you would like to be removed from this
> list.
>
> Andy
>
> Andrew Updegrove
> Gesmer Updegrove LLP
> 40 Broad Street
> Boston, Massachusetts 02109
> T: 617/350-6800
> F: 617/350-6878
> www.gesmer.com
> www.consortiuminfo.org
>
> Have you discovered The
> Alexandria Project? http://amzn.to/xo00rn
>
>   _____
>
> Any tax information or written tax advice contained herein (including any attachments) is not intended to be and cannot be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding tax penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer. (The foregoing legend has been affixed pursuant to U.S. Treasury Regulations governing tax practice.)
>
> Electronic mail from Gesmer Updegrove LLP, 40 Broad Street, Boston, MA 02109. Voice: (617) 350-6800, Fax: (617) 350-6878. This communication is intended only for the use of the individual or entity named as the addressee. It may contain information which is privileged and/or confidential under applicable law. If you are not the intended recipient or such recipient's employee or agent, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, copy or disclosure of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify Christopher O'Sullivan at (617) 350-6800 and notify the sender by electronic mail. Please expunge this communication without making any copies. Thank you for your cooperation.
>

RE: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)

Posted by "Dennis E. Hamilton" <de...@acm.org>.
It is incorrect for Andy to claim that Transitional was not part of ISO/IEC 29500 for OOXML.  It was there initially and still remains part of the specification.  There has been some tidying up of the boundaries between strict and transitional, but they have always been provided for in the 4-part IS 29500 specification.

Jim Thatcher's post from yesterday can be found at 
<http://blogs.office.com/b/office-next/archive/2012/08/13/the-new-office-expands-file-format-options.aspx>

The approach to migration and expansion of format support starting with Office 2003 is nicely-illustrated by the diagram in that blog post.  The support in Office 2003 was by a "Compatibility Pack" upgrade and that worked at the transitional level, the only one that made sense that far back.  The arrangement to consume Strict OOXML before providing producers of it is also sensible.

The most interesting part for me is the greater parity in terms of ODF support, especially ODF 1.2 and OpenFormula.  The other facet, not mentioned in Thatcher's piece, is that the Office Web Apps and Skydrive now support the "New Office" formats although not all features are exercisable in a browser.  But this makes cross-platform interchange possible wherever Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome run.

I think this expansion of the interoperable support of ODF will benefit the OpenOffice-lineage community as well as provide more diversity of supporting applications.

 - Dennis
  
-----Original Message-----
From: Lawrence Rosen [mailto:lrosen@rosenlaw.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 15:05
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
Cc: lrosen@rosenlaw.com
Subject: FW: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)

FYI. /Larry

 

Lawrence Rosen

Rosenlaw & Einschlag, a technology law firm ( <http://www.rosenlaw.com> www.rosenlaw.com)

3001 King Ranch Rd., Ukiah, CA 95482

Office: 707-485-1242

 

From: Andy Updegrove [mailto:Andrew.Updegrove@gesmer.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2012 8:53 AM
To: andrew.updegrove@gesmer.com
Subject: Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last)

 
[ ... ]

But after the dust settled, Microsoft did not fully implement the standard
that it had fought so vigorously to have become a global standard.
Instead, it implemented what it called "Transitional Open XML," which was
better adapted for use in connection with documents created using older
versions of Office.

According to a blog posted yesterday by Jim Thatcher at the Office Next Web
site, Office 13 will - finally - permit users to open, edit and save
documents in the format that ISO/IEC approved. Thatcher says that Office
13 will also provide similar capabilities for the latest version of ODF,
approved by OASIS in January of this year (ODF 1.2), as well as for PDF.

[ ... ]