__/ [ Mark Kent ] on Tuesday 03 April 2007 15:04 \__
> BearItAll <spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
>> Roy Schestowitz wrote:
>>
>>> A New Dawn Rising For Open Documents?
>>>
>>> ,----[ Quote ]
>>> | With the filing of a new bill in Oregon, five US states have now
>>> | taken legislative action around adopting open documents. Still,
>>> | government agencies in the US lag way behind those in Europe in
>>> | moving beyond Windows lock-in.
>>> |
>>> | [...]
>>> |
>>> | "I expect that, five years from now, government requirements for
>>> | open formats will be near universal, either by law or by
>>> | agency-determined acquisition policies," he [Andy Updegrove]
>>> | told LinuxPlanet.
>>> `----
>>>
>>> http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/reports/6375/1/
>>>
>>
>> I think that it is important for users to just use ODF everywhere that it
>> is available, let people around you see just how good it is and it's
>> potential. I default my StarOffices to ODF (OpenOffice can do the same), I
>> do have to interact with MS users but it isn't hard to send a copy in
>> their format.
>>
>> It isn't simply a revolutionary thing or a get at MS thing either. Once
>> you start using ODF you will see loads of advantages in the format. First,
>> it is a fast format, document rendering is very fast.
>>
>> Document searches, what has Linux got that is better than on any other
>> platform? Powerfull commandline or scripted text searches, ODF is perfect
>> for that. How often have you set of a regex through a document folder only
>> to find that they are millions of answers for your particular search, none
>> of which are really what you were after, how can your regex be more
>> specific in an unknown document? Answer, by making use of tags, as you
>> would in xml or html searches.
>>
>
> <snip>
>
> This is a hugely important point which I hadn't considered the fullest
> implications of. I remain something of a cli junkie, and given the
> opportunity to have documents which are not fixed in some format which
> will be obsolete in 18 months (like Microsoft Word, say) could persuade
> me that it's worth writing something other than html/text documents.
> The possibility to use cli tools is such an obvious one now that you
> mention it that I'm amazed I hadn't considered it before. This is going
> to be a huge advantage for the whole planet. Imagine being able to
> search all government documentation using simple front-ends to
> standardised searching engines? The possibilities are near-endless for
> this.
>
> Long-live open formats!
I'm still a little afraid of OpenDocument myself. Nothing like a
human-readable TeX, which can be freely be converted to anything, even from
the command line. It can also be read without a GUI. What I don't see from
the command line (e.g. nice XML for settings in KDE) is a good candidate for
obsolescence. Think about bookmarks and Mork for example... data is cheap to
retain and it should also be cheap to access... no use in having large piles
of personal data that can no longer be interpreted.
--
~~ Best wishes
Beware the Windows box spewage (more commonly known as "spam")
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