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Re: OpenDocument standard ratified

  • Subject: Re: OpenDocument standard ratified
  • From: Roy Schestowitz <newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Thu, 04 May 2006 17:27:50 +0100
  • Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
  • Organization: schestowitz.com / MCC / Manchester University
  • References: <1146703270.626703.27340@y43g2000cwc.googlegroups.com> <e3d7cn$c2l$1@tux.glaci.com>
  • Reply-to: newsgroups@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • User-agent: KNode/0.7.2
__/ [ thad01@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ] on Thursday 04 May 2006 16:42 \__

> nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <nessuno@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> 
>> "However, Jason Matusow, Microsoft director of standards affairs, said
>> in a statement: 'The ODF format is limited to the features and
>> performance of OpenOffice and StarOffice and would not satisfy most of
>> our Microsoft Office customers today.'"
> 
> Of course the same could be said of RTF or HTML, and yet they still
> manage support those along side their native doc format.  Their
> motive is obvious and understandable; they do not want to open up
> a migration path away from MS-Office to OpenOffice.  It will take
> a lot more market pressure before they jump on the ODF bandwagon.
> 
> No problems.  OOo seems to be growing on its own just the same.

Intersting  point.  If  you  draw  dependencies,  interoperabilities   and
translation  paths, you get somewhat of a tree structure. Microsoft Office
used  to lie at the top of this tree (upside-down, leaves at bottom). This
means  that other packages could translate the Holy Grail, which was  DOC,
XLS, or whatever.

Things  have just been reversed. With ISO standard for ODF, OpenOffice  is
probably  at the top whereas Office needs to catch up. OpenOffice and  its
siblings,  parents, and cousins (Open Source primarily) can open both  ODF
and  Office  formats. Office is lagging behind and if it ever  aspires  to
become the superset of all (i.e. contain all translation paths), it simply
must catch up.

As  the release of Office was recently pushed back by a few months, it  is
evident that there are many other pressures on the agenda for Office. They
must  be  sweating. I know Mr. Ballmer does. Add yet another  factor  that
postdates  this delay: Office lost their project manager who moved to  the
Windows team.

Best wishes,

Roy

-- 
Roy S. Schestowitz      | "Quote when replying in non-real-time dialogues"
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