New York Decision On ODF Vs. OOXML Approaching

christian.einfeldt writes "In August of 2007, the State of New York passed legislation requiring its CIO, Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, to gather information on the advantages and disadvantages of adopting either ODF or OOXML as a document standard, and to report her findings by 15 January 2008. As part of her duties under that legislation, the CIO issued a Request For Public Comment to get feedback on the topic. The deadline for that public comment is 28 December 2007 — so there is still time for the Slashdot crowd to be heard."

anybody?

Am I the only one surprised that this was actually posted here before the deadline?

Write!

If you don't do something as quick and simple as writing to ask for something, what right do you have to complain when you don't get it. If just a small fraction of the people here write in support of ODF, that will be a huge and impressive response.

There's enough complaining about OOXML et al on this site. Put your money where you mouth is.

Re:Write!

what right do you have to complain when you don't get it

Let's see - the NY taxpayers are already paying this CIO's (probably hefty) salary, and she is supposed to recommend that which is best for her constituents.

From all the info I've seen regarding the matter, ODF and OOXML are two document standards. One was written by committee and has the support of multiple companies, organizations, and individuals. The other is written by a monopoly and has support of no one except MS and their paid shills.

The fact is there is absolutely no reason for a government body to go with MS's lock-in format considering the technical merits of both, and most especially the past behavior of MS. OOXML is a pseudo-standard, purposefully obfuscated to keep the MS monopoly gravy-train running smoothly.

If these government agencies can't start making no-brainer decisions in the interest of their constituents, perhaps it's time that these positions were simply abolished...

Re:"locked in"?

In the spirit of open source, screw the MS Office suite. Take the open OOXML standard and write your own office suite.

Since you've apparently not followed the saga, the purpose of the MOOXML "standard" is that you cannot reimplement it because it isn't fully specified (in addition to being a festering mess).

Only Microsoft has the blobs required to make MOOXML work. Only partial compatibility can be attained by other in the best of cases. OTOH ODF actually *is* an open format which is properly documented and which does evolve in the open.

On top of that, I'm not certain whether all of the Microsoft users can actually read/write MOOXML files. A large number haven't switched to the latest version of Office and don't seem to want to (or cannot if they're on Macs). In small structures I doubt they even know about the translator add ons for their version of Office (if it's even available for their version).

Re:"locked in"?

Gah. Here's a FAQ you may find useful:

Q: What does open office and MS Office have to do with a document standard?
A: Nothing.

Q: What does the GUI of your word processor have to do with the format you save a document in?
A: Nothing.

Q: Why do you need to use open office if you use ODF?
A: You don't, use whatever software you like.

Q: What does the open source software development model have to do with open information standards?
A: Nothing.

Q: Does using ODF mean that communists will steal my children?
A: No.

Q: Will aliens eat my brain if I equate information standards with software implementations?
A: Yes.

Re:Write!

The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an open standard:
        * The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.).
        * The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a nominal fee.
        * The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
        * There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.

These commonly accepted criteria are enough to ignore the whole OOXML vs ODF discussions as OOXML patent licesing conditions only fake compliance. No one trusts the OSP and the CNS from Microsoft. And openness of the ongoing ISO process is a running gag.

Re:Write!

Any suggestions for how to phrase it if you're not a New York resident?

How about this?

Dear CIO;

I'm not from New York, but I'm on the Internet. The same Internet that thinks Ron Paul, lolcats, and "2 girls 1 cup" are great, so I obviously know more than anyone technical.

I don't know anything about your actual requirements, but you should pick ODF, because OOXML is from Microsoft. ODF 1.2 is in committee right now, and it will plug all those holes in ODF, like spreadsheet formulas not being specified, so don't let the fact that you can't do anything useful in the current version without lots of vendor-specific non-standard extensions bother you. Vote for Ron Paul!

Being Diplomatic

Please folks, if you're going to comment on this issue be polite and don't use form letters. Refer to government open standards, how OOXML isn't a stable standard and is ungoing massive changes at Ecma, that kind of thing.

Mostly though emphasis on the "polite" part. Imagine how persuasive someone can be when they're not a dick about it and when they just lay out some good clear arguments :)

Re:Being Diplomatic

correct... another words use constructive criticism should you add input before the decision is made. List the pros and cons and be clear and to the point. Its kind of like a resume... If the employer sees many misspelled words, way to long, or with a font thats hard to read, etc will be ignored. If I was to write in with feedback I would put what I want in bullet points and have the text bold. Under that I will argue the pros and cons etc... I would follow the same form throughout my commenting. I find it to be the best way to get your point across. Forgive my horrible comment grammer but I just wanted to add my comment to the discussion. Getting back to History final exam prep along with the Spanish one... :-(

Advice on History final

"in other words" is not spelled "another words".
Grammar on a final examination is as important as grammar in a letter to your congresscritter.
May your professor mod up your exam score.

Re:Being Diplomatic

Refer to government open standards, how OOXML isn't a stable standard and is ungoing massive changes at Ecma

The problem with that is that ODF is also undergoing massive changes. The version currently working its way through standardization adds the OpenFormula spec to ODF, which is something like 25% of the size of ODF. That's a pretty massive change!

When is....

When is a standard not a standard?

Perhaps... it's when the company who wrote it won't pass it over to standards bodies [slashdot.org].

Perhaps we ought to have "varying" standards for road design... or we should have ever-changing standards for building construction.

Considering this is public documents are at stake, it is our history. It is no less important than safety.

Re:When is....

So when is Sun going to turn control of ODF over to a standards body? (There is a difference between letting a standards body approve a particular version, and turning control over).

There are zillions of things wrong with OOXML, so why do people keep picking things that are ALSO problems with ODF? It would be a lot more effective to pick those areas where ODF is actually different and better, and push those.

I'm a New York State resident and...

...I've just about given up on politicians in this state. Albany has not been able to pass an on time budget for...actually, I don't think I was even born the last time they passed an on time budget. Governor Pataki was a union-busting asshole, and Governor Spitzer has failed to fulfill his promise of restoring integrity to Albany. Hillary Clinton votes for one idiotic bill after another, and Chuck Schumer voted in favor of Mukasey (need I say more?).

Not even Windows users like OOXML

Not even Windows users like OOXML. Even the ones with Office 2007 usually save into .doc format. I don't see why we can't just go with plain old .doc. Sure it isn't as "open" as ODF, but OOo and Office can read them well enough (now if I got to make the plans, it would just be plain .txt, fast and easy to read, who needs formatting) to see what they are saying. But OOXML just plain isn't adopted anywhere, it lacks support for non Windows platforms and no one really knows what the "standard" actually is, and knowing MS's previous actions, they will soon "extend" OOXML to have "features" that will make the free/open source document readers have yet another thing to deal with. So why can't they go with .doc? Or better yet HTML? Even .txt would be better then OOXML, even though ODF is nice, Windows systems with Office need "plugins" to view them.

Re:Not even Windows users like OOXML

Which version of .doc?
They are fairly incompatable, and not even Office can open all of the versions correctly:
95, 2000, XP, 2003?
There is no "doc" standard, it is just the memory dump of the version of Office, which changes with each release, and that is the problem.

TXT would indeed be better, if only because it isn't going to change in the future.

Re:

TXT would indeed be better, if only because it isn't going to change in the future.

What kind of TXT? ANSI? Unicode? UTF-16? Big endian? Little endian? etc, etc.. I know, my examples are probably wrong, but the point isn't.

Re:Not even Windows users like OOXML

I know the parent is probably going to get modded into oblivion, but they made an interesting point that will probably be missed. Why do we need to store all the information in a fully formatted document. I know that good ol' A4...or American Letter standard will persist for a long time, but surely if it's just the information we need to retain there would be a better way of storing it without all the formatting cruft thrown in that makes it hard to decipher if you don't have a massive spec to write a loader from.

Afterall everyone here is mainly worried about retaining the information in a format that is readable by future generations right? right!?

Fuck document formats. XHTML and SVG work fine.

Fuck all these document formats. XHTML, CSS, PNG, SVG and PDF work just fine for displaying virtually any sort of data.

XHTML is the container. It allows for textual documentation to be represented, and allows for other data representations to be embedded within that container. Its native support for tables makes it usable even as a spreadsheet (which can be powered by JavaScript).

CSS allows for very complex document layout and stylings to specified with ease and conciseness.

SVG can represent nearly all vector-based pictorials, including many forms of graphs. Bar charts are easily represented with rectangles, and a pie chart is easily represented as a collection of filled arcs. SVG's scalability allows for these charts to be resized really easily.

PNG images can be used for all other images that aren't best represented using SVG.

PDF is the perfect format for bundling all of those other resources together in a medium that displays on almost any system.

Best of all, those are all open standards, with free implementations available for almost every operating system and platform. There's just no need for this ODF and OOXML bullshit.

Re:

Except that no one would want to use a JavaScript-powered spreadsheet for anything more advanced that a few simple arithmetic formulas. But sure, as an interchange format it would probably work. Everyone can get their hands on a free standards-compliant b

Re:

In case you didn't know, ODF is basically just what you mentioned. If you rename your ODF file to .zip, you can open it and see all those files inside. It doesn't use XHTML, but it does use XML to store the document text and structure. It stores all the

And invent time travel

Was she required to invent a time machine to meet that deadline? ""In August of 2007, the State of New York passed legislation requiring its CIO, Melodie Mayberry-Stewart, to gather information on the advantages and disadvantages of adopting either ODF or OOXML as a document standard, and to report her findings by 15 January 2007. "

Oh, Come Now

Think about it: New York, politics, Microsoft's money, the need for an objective decision. It is just so cute that everyone on Slashdot is discussing this seriously and talking about sending comments in; I wish I had a camera.

Re:Oh, Come Now

Try the "Print Screen" key.

You do

You answered your own question. Standardization does not equal adoption, but the State of New York is asking its CIO which format it should adopt. PDF became popular and a de-facto standard before ISO 32000 was approved, so it is important to note that a government is asking for public comment about which format to implement, regardless of ISO status.