Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Microsoft IT

Office + OpenDocument, Never Say Never 261

Posted by CmdrTaco from the i'll-believe-it-when-i-see-it dept.
barryfreed writes "There's a blog entry by Andy Updegrove at ConsortiumInfo.org that says Microsoft has officially stated to him that support of OpenDocument in MS Office could happen. Microsoft sent the statement in a response to an article Updegrove wrote called Massachusetts and OpenDocument: A Brave New World?"
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Office + OpenDocument, Never Say Never More

Office + OpenDocument, Never Say Never

Comments Filter:

  • OpenDoc? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by generic-man ( 33649 ) * on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:39AM (#13817663) Homepage Journal
    Isn't "OpenDoc" a much older standard than OpenDocument [wikipedia.org] that never quite caught on? I remember being so jazzed as an OS/2 user that OS/2 Warp 4 would support OpenDoc, then... well, we all know what happened to OS/2 after that.

    In any case, blah blah open standards good blah blah down with proprietary crap.
    • I imagine Microsoft will refer to it, or want their users to refer to OpenDocument as OpenDoc, so most users think it's just a different version of their .doc format, and don't understand the difference.
    • Well yeah, but what does that have to do with anything? The term OpenDoc isn't mentioned in any of the articles. It also has nothing to do with OpenDocument and had a completely different goal. OpenDoc was a programming framework for object embedding and encapsulating, you can think of it as OLE on steriods. OpenDocument is a file format.

    • Re:OpenDoc? (Score:2, Informative)

      by bruce_the_moose ( 621423 )
      OpenDoc is a compound document technology ala Micsoft's OLE (think embedding a spreadsheet in a word processor document that dynamically changes). OpenDocument is an XML based document format.

    • Re:OpenDoc? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Professor_UNIX ( 867045 )
      Did you actually read that entry? This is the second sentence:

      Sometimes, people mistakenly refer to OpenDocument (short for the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications) as OpenDoc.

  • OpenDoc (Score:5, Informative)

    by russellh ( 547685 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:40AM (#13817666) Homepage
    Dont' call it OpenDoc [apple.com]...

    sigh...

  • It will happen! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by matr0x_x ( 919985 )
    I honestly believe that over the next 10 years Microsoft will embrace the open standard. They will find way to still make money off it however :P
    • They will find way to still make money off it however

      How dare they! Those evil corporations.

    • Re:It will happen! (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Lussarn ( 105276 )
      They will find way to still make money off it however

      Can't be hard with the new tools their lawyers have.

      If they encrypt the resulting documents using some lame encryption like ROT13 it would be against the law to Open them in anything but MS Office.

  • I'm sceptical (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nicholaides ( 459516 ) <mike.nicholaides@NOsPaM.gmail.com> on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:42AM (#13817683) Homepage
    MS likes to embrace and extend, remember? I do believe that MS could make OpenDocument useless by over-supporting it.

  • What about browser standards? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bogaboga ( 793279 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:44AM (#13817696)
    Could the same paradigm be extended to the browser and browser standards? I mean, just like Massachusetts kind of stood its ground on document formats, it goes an extra mile and does something similar with the browser.

    This would be very beneficial since every web page would look the *same* and act the same regardless of the browser use to view it.

    What about that?

  • Support will be useless for the most part (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Jeff85 ( 710722 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:44AM (#13817699) Homepage
    Even if Microsoft includes support for an OpenDocument format, the only thing it will do is enable MS Word users to read documents from other word processors such as OpenOffice or StarOffice. However, I'm sure MS will still have the default save setting be their proprietary .doc format, which Joe User will automatically choose when he saves his document which someone who only has OpenOffice will try to read. Sure, OpenOffice does its best to render .doc files, but sometimes it still looks disfigured. What MS really needs to do is open up its .doc format.

    • Re:Support will be useless for the most part (Score:5, Informative)

      by generic-man ( 33649 ) * on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:50AM (#13817754) Homepage Journal
      Office 12 will not write .doc by default, but rather an XML-based format called .docx. More information is available [msdn.com] at the Microsoft Office XML Formats blog [msdn.com].
      • Office 12 will basically be using a proprietary patent-encumbered format wrapped in a buzz-word XML wrapper. That doesn't make it open at all, though that is what the MS PR-machine is trying to make everyone think.

        I can serialize an object in a program to a file. I can then encrypt that file and stick it in an XML-wrapper. Does that make it open? Nope. Sure, the plain text in an Office 12 doc will be viewable, however the objects will be what are in a proprietary format (and probably patent encumbere

    • http://xml.coverpages.org/ni2005-09-26-a.html [coverpages.org]

      Agencies should therefore "begin to evaluate office applications that support the OpenDocument specification to migrate from applications that use proprietary document formats. As of January 1, 2007 all agencies within the Executive Department will be required to: (1) Use office applications that provide conformance with the OpenDocument format, and (2) Configure the applications to save office documents in OpenDocument format by default."

      They've already thought

      • That just says that people in the government must configure it as the default. Microsoft could make their own format the default for new installations while allowing people to configure Word to save in whatever format they wish by default. You can already configure Word to save in other formats by default.

    • Even if Microsoft includes support for an OpenDocument format, the only thing it will do is enable MS Word users to read documents from other word processors such as OpenOffice or StarOffice.

      There are a lot of Office users and I doubt that trend will change any time soon. Supporting OpenDocument is a good thing for those users. It's also good for MS being part of the procurement process for any company, state, or government choosing that format.

      However, I'm sure MS will still have the default save setti

    • Even if they don't support writing OpenDocument, _you_ will be able to use OpenOffice and send them documents that they can read. This would be a biggie.
      Right now, most people in business require a .doc document. If you send them something that word will open without problems, they will accept it, and you will be able to ditch ms-office for a free and Free alternative.

  • Big deal (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Dracos ( 107777 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:47AM (#13817726)

    Even if MS decided to realize what interoperability actually is, the only reason they would add OpenDoc support to Office is to grab back the millions of dollars they'd lose on MA not buying Office licenses. This is precisely why MA is switching, and whether or not MS can FUD them into going back to Office remains to be seen. I predict promises that will ultimately go unfulfilled.

  • offically could == (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gaima ( 174551 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:47AM (#13817730)
    un-officially won't.

  • Could? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by zappepcs ( 820751 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:48AM (#13817740) Journal
    Yes, I suppose so, and they could relicense MS Office under GPL too, but it doesn't seem likely unless 100's more government and business organizations do as Mass. did....

    It will be good to see the bull with a ring in its nose for a change, so to speak, but the more relevant down line consequences don't seem to be jumping out at me. If MS goes with ODF, then we are all back in the same mess, more or less, aren't we?

    I have faith in people, open-minded people, to see a product, and when the value of the product is comparable to any other product of similar purpose, then choose the cheapest one, or the one with the most compatibility with present relevant investments.

    The trouble is, so far as I have seen or understood (I could be wrong), when the products are equal or close, MS uses those 'politicians' they paid for to ensure that only MS products get sold to all but the very edgy techno-geeks. That would leave us right where we started (more or less) in respect of MS's domination of the OS and software world.... that means very little competitive product in circulation by comparison.

    So, what would make this more of a move to open and competitive markets?

    I don't see the bright future in this.
    • Exactly. Yeah, I suppose that pigs could fly, too, if they had wings.

      Read between the lines very carefully. What Nick Tsilas says is:

      Andy, this is not accurate. I think what we have said is that features are dictated by customer demand and, until the Massachusetts-related activity occurred, Open Document was not even on our radar screens.

      Yep. OpenDocument is not even on their radar screens [oasis-open.org]. Nope. Never heard of it before the Commonwealth of Massachusetts wanted it.

      Puh-lease. Does he think we'

      • (Fairness? To Microsoft? On Slashdot? Hey, humor me here.)

        I don't think he's saying that it wasn't on their radar screens, as in, "We've never heard of Open Document". Instead, he's saying, "It wasn't on our radar as a feature to implement right now." And, pre-Massachusetts, it probably wasn't.

      • It does make a difference. I can send people an open office doc and have comfort knowing they can read it in. As long as MS does not cripple it somehow with scary warning messages on open or some such. Its still a good thing. Even if it is not the ideal thing.

        Jeremy
    • The real danger to Microsoft of using ODT is that it makes it much harder to force people to upgrade. With proprietary stuff, the default format in the latest version isn't supported by older versions, making it hard for people using older versions to avoid upgrading when they get documents from people with newer versions. If everyone is choosing ODT (either by default, or, more likely, by selecting it specifically), files from the new version will work fine in the old version, either because the format is

  • Hopefully (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RLiegh ( 247921 ) * on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:49AM (#13817743) Homepage Journal
    Hopefully any government bodies which adopt OpenDocument will thoroughly test any suites they do purchase for compatibility (so that they aren't stuck creating 'open' documents which are only able to be opened by products from one company).
    However, given the corrupt and incompetent nature of governments, I'm very much not counting on it.
    • Why is this a troll? Microsoft has a very bad track record of abusing standards. The parent post seems like a very valid suggestion. Just because a product claims to support Open Document doesn't mean that it actually does. The only way to be sure is to test.

  • ActiveOpenDocument-X! (Score:5, Funny)

    by tnk1 ( 899206 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:50AM (#13817762)
    Say Hello to ActiveOpenDocument-X! It's just like OpenDocument only it's more fully featured!!!*

    *New features require Microsoft Office Vista XP 2008 Professional and .Net for best results.

  • Oh, They'll Support It... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:56AM (#13817811) Homepage Journal
    Just like they support Posix -- just enough to be considered in bids by government organizations that mandate the format. There may be tools out there that do it better, but the "Supports Opendoc" checkbox on those contracts don't specify how well that support works, just that it's there. And although OpenOffice might be free, government IT bids will necessarily go through the 3 companies on the planet that feel it's profitable to do that work despite all the paperwork, and they prefer Microsoft products. Don't think to take your independent consulting firm into the bidding process either. You won't even get past the form WXD-423. Assuming you can even find one.

  • Retardedness (Score:4, Funny)

    by OneByteOff ( 817710 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:57AM (#13817820)
    FTA :
    "and also to lessen the likelihood that public information will not become inaccessible in the future"

    lessen the likelihood..... that public information... *will not become inaccessible*

    -- 2010 --
    User : "I can't access Files on the Server"
    Admin: "Yeah thats just part of the IT Policy"
    User : "WTF?!?"
    Admin: "Yeah I know, it's fucked up but I didn't write it..."

  • Wow, someone should have proofread the abstract (Score:3, Informative)

    by petree ( 16551 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @10:59AM (#13817841) Journal
    Wow, someone should have proofread the abstract

    Here's the abstract from the featured article [consortiuminfo.org]:
    Abstract: For a period of 20 months, the Information Technology Division (ITD) of Massachusetts has been considering certain amendments to its internal information technology policies relating to the use of open formats when saving documents created by the Massachusetts Executive Agencies. The impetus for such a change is to prevent vendor lock in, and also to lessen the likelihood that public information will not become inaccessible in the future due to changes in proprietary software , or the discontinuance of support for such software. On September 21, 2005, the proposed amendments became final, and Massachusetts became the first jurisdiction in the world to mandate the saving of documents using only software that complies with the OpenDocument OASIS Standard or the Adobe PDF format. This article describes the history of both the process followed by the ITD as well as that of the OpenDocument OASIS Standard, summarizes and assesses the arguments for and against the amendments made by those that offered public comments, and finally seeks to evaluate the potential impact of the Massachusetts decision on further government information technology policy evolution around the world.
    Maybe they meant: "and also to lessen the likelihood that public information will (remove: "not") become inaccessible in the future due to changes in proprietary software."

    Maybe they need to worry less about the format being open and more about the text making sense ;)

  • If M$ wants to continue to make money, what with torrents, napster, E-mule (however it's spelled nowadays) burning, ripping, mashing, and overall passing the info to and from one another, they're going to have to adopt open source policies soon and they know it.

    Simply put, people aren't going to tolerate closed EULA's much longer. Average Joe's can't afford 500 bucks every two years to upgrade an OS, relearn, understand, then do it again. That's why people are pooling cash, buying one copy, waiting for s

  • No brainer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jmorris42 ( 1458 ) * <jmorris@[ ]u.org ['bea' in gap]> on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @11:04AM (#13817878)
    They will refuse to support OpenDocument just as long as there is a chance they can browbeat customers lime MA into sticking with Office. Then they will refuse to support it while they make all of their plans to switch to something else. Finally at the last minute they will offer to allow them to be a 'beta' site for their upcoming OpenDocument supporting version. Since the grunts at the keyboards hate change, tons of political pressure will be put on the people in charge to stick with MS, this offer will be accepted. Then after a couple of years of buggy and disfunctional betas we will get to the final decision. If others also demand OpenDocument it will finally go production. Otherwise they will just pull the plug on it, the current IT team in MA will have been quietly replaced by then and the whole thing will be forgotten.... except by anyone else who is thinking of taking a similar stand.

    • They will refuse to support OpenDocument just as long as there is a chance they can browbeat customers lime MA into sticking with Office. Then they will refuse to support it while they make all of their plans to switch to something else. Finally at the last minute they will offer to allow them to be a 'beta' site for their upcoming OpenDocument supporting version.

      It's already too late. Parts of Massachusetts (including perhaps most notably Saugus [saugus.net]) have already switched. See the announcement on Saugus.net [saugus.net]

  • Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @11:07AM (#13817908)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Why not use HTML? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Spy der Mann ( 805235 ) <spydermann.slash ... com minus distro> on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @11:13AM (#13817957) Homepage Journal
      *cough cough* ack! Have you EVER seen the ugliness inside MSWord produced html?

      Anwyay, HTML is a markup language - just as OpenDocument. The difference is that HTML was meant to be read by web browsers. Printing and formatting is out of its scope.

    • Re:Why not use HTML? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by csirac ( 574795 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @11:21AM (#13818025)
      I agree to a certain extent, and I think if you were to attempt to build an office workflow based around "paperless" and entirely electronic document exchange, HTML could fit the bill quite well. But I can see a possible reason as to why HTML isn't used for more inter-office document exchange.

      1) It quickly becomes a collection of files (figures, pictures, diagrams, charts, formulas, etc) which are inconvenient to manage. You have to attach say six different files to your email, or mess around with zipping it up, likewise at the recipient end.
      2) Printing

      As for (1), there's Microsoft's Compiled HTML which forms the basis of their help file format, not sure why that isn't an option in FLOSS (maybe it is, I haven't researched).

      For (2), people want to control how the formatting looks on the printed page. You don't get that in HTML. And most word-processing, let's face it, is meant to be printed on paper. Depressing that computers have yet to provide a solution to the paperless office... but that's the way things are.

      In my opinion, documents > 5 pages or so should be written in LaTeX but that's just me :-) (and for those that groan at this thought, take a look at Lyx [lyx.org]).
      • regarding point (2), it is possible to define pages and sizes and such in CSS level 2

        http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/page.html [w3.org]
      • I seem to remember Opera, ages ago, could read zipped HTML+images. I'm surprised and disappointed that such a simple idea never caught on. Along with that, editors should be able to treat zipped files as directories and work on files directly in them. It might be trickier to handle images, but there's no reason I shouldn't be able to point a text editor at a zipped file, choose which text file I want to edit, edit it, and save changes, without once ever manually zipping or unzipping it. Come to think of it,
      • I think the help file format is compiled RTF. Or at least it used to be. I remember having to write a help file and edit the RTF to insert the right tags, but that was ~2000-ish.
    • Because there are two families of file-formats for text formatting:
      1) Word Processing/Page Layout formats such as Open Document, MS Word, Word Perfect, and PDF.
      2) Hyper text formats such as HTML, XML, and SGML.

      The first family contains the exact specific information required to render (display, print) the document. In theory, I can open a Word Document or a PDF file on any computer in the universe and it will print exactly the same. It also MAY contain SOME semantic, contextual, "hypertext" information.

      Th
    • While I agree in theory this is a good idea HTML is not really a great format for portability. Although a lot of devices read HTML and it's very platform neutral it does take some skill and effort to make it consistent across platforms. So that bugs the publishing crowd who wants control over the flow and layout of a document. Ah, CSS solves that! But my next point illustrates why this is also problematic. You mentioned containing images; images and other non-textual data in an HTML document are just links.
    • how come in this day and age the default format for text isn't html?

      It could easily replace rtf, but a full featured word processor, like Microsoft Word or OpenOffice.Org Writer, demands more. There are formatting features, revsion controls, and all manner of underlying tech that html simply doesn't suport.

      That said, I totally agree that html should be the default for text documents that are more complex than raw ascii and less complex than a 500 page technical manual with macros and embedded revison histo
    • HTML is of course HyperText Markup Language (emphasis mine). It was designed for inserting links and other nifty widgets like forms into hypertext. Of course, over time some basic formatting tags snuck in (bold, italics, paragraphs, etc), but those don't come close to dealing with the advanced formatting available in most word processing or desktop publishing packages. One of the reasons even older versions of Word et al produce such nasty HTML is due to them trying to as faithfully as possible replicate th

    • Re:Why not use HTML? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by shotfeel ( 235240 )
      I never really understood this but how come in this day and age the default format for text isn't html?

      Call me old-fashioned, but I still think the best format for text is .txt. If you want more formatting options, .rtf. If you want images, tables, etc, then go HTML.

      IMO the best format is always the simplest.

  • FOr all you Office users... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Eric_Cartman_South_P ( 594330 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @11:12AM (#13817943)
    JUST DO IT. Go to http://www.openoffice.org/ [openoffice.org] and download it. It installs cleanly, uninstalls cleanly, and does not interfere at all with your current install of MS Office (just choose "NO" when asked if you want to link OpenOffice to MS Office file types).

    Use it, and I bet most, if not all of you, will find yourself not needing MS Office.

    Oh, and try that Save to PDF button. Yum.

    Good night, and good luck!
    • I'd consider it, and have, but OpenOffice for OS X in the form of NeoOffice isn't very good. It starts on my 1.5 Ghz PowerBook in about 30 seconds, compared to 3-4 for Word, and has inferior style support and lacks a unified toolbar. I also haven't been able to get it to do complex number patterns, like 2.c.iv., and have all of them increment appropriately. Finally, although NeoOffice is a noble effort, it's ugly on OS X. Although I've already tried your suggestion, I find that I do need MS Office.

  • Come on folks (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Nom du Keyboard ( 633989 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @11:12AM (#13817948)
    support of OpenDocument in MS Office could happen.

    Did anybody think it wouldn't happen? Really?? And you just arrived from what planet again???

    Of course it will happen. It will happen the moment MS needs it to happen. They've successfully resisted as long as they can, and when it starts costing them sales rather than creating sales for them they flip a compiler option switch and it's included. Don't think for a moment that they haven't had this running in their development labs for years. They would have been fools not to have.

    Doesn't mean the battle is over. MS will certainly try to find some essential feature that OD doesn't support to keep people on their own proprietary format. Fight this by using OD regardless. The only thing I don't understand is why RTF was never an acceptable open format. I know it was supported by other platforms, and appears to be all ascii tags and data.

    Kudos to Massachusetts to standing up to the MS BS. It took someone big enough and brave enough to get their attention. Apparently even a small state is big enough to really scare them.

  • Let's just ditch Word. (Score:5, Funny)

    by CyricZ ( 887944 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @11:15AM (#13817972)
    I don't know why people are putting up with all these shenanigans from Microsoft. This should be an indicator to everyone that they're only out to hassle the community.

    As such, any product organization should begin to switch to a system such as LaTeX for their document formatting needs. And for those who suggest that it is too complex for memos and other smaller documents, the perfect answer to that is to just stick with plain text files.

    While the learning curve of something like LaTeX is a bit more than that of Word, it is far more powerful. Using a system such as LaTeX you can easily produce some very complex documents, and they look great. You don't have to worry about proprietary binary or XML formats, because LaTeX source files are plain text files. You can easily transmit them in source form, or you can create PDF documents when you need the presentation to be exact.

  • I can see it now, Office can open OpenDocuments but everytime you try to save, it will ask if you want to save to .doc to prevent losing formatting info. Users complain about this extra step. Or they just say yes and you get a mix of OpenDocument and .doc going around in MA. MS runs a FUD campaign about how much this is costing taxpayers and what a mess the whole OpenDoc conversion has been. MA gives up and back to MS it is.
  • I would like to officially state that it is possible that pigs will fly, that the sun will rise in the west, and that all males between the ages of 34 and 37 inclusive will develop a small blue spot under their left arms at 4:03am tomorrow morning.

    Furthermore, it is my official position that it is possible that we will have a global renewal of peace and brotherhood, starting in the middle east; that demands on oil will suddenly drop out to nothing due to the invention of cheap, clean cold fusion; that Santa

  • ...officially stated to him that support of OpenDocument in MS Office could happen...

    Boy, that's as much a sure thing as when Owl says to Pooh, floating in the floody 100 Acre Wood, "A rescue is being thought of"

    More than likely, it will be provided as an import/export format. I haven't viewed either schema, but seeing as Microsoft typically releases next-version converters (including the next XML format) for current version software, another format should be easily done.

    After all, wouldn't they rather have

  • Why this will happen (Score:4, Interesting)

    by foolinator ( 611098 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @11:38AM (#13818151)
    Having a lot of IT friends in Europe and Asia, I know that a LOT of organizations are now using open office as a document standard. Since OO doesn't work 100% well with MS formats, allowing MS Office to be 100% compatable with OO will make the US companies (who are still obsessed with MS Office) more easily work with their OO businesses. If MS didn't support it, then the US companies will begin to use both MS Office and OO - which will start the push for US companies to use OO.

    It's a win for MS to do this. They've done this with Java in the past and it proved damaging to the Java world.

  • CSV (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 3ryon ( 415000 ) on Tuesday October 18, 2005 @11:43AM (#13818191)
    I suspect that MS support will be like that in Excel with CSV files. I choose "Save As", hit the drop down, scroll through the list for .csv, select that, hit save.

    I then get a dialog box saying something like "This file may contain features that cannot be saved if you continue to save in this format. Are you sure you want to save in this format?" Well, yes. I scrolled through the list and picked that format.

    This behavior occurs even if you open a .csv file, change one value and resave it...not using any fancy features.

    • OOo does the same thing! (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      If you open a .doc file, you get the same kind of message when you save. I want to keep a certain document in .doc format for my co-workers, but I only want to use OOo. So they penalize me with this stupid form that you can't turn off.

  • What was that?

    Blinking 'eck, it was flock of flying pigs.

  • Microsoft realizes as much as anybody that the days of desktop-bound apps are swiftly coming to a close. They realize that XML is "the" way that data is shared between applications, a trend that will likely continue for many, many years to come. The realize that being able to easily inject Office-authored content into enterprise-wide, services oriented architectures is critical to their very future.

    I think people should be paying more attention to where MS has been heading lately. They are aggresively pu
  • "My best friend's sister's boyfriend's brother's girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who's going with a girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night."

    I'll believe it when I see it. Otherwise, we're all just Rooney's in training.
  • ...is like them officially stating they will start cooperating with other businesses?


    For those who like text only format, you can go to the Oxford Text Archive for all of your ASCII & html fun...
    http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/ [ahds.ac.uk] (browse by title)

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close