Docvert 3.0 Lessens Reliance On Microsoft Office 108
An anonymous reader writes "After 10 months of development Docvert 3.0 was released today. This open source web service converts DOC files to Oasis OpenDocument 1.0, and then to HTML, RSS, or any XML format. Try the ODF demo or download the source and install it on your own box. Version 3.0 comes with an MS Word Plugin, FTP/WebDAV upload, and an in-browser document editor."
It promises to be an interesting battle (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:It promises to be an interesting battle (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:It promises to be an interesting battle (Score:5, Insightful)
They don't have to implement it correctly. They can claim support for a standard [msversus.org] for years without actually following it (e.g. CSS, Kerberos, etc.) and still get the contracts. They were actually involved in creating some CSS standards and still didn't follow them.
It's all about the money. Get the big contracts and nothing else matters.
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Can anybody implement for free?
I think so! But, you'll need to get a copy of the standard first, and I believe ISO normally charge.. rather more than I'd like for that.
Can MS get fined for saying they support the standard when in fact their software actually does not...
I doubt it, but if a test case can be produced to prove the fault, they'll maybe/probably/hopefully/perhaps fix it. Depending on whos asking for a fix!
You're right that *a standard* is far be
Re:It promises to be an interesting battle (Score:4, Informative)
No, because bits of it are patented (especially the "legacy compatibility" parts that basically just say "emulate old versions of Office").
In this case it won't matter, because the OOXML "standard" is effectively defined as "whatever MS Office does." In other words, MS basically documented Office's behavior down to the smallest detail, and submitted it to ECMA and now ISO.
Re:It promises to be an interesting battle (Score:4, Informative)
They didn't even do that. A lot of the document states that when you encounter certain tags you will emulate a Office bug, but never specifies the details of that bug because that is "beyond the scope of the document". So even if you have the standards document, you can't fully implement the standard without getting all the old versions of Office and reverse engineering their behavior.
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It only figures... Microsoft expecting a compendium of proprietary digital glop to be officially embraced by all. Why even submit this for standardization? De-facto "standards" have worked so well for them [ -and so badly for everyone else].
Application Rejected. Thanks for Playing. Please Try Again.
I originally read OOXML ... (Score:5, Funny)
Object
Oriented
X
M
L
and whimpered at the thought...
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But let's assume that this OOXML thing get through the approval process... with an open standard anyone can make import/export functionality for MS Office documents in non-MS applications. From iWork to KOffice to OpenOffice and whatever else is out there, will there be any need to have MS Office in order to read, edit, and forward on "MS Office documents?" To me, it seems like MS is creating a way for everyone else to erode their market share.
Re:I originally read OOXML ... (Score:4, Insightful)
And i wonder how you could. Even just reading the the
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Indeed... that would be nice. Try reading the article to find o
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-Cartman
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Please recommend compliance validation tools (Score:4, Interesting)
--jeffk++
Re:Please recommend compliance validation tools (Score:5, Insightful)
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ODF has already been supported by several implementations, and some of these threw up some OpenOffice-isms; if the support had been finished before the standard had been finalised then this w
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Describing exceptions doesn't make a standard. (Score:5, Insightful)
Although I'm quite sure that Microsoft really doesn't give a and will push this through as 'their' standard that everyone else will have to adhere to to be able to do anything with Mickyshaft generated content anyway.
Whether ISO approves of this or not is inconsequential, the only thing that matters is that M$ can now say: Look, we proposed a standard, it's not our fault 'they' think it's not good enough.
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Whether ISO approves of this or not is inconsequential, the only thing that matters is that M$ can now say: Look, we proposed a standard, it's not our fault 'they' think it's not good enough.
My response: I proposed a rational solution for the tech department that I control - it's not my fault that we decided to go to another vendor when you no longer support Office2K. Google gives its love and regards. As does OpenOffice, MySQL, and Linux. Sincerely,
The guy who makes the tech decisions
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Idealism will only get you so far, especially when it squares off against practicality.
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I'm not necessarily anti-M$ (ducks), however, unless they tone down their schoolyard-bully tactics, they won't see another dime of my milk money.
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There is only 24 hours in a day (roughly) so there are only so many battles we can fight. Pick the ones that matter most to you and do what you can. But I think the most important aspect is to acknowledge that we will all have different priorities. Just because your way makes most sense to you and the products/
Re:Describing exceptions doesn't make a standard. (Score:4, Insightful)
But yeah it doesn't matter much to the private sector / industry.
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Deja Vu Docvert (Score:5, Interesting)
I solved the issue by writing a program that ran on a Windows PC (an old one that had been discarded and was gathering dust in the closet) that received SMTP mail, detached the Word attachment, started up Microsoft's Word Viewer to read the attachment, then "printed" it to a file in PDF format and finaly SMTP mailed it back to the sender.
From then on all we had to do was forward the email to the robot and wait for a readable version to bounce back. As I used Microsoft's own Word Viewer there were no problems whenever a new version of Word came out, I just downloaded the latest viewer :-)
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- Andrew
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I think I smell a tiny fib.
I would have believed you if you had told me that you used Windows' (native since 3.1) Apple Laserwriter printer driver set up to print to a file, then mailed the resulting (PostScript) file to yourself to print or view with GhostScript/gv.
Well, except that I didn't think the Word viewer was released until either '95 (or as late as '97?), and it was released because MS broke the Word 6.0 (Office 4.3) document forma
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That seems like the hard way to solve the problem...
Watch my example:
computer:~/Documents wonkobeeblebrox$ ls Op*
Op
Open XML is a transliteration (Score:2)
I wonder how it ended this way: not enough time to properly develop and implement a more proper standard, or by design.
I feel it's both.
Re:Open XML is a transliteration (Score:5, Insightful)
The second design requirement was that the spec be developed and released quickly, before ODF had time to gain much traction. Between these two objectives, it's hardly surprising that it ended up the way it did...
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Microsoft is so huge now (and i work for a huge corporation as well) that it may be easier/more natural to just let the business mangle things in a natural way than to get a purposeful plan going to do this kind of thing.
The project planning and meeting time alone would be bad plus you wouldn't want a documentation trail showing you intended to lock in to word or it might come back to bite you later.
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Uh, no, that is wrong. A many-to-one mapping would work for that requirement. If doc has many ways of representing the same information, turning them all into the same way would work just fine and would be lossless.
A requirement that it lossly convert *both* ways, however, would require this. Otherwise converting to XML and b
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What, like... (Score:1)
(Content of
Re:What, like... (Oops, forgot, no xml tags.) (Score:5, Funny)
<microsoft_word_document>
(Content of
</microsoft_word_document>
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I think you mean (Score:1)
<microsoft_word_document>
<[!CDATA[
(Content of
]]>
</microsoft_word_document>
Got to make sure it's valid XML.
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8">
<microsoft_word_document encoding="base-64">
[blob of nastiness, err, word document, suitably bloated by the encoding scheme]
</microsoft_word_document>
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That's the reason for all the "render like WordPerfect 5.x" options that people have complained about [slashdot.org], because they have to allow people to convert to the XML format and then convert back without reducing the document to an unreadable mess.
I remember reading some interview with the Office program manager where he said rountripp
Re:Open XML is a transliteration (Score:5, Insightful)
That's the reason for all the "render like WordPerfect 5.x" options that people have complained about, because they have to allow people to convert to the XML format and then convert back without reducing the document to an unreadable mess.
There is no reason I know of why the XML format cannot support all the features of Word and round trip, without relying on nasty hacks like this, it just takes more work. The problem with "Open"XML that I've seen is the concentrate entirely on supporting only the features of .doc files and their interactions with other programs to the exclusion of anything else. Rather than "render like WP 5.x" you need to define how WP 5.x renders that feature, then incorporate it into your conversion script in a way that makes sense in general for documents.
The whole format is built upon the assumption that only MS and Word will be using it and it is not designed to abstract word processing documents in general, but to kowtow to the eccentricities of Word.
The alternative is to not support roundtripping and then wait for slashdot headlines like "Users find that the new Office XML format mangles their documents".
No, the alternative is to do it right and build hacks like the ones you mention into the import and export routines, rather than embedding them, without any definition, into the format.
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Well it's a Microsoft format, and the only word processor they have is Word. What do you expect?
Rather than "render like WP 5.x" you need to define how WP 5.x renders that feature, then incorporate it into your conversion script in a way that makes sense in general for documents.
Microsoft spent lots of time a
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Microsoft spent lots of time and money taking over the market from WP, and they have no incentive making it easy for someone to take over the market from Word.
The point of having an open standard is the fact that anyone can do this. Once again, MS has promised to create something that is just like and almost as good as, what customers want, but which really is nothing of the sort. The advantages of open standards are that they allow any vendor to provide a solution, and in fact, multiple vendors to provi
And the sad thing is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:And the sad thing is... (Score:4, Insightful)
The user cares only for the document he sees in print or on screen. The internal structure of the file interests him not at all.
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Do ClarisWorks files store text as text (i.e., without mangling it)? If so, just use strings to convert the files to plaintext, delete all the garbage (which used to be formatting) and be done with it.
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Actually, many users care about their ability to use the document, not just the appearance. Now, in the short-run, that means the applications that support it now; in the longer-run, though, the underlying format and its adaptability and limitations are a real-but-hidden issue that effects utility, though most users are not able to evaluate it directly.
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Divy it up? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Cool!
Objection! (Score:2)
Wait a minute, I know this! This is just Phoenix Wright!
For all the students out there (Score:3, Funny)
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The fact that Updegrove might have a vested interest in ODF succeeding doesn't detract from the OOXML proposed standard being a crock of shit.
Who needs OOXML... (Score:3, Funny)
Chris Mattern
Open Source community debugs MS code (Score:4, Funny)
Congrats to the world community but they should really submit a bill to Microsoft.
Yeah, that's a Microsoft product alright (Score:4, Funny)
Pretty much like everything they do.
Wait - where are the virus APIs? Did they leave those out?
Naah...
Gotta be there somewhere. Keep looking.
The OOXML acronym (Score:2)
It means neither. OOXML is shorthand for Opaque and Obfuscated eXception-based Markup Language. However, Marketing rejected the longhand name for the format because it didn't test well in developer focus groups. However, marketing found the shorthand OOXML appealing because psychologists have said the roundness of the O's induces a sense of calmness. BillG liked it because legislators could make an (incorrect) association between OOXML and OpenOffice
Now We'll Now... (Score:3, Interesting)
As it is, there is not a snowball in hell's chance that OpenXML can become an ISO standard. It is simply a dump of the existing awful doc format into a nice incomprehensible 6000 page document, and it doesn't even use existing ISO standards. There's even a set group of banners and bullet points defined in there which can by no stretch of the imagination be called international.
I know Microsoft has managed to butter the ECMA up as their usual standards dumping ground, but I simply cannot see how they can get past the shortcomings in that article. To do so would be a huge amount of work (and Office 2007 is already using this format) and it would threaten their Office monopoly - which is what this obfuscation was about in the first place.
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You mean like how ISO rubberstamped the half-spec for ODF that OASIS submitted? You don't even have spreadsheet formulas spec'ed for crying out loud! OO.o is the "reference" implementation. Whenever anyone implements ODF and runs into a wall because the spec isn't fully spec'ed, they say, "Just do whatever OO.o does". Some spec. It's a spec based on and written for OO.o, indeed it's derived from OO.o's previous XML format. And OO.o writes lots of stuff in its documents that are NOT in the spec (spreadsheet formulas being the most well known example).
No doubt the ODF standard needs some work, but at least the reference implementation is available with source code. The OOXML spec references implementation details in old versions of MS Word and even Corel Wordperfect, but does not document how they work. At least with ODF you can go and look at the code implementing these edge cases, whereas with OOXML, the products being referenced are closed source and likely covered by various patents that wouldn't allow reimplementation anyhow.
Plus OOXML just reinv
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And to pour salt on the wound, I hear Microsoft's promise not to sue only applies to those who can fully implement their "Open Standard". And since it appears that only Microsoft can do that, what good it that promise? More smoke and mirrors from Microsoft?
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You heard wrong. That was more of IBM's FUD. When are you going to understand that 99.99% of IBM's statements regarding OOXML are to be disregarded as pure FUD (FUD is an invention of IBM). You do NOT have to fully implement the standard.
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Simply doesn't matter. That's not the point. The point is that OOXML is trying to be an ISO standard when it doesn't even respect other ISO, or even accepted, standards - a lot outside of the IT industry. I'm not talking about how complete you might happen to think ODF is.
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When Microsoft says "Reverse engineer whatever it was that Word 97 did" or worse one of the obsolete DOS word processors that OOXML has special flags for, you think this is better than "Do whatever OO.o does, oh and here's the code"?
Sure the ODF spec could do with some work. But if you want to implement it you *do* have access to everything you need to understand it.
Is OOXML Truly Open Source (Score:1, Informative)
The biggest issue I have with the OOXML "standard" (and I use the word quite losely) is there are BLOB's (binary large objects) in the OOXML file created by Microsoft. In this BLOB is all the byte code used in the Macros, etc for the file in question (i.e. an Excel file). Since Microsoft has not provided proper instr
More info @ groklaw (Score:5, Informative)
ISO maybe, but never an IETF standard (Score:3, Insightful)
Outside Office 2007, who would ever implement this "standard"?
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Surprised? (Score:2)
If it's true, is anybody really surprised? This is MS after all.
There is a another analysis [groklaw.net] on groklaw.
hope not (Score:1)
Hey guys, I've an idea (Score:3, Funny)
Couldn't the Microsoft people use the existing standard instead? That way everyone would be able to communicate. Someone should call to let them know about it.
MS is not worried about the format's success! (Score:1)
1. You'll go back to your works-good-enough-for-me Office formats you've already been usin
OOXML vs. ODF Deathmatch! (Score:1)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenDo
It may not be an ISO standard, but it's a heck of a lot better than the completely proprietary older formats.
How about a good "atta boy" for Microsoft at least?
How is OOXML better than older formats? (Score:2)
The old formats are known. OpenOffice and AbiWord can read the old formats - as can older versions of ms-office. With this OOXML cr@p it's right back to square one.
Oasis OpenDocument (Score:2)