Void's Forums

I'm curious. What do you people think about .odt and the like?
I use it exclusively, along with OpenOffice.org. I hate it when I have to send .docs to people. You're the experts, however, so I ask your opinions.

Did you know that if Iso accepts OD as a standard, it WILL become the official required standard in the EU, just as it has in Massachusets (and Vienna, Munich, Brazilian ministry of health, French ministries and a few more goverment orgs.)? It is considered, I think, quite probable, because it was submitted by OASIS. Has Iso ever rejected an OASIS submitted standard?

Actually, it has not become the official required standard in Mass yet and appears that the corrupt (appears that way anyway) leadership there may be getting paid off to stop it:

viewtopic.php?t=1580
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Massachusetts

I have been using OOo for years now and that's all my kids have used for their school work (now 10th and 12th grades) and have not run into any problems. Of course OpenOffice really only relates because it supports ODF. I believe at minimum all government and any other tax payer sponsored data be saved in an open and unencumbered (and royalty free) format. Microsoft has no such format in any of it's products. Unlike the way Microsoft would have the media spin it, this is nothing against Microsoft. They are more than welcome to implement the standard data formats into their products. My only fear with Microsoft is that they take that standard as they have many in the past and ebrace and extend it (i.e. rape it so it works differently on their systems and will not work on competitor systems, blowing the etire concept of a standard).

I just love the idea that the European gov'ts stop using MS Office (for a start) just because MS refuses to comply with standards. Not because MS is evil, not because it's expensive, not because of personal preference - because MS office is simply inferior. Until they start supporting ODF.

And as you mentioned the MS-rape-to-destroy, I think the definition of ODF as an ISO standard will prevent this. Just look at Windozers using the same .iso encoding as we do. Thanks to ISO,

Now I'm 100% porcent certain that I did NOT write M$. I wrote m - i - c - r - o - s - o - f - t!!!

All my word processor documents get saved in rtf. If you need something more robust than rtf, then you need something more robust than a word processor. Additional formatting is best done with a page layout program.

That's my 2 cents. And honestly, I do use word processors quite often. But rtf is the easiest format to transfer.

Jenda wrote:And as you mentioned the M$-rape-to-destroy, I think the definition of ODF as an ISO standard will prevent this. Just look at Windozers using the same .iso encoding as we do. Thanks to ISO,

Nope, makes no difference to Microsoft if it's an ISO standard or not. They have done this with many standards in the past. Here are a few examples:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace_and_extend

Microsoft is looking to "standardize" it's Office XML document format. In direct response to all this open standards hubbub, no doubt. Will customers see this act for what it is (a last ditch attempt to prevent a permanent flush)? Or will they praise Microsoft for coming to their rescue?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051123/ap_ ... _standards

Giving thanks that I don't have to use Windows everyday!

I heard a rumor of this at school and I knew immediately there's a catch (or many). I'll try finding them, but I'm curious if any of you see any...

The company's proposal to Ecma International (...) would make Microsoft Office Open XML an international standard.

The proposal is backed by companies including Apple Computer Inc., Intel Corp. and Barclays Capital, the investment banking division of Barclays Bank PLC.

It seems to me that they are desperately struggling not to allow a different open format to dominate. They want the standard to be theirs, whatever it takes - even if they have to (partially?) open it up.

Why do they NOT mention OASIS nor ISO and what the fsck is Ecma?