It is interesting to witness vocal minority who insist Open XML and ODF become the same format. It must cause them terrible heartburn to know that their recommendation comes against the wishes of the ODF Editor. And yes, Rob, this is Mr. Durusau speaking as "the editor of OpenDocument." So much for fine distinctions.
http://www.durusau.net/publications/wholoses.pdf
Mr. Patrick Durusau is again making his position on the issue clear:
"As the editor of OpenDocument, I want to promote OpenDocument, extol its features, urge the widest use of it as possible, none of which is accomplished by the anti-OpenXML position in ISO. Passage of OpenXML in ISO is going to benefit OpenDocument as much as anyone else. Here are some specifics: OpenDocument currently lacks formula definitions for spreadsheets. (To appear in OpenDocument 1.2.) Many core financial functions in spreadsheets are undefined except for actual Excel output. That output varies by version and service pack of MS Office. What happens if OpenDocument and OpenXML reach different definitions of those functions? OpenDocument does not presently support legacy features of Microsoft formats. That will be easier with a formal definition of those features. Without OpenXML, OpenDocument has no authoritative definition of those legacy features. That delays OpenDocument supporting them in some future release. OpenDocument does not have a robust mapping to the current Microsoft format. That requires an OpenXML that has completed the standards process. If OpenXML is unclear, it must be fixed in order to create a robust mapping between the two. The bottom line is that OpenDocument, among others, will lose if OpenXML loses. Covington, 24 March 2008 Patrick Durusau"
"As the editor of OpenDocument, I want to promote OpenDocument, extol its features, urge the widest use of it as possible, none of which is accomplished by the anti-OpenXML position in ISO. Passage of OpenXML in ISO is going to benefit OpenDocument as much as anyone else. Here are some specifics:
OpenDocument currently lacks formula definitions for spreadsheets. (To appear in OpenDocument 1.2.) Many core financial functions in spreadsheets are undefined except for actual Excel output. That output varies by version and service pack of MS Office. What happens if OpenDocument and OpenXML reach different definitions of those functions?
OpenDocument does not presently support legacy features of Microsoft formats. That will be easier with a formal definition of those features. Without OpenXML, OpenDocument has no authoritative definition of those legacy features. That delays OpenDocument supporting them in some future release.
OpenDocument does not have a robust mapping to the current Microsoft format. That requires an OpenXML that has completed the standards process. If OpenXML is unclear, it must be fixed in order to create a robust mapping between the two.
The bottom line is that OpenDocument, among others, will lose if OpenXML loses.
Covington, 24 March 2008
Patrick Durusau"
Coming on the back of the "Approve" confirmation of the United States national body (guess Bob Sutor couldn't bully them, eh?), it is great to see this video on YouTube. These are the comments by Bill Gates during his testimony to the United States House of Representatives. Congressman Brian Baird is asking the questions of Mr. Gates and offering the positive comments.
Bob Sutor has emerged from blogging about Second Life to once again attempt to threaten and intimidate national standards bodies.
I'd like to call your attention to a few of the questions he's asking about:
"Those were the easy and straightforward ones. The following ones are more controversial, but I don't think anyone is naive enough to think they should not be considered.
I interpret this as Bob Sutor and IBM trying to intimidate national standard officials. I'm not sure how one would see it any other way than this. So Bob, I just have one or two questions of my own to add to the discussion:
I would have just commented this on your blog, but your "Open Blog" does not allow comments from people who don't agree with you on Open XML.
FYI that I'm not the only one who has a huge problem with this: http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2008/03/critical_questions_for_nationa.html
Interesting post here: http://www.oooninja.com/2008/03/openofficeorg-30-new-features.html
"Microsoft Office 2007 file format support
Microsoft Office 2007 (also called Office Open XML) file formats include .docx, .pptx, and .xlsx. Despite the similarity in names, these formats are significantly different than the Microsoft Office formats used since 1997. OpenOffice.org 3 will offer native read and write support.
OpenOffice.org 3.0 DEV300_m3 converted this reference .docx document with mediocre quality. The notable problems were tracked changes, a comment, columns, an image, and an embedded Excel document. For comparison, the same document is shown rendered in Word 2007 and in OpenOffice.org 3.0 DEV300_m3."
The post references this link as well: http://katana.oooninja.com/w/odf-converter-integrator
Once again, those interested in interoperability benefit from adoption of the Open XML formats. I'll take this as a very strong statement of support for the Open XML IP Policy. I'm just wondering, is this what IBM is contributing to OpenOffice.org? Is this why they joined? :)
Onward!
Ooh.. (should I say Ouch!): http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2008/03/how_many_defects_remain_answer.html. Once again Rob Weir is defeated (handily).
"One of the constant themes over the last year has been the theme of panic. QUICK: You only have one month to find contradictions. QUICK: You only have five months to find defects. You only have a few weeks to evaluate the Editor's comments. Every person has to read or review the whole standard. Every national body needs to have an explicit detailed position on every issue. And so on. Always under the assumption that the current stage is the last and only chance for change.
It every case this panic is has been unnecessary FUD-mongering, because at ISO there is always the scope for improving a standard. [The normal caveat that you want to get it as right as possible first time because you cannot bolt the stable door once the horse has bolted does not apply with the same strength as with a from-scratch standard because the horse has already bolted. In fact the horse has been off and running for the last 20 years! So "getting it right" relates to documentations and harmonization rather than the general shape.]"
Aah… http://www.irislink.com/Documents/pdf/200803181557/Microsoft-031808.pdf Iris announces a partnership with Microsoft for delivering OCR solutions for Open XML. Notable from this announcement:
"I.R.I.S. being a Microsoft Gold Partner, has always been investing a lot of time and effort to provide the best support of the Microsoft formats in all of its products, said Pierre De Muelenaere, I.R.I.S. Group President and CEO. For instance, we recently announced new capability to convert images into fully‐searchable XPS files and also hyper‐compressed XPS files, using our iHQC™ document compression technology. More and more customers are confronted to situation where they need to convert documents from one format to another. A typical example is the need to convert massive amount of existing Tiff Group IV documents to fully‐searchable PDF, PDF‐A or XPS documents, for more advanced ECM applications, or to ODF or OpenXML for document repurposing. Our solutions, allow the user to select the format that best suits its needs"
Ooh… http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2008/03/13/open-xml-sdk-roadmap.aspx The Open XML SDK is announced, making it easier for developers to work with Office file formats.
"After nine months of developer feedback on the Open XML SDK, we have some good news today: a roadmap for releasing the API. We have two versions coming: a version 1.0 that will be released in May, and then a version 2.0 that will be available as a CTP this summer, and will be released around the time of the next major release of Office (Office "14")."
Allow me to return the favor of posting Doug's photo on my blog. Here's the famous "Hug Madogh" doing one of the things he does best:
Aah… http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2008/03/18/ongoing-support-for-is-29500-open-xml.aspx And for all my new fans at Groklaw, Brian Jones has also posted on the Chris Capossela open letter, noting our intent to support DIS29500 in it's post BRM-state in our products. Hopefully the repetition will help a little bit.
Ooh.. http://idippedut.dk/post/2008/03/IBM-is-now-fighting-from-the-trenches.aspx Speaking of Groklaw, I was glad to see Jesper Lund Stocholm offer a comment on the SFLC report. I'm always a fan of folks who bring reason and logic to the table to discuss things. The folks on Groklaw were apparently pretty upset that I stopped comments on my SFLC post, so they now have increased opportunities to share their thoughts on the topic.
I've seen a few comments this week quoting my comments in PC World, and claiming that I have somehow recommended a "no" vote on Open XML.
"If individual governments mandate the use of ODF instead of Open XML, Microsoft would adapt. The company would then implement the missing functionality that ODF doesn't support."
So, consider this my (first) response:
Regarding my comments here: (http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,141424-pg,1/article.html), It is unfortunate to see folks who elect to omit parts of the statements that do not support their case. The full comment is quoted here, to avoid any misunderstanding in the future.
"Also, if individual governments mandate the use of ODF instead of Open XML, Microsoft would adapt, Knowlton said. The company would then implement the missing functionality that ODF doesn't support. However, those extensions would be custom-designed and outside of the standard, which is counter to the idea of an open document standard, Knowlton said. "Disastrous? No. But definitely not preferable," he said"
I've added some additional context here:http://blogs.technet.com/gray_knowlton/archive/2008/02/20/harmonization-vs-unification.aspx
"I do not believe it is feasible just to add features of one format to another. These formats are not subsets and supersets of each other, there are fundamental differences in text, table, graphic and style models, spreadsheets have a very different representation, and on and on and on. "Unification" points toward an argument about how product code bases will have to be re-written, and there are no winners in that discussion.
Suggesting that one can just copy / paste between these formats because they appear to be "90% similar" is an insincere / inadequate / uninformed attempt at understanding the issues that are involved.
To ensure my position is unambiguous: Anything that Microsoft does with respect to ODF has no effect on our position on Open XML. The two formats are designed for different purposes, and would not benefit by being "unified" or "merged." Should you encounter lobbying within your national body or government agency on my behalf, feel free to reach out to me directly for comment on the issue. I'll be glad to share the whole picture with you, not just the half that suits my needs.
If you are preparing comments for your national body which represent the situation as anything other than my endorsement of a "Yes" vote of Open XML, you are misrepresenting fact.
Chris Capossela, SVP at Microsoft (somewhere high in the altitude of my management chain) has published an open letter regarding Open XML. This is another effort to underscore our commitments to openness, the Open XML process, and building the Open XML community. This is a great letter that you should read in its entirety, but I've extracted an important section here, based on my recent increased readership from the likes of Groklaw.
"Pledging our supportAbove and beyond our own implementation, however, I wish to make it clear that to enable broader adoption of the format – including for use by our current and future competitors - we have made our commitment to Open XML unambiguous, and as such have made (through our Open Specification Promise) irrevocable, royalty-free patent commitments to all developers to implement the formats.
We submitted the original Open XML specification to Ecma International for consideration in 2005 because we wanted to respond to our public and private sector customers' requests that we turn over control of the specification to the community. Ecma International's further development of the specification for more than a year, and its adoption of Open XML as an Ecma International Standard (Ecma 376) in December 2006 was a realization of that goal. Now, the global community has the opportunity to take control of the future of the specification by ratifying Ecma 376 as an ISO/IEC standard. We know that it will be in good hands when this happens based on the tremendous work and improvements that have been made to the specification during the ISO/IEC process over the past 14 months. We are committed to the healthy maintenance of the standard once ratification takes place so that it will continue to be useful and relevant to the rapidly growing number of implementers and users around the world.
We have listened to our customers and the community and are proud of the work that has been done on the Open XML formats. We believe that these formats deliver unique value to the industry and users will benefit from it being in the hands of the global community as an ISO/IEC standard."
Open XML has the commitment, the community support and the momentum working for it now.
I used to live in Dublin (on Mount Street, just above Grafton Street)... I spent many, many days in the Oval pub just off O'Connell street, and I remember every one of those days fondly. Spending two St. Patrick's day holidays in front of the St. Patrick's day Parade in Dublin changed my perspective on the holiday somewhat. When you experience a holiday in its proper context, it really does add a perspective around what is important, and what it means to build and live in a community. When it's all said and done, there may be a lot of talk and banter, but there's no substitute for real action.
Thus, today's post is just a pulse to reset on the broad Open XML support in the industry. It really is great to see how far Open XML has come in such a short period of time. Open XML is experiencing broad uptake from users and developers alike. For end users, the compatibility pack was downloaded 20 million times in its first year of release.
You can find a list of interesting examples of Open XML support in applications
There are 160 solutions listed in Germany alone
Adobe has joined the ranks of companies offering Open XML support in its products:
There are a number of significant case studies for Open XML as well
iT-Workplace (Nottingham, England)
Software vendor iT-Workplace develops online analytical processing (OLAP) reporting solutions for developers and business users in the United Kingdom. In 2007, they released Intelligencia for Microsoft Word 2007 that embeds reporting functionality usually only available in Microsoft Office Excel and database tools into a word processing-based format. Users can simply create a wide-range of business reports using Microsoft Word 2007 skills. Based on the internationally recognized standard, Ecma Office Open XML, the front-end application sources "live" data directly from a Microsoft SQL Server database. When the database is updated, the corresponding data is modified in the Word document, and vice-versa. What's more, this dynamic data can interact with other systems easily exchanging data between office applications and enterprise business systems. Employees can improve productivity by publishing, searching, and reusing information more quickly and accurately in the application they choose, as long as it supports reading and writing XML; developers can write the information about all the data connections into the Word document itself so that when the document is reopened, data integration continues without interruption. There is no need for a separate data file because all the configuration information is written back into the Word document itself. Download PDF case study
Money Partners (United Kingdom)
United Kingdom-based Money Partners deployed X-Merge developed by Dot Net Solutions. It uses the XML file format to help employees and brokers quickly create detailed templates and forms with familiar Microsoft Office Word tools. As a result, the XML-based system is much faster, delivering an impressive throughput of hundreds of documents a minute. In addition, most of the company's business analysts who regularly use Word can now manage templates themselves without expensive development time. Download PDF case study
Florida House of Representatives (Florida, United States)
The Florida House of Representatives has benefitted from using Office Open XML file formats when they incorporated a pilot project using Microsoft Office 2007 system. Prior, they were finding that during their debate process multiple amendments to bills made by senators were creating delays to the process and errors. Office Open XML helped them complete their tasks 60% faster, with fewer errors, reduced training costs, and provided a more effective search capability solution. Download PDF case study
Skyfish, Inc. (Japan)
Skyfish, Inc., is a software application development company based in Japan and a certified member of the Microsoft Accessible Technology Vendor Program (MATvp). MATvp is aimed at those companies that design, develop, and provide support for accessible technology products that satisfy the needs of schools and corporations who have customers and users with disabilities or functional limitations. Skyfish recently added JukeDoX, a document file reader software product for the visually impaired, to their line of products. JukeDoX was built on Open XML technology and only took a half a year to develop—a much shorter development period than initially budgeted for. According to Skyfish, data can be safely written and JukeDoX has excellent interoperability due to Open XML technology. Download PDF case study
MS Technology, Inc. (Charlotte, North Carolina, USA)
MS Technology is a software development company that specializes in imaging and image-processing technology for primarily High Tech and Electronics Manufacturing customers in India and the United States. In 2006, their customers demanded a platform-independent document format and better safeguards against corrupted files in two of their products, MSTViewer and MSTJavaViewer, which give users the ability to open different file formats, save documents in different formats, and annotate documents. As of October 2007, about 12 enterprise customers in India—each with nearly 50,000 worldwide users—take advantage of support for Open XML in the MS Technology MSTViewer and MSTJavaViewer. The results have been greater time savings and cost savings, better handling of corrupted documents, decreased storage needs, and increased choice for improved customer satisfaction. The company plans to officially release its Open XML-ready products in December 2007 and also plans to use Open XML in its reporting mechanism as the company moves into the medical imaging industry. Download PDF case study
These are partners of Microsoft who offer some level of support for Open XML within their solutions. This would include SharePoint products, technologies and services, Office client related products and services and so on. If you use the search from the screen shot below (select Open XML from the technology list and leave everything else blank). You should get 100+ solutions here as well.
No matter how you look at it, Open XML is becoming an integral part of many, many products. The widespread use of Open XML underscores its importance as an international standard. Take this into consideration next time your favorite blogger or website claims otherwise. J
A great way to wind down for the weekend. This is a wonderful site.
Happy Friday!
I could make a full time job of tearing down the "say anything we possibly can" approach to Open XML opposition. Seems like we're seeing a new level of arm-flailing and finger pointing, now that we are weeks away from the close of the post BRM period. I wanted to offer some comments about the SFLC's analysis of the OSP. This is an unfortunate report, these all represent issues that have been raised in a campaign that includes innuendo and supposition, leaving out inconvenient information and language and ignoring the same, similar, or less attractive, language that exists for ODF.
The big news in this is their admission/confirmation that the OSP is in fact compatible with the GPL. They say "The OSP cannot be relied upon by GPL developers for their implementations not because its provisions conflict with the GPL but because it does not provide the freedom that the GPL requires." They go on to identify that "freedom" being linked to the OSP being unsafe is because new versions of the specifications could be excluded from the OSP in the future.
It is unusual for promises like the OSP to automatically include every spec or all future versions (IBM's pledge is exactly like ours). The norm is for new versions to be added to them to be covered. In the case of Sun's statement new versions are automatically added only when they participate in the development of the new version to the extent that the OASIS IPR rules would then obligate them to provide patent rights under the OASIS IPR Policy. None of these promises include future versions of the specifications without any qualification.
Let's deal with the points one by one:
This section points out that the OSP only applies to listed versions of covered specifications. True, except that we have already committed to extending it to ISO/IEC DIS 29500 when it is approved in our filing with ISO/IEC. For ODF, IBM in their ISP takes the identical approach. Strange how things that seem appropriate for ODF are not appropriate for Open XML.
Not true. The OSP is a promise to not assert patents that are necessarily infringed by implementations of covered specifications. Like all similar patent non-asserts (including the Sun and IBM versions for ODF) the promise covers that part of a product that implements that specification (and not other parts that have nothing to do with the specification). While the Sun covenant is silent about conformance to the specification, the OSP allows implementers the freedom to implement any (or all) parts of a covered specification and to the extent they do implement those portions (also known as conform to those parts) they are covered by the promise for those parts. Contrast that to the IBM pledge that requires total conformance and so programming errors or absence of something required by the spec (but not by an implementer's product) means that the promise is totally void for that product.
Not true. As far as we are concerned we are happy to extend the OSP to implementers who distribute their code under any copyright license including the GPL. The FAQ cited just states what everyone knows and acknowledges, the GPL is a copyright license that is drafted in a way that leaves many issues (not just those related to patent rights) open to many interpretations. Any particular user or implementer should read the GPL carefully and make their own judgment about what it means and requires in accordance with their own circumstances. The FAQ states that Microsoft is not in a position to give blanket advice about the GPL to others. They missed these two FAQs for some reason...
"Q: Is the Open Specification Promise intended to apply to open source developers and users of open source developed software?
A: Yes. The OSP applies directly to all persons or entities that make, use, sell, offer for sale, imports and/or distributes an implementation of a Covered Specification. It is intended to enable open source implementations, and in fact several parties in the open source community have specifically stated that the OSP meets their needs. Moreover there are already a significant number of implementations of Covered Specifications that have been created and/or distributed under a variety of open source licenses as well as under proprietary software development models. Because open source software licenses can vary you may want to consult with your legal counsel to understand your particular legal environment.
Q: Is this Promise consistent with open source licensing, namely the GPL? And can anyone implement the specification(s) without any concerns about Microsoft patents?
A: The Open Specification Promise is a simple and clear way to assure that the broadest audience of developers and customers working with commercial or open source software can implement the covered specification(s). We leave it to those implementing these technologies to understand the legal environments in which they operate. This includes people operating in a GPL environment. Because the General Public License (GPL) is not universally interpreted the same way by everyone, we can't give anyone a legal opinion about how our language relates to the GPL or other OSS licenses, but based on feedback from the open source community we believe that a broad audience of developers can implement the specification(s)."
I can keep this post nice and short. Patrick Durusau has responded to some pretty harsh accusations from Rob Weir. (I guess I got the answer to my question about the disconnect within the ODF TC.) I guess Nick Tsilas should feel vindicated, at least a little bit.
Ouch:
"If you need further proof, consider that months before Rob Weir started his "NOOXML" site that I advised IBM that the best strategy in this matter would be "Yes to OpenXML, No to DIS 295000." My reasoning being that supporting the notion of an OpenXML would put Microsoft in a position of not being able to refuse useful corrections or additions to OpenXML and still allow reasonable opposition to DIS 29500. I won't report IBM's reaction to that suggestion but I think you can guess its general tenor from what has followed.
Speaking strictly for myself, I have better things to do than butting and braying on behalf of IBM.
Covington, Georgia
March 12, 2008
Speaking of accusations, I have never met Patrick Durusau.
Picking up on the harmonization topic again, it appears that DIN has published an early draft of their report on translation between the two formats. The report outlines some preliminary findings in the feature differences between the format specs, and outlines some principles for what it thinks appropriate conversion scenarios are. It is great to see IQ being placed in this topic area, rather than the voodoo of wishing your neighbors cows will die J.
The report has examined a handful of functional areas to determine the level of feature parity between the specifications, and makes a comment about the "translatability" of that functionality. What is immediately evident is that there are feature differences between the formats. Nobody should be surprised by this. Looking at the table features identified in the report, we see examples of what the project is uncovering in terms of potential for fidelity.
Such a definitive guide will make it easier to translate between the two formats, and it will certainly inform applications seeking to improve interoperability. It will also underscore the idea that a "super-set" of all features in all authoring tools makes for an unwieldy standard. A "one (great big) size fits all" unified format is probably a bad idea; as we've seen with multiple file formats supported in countless applications, using the right format for the right task seems to be the preferred method (when to use TIFF vs. JPEG, for example).
Perhaps by design, there is no discussion about unification of these functionalities. For example, there is no discussion of a mixed and non-mixed content model unification, or a "merging" of things like shared formulas, graphic or table models between Open XML and ODF.
The report seems to be feature-centric and focused on the ability to faithfully migrate between two formats. Perhaps the authors don't even bother to assume an interest level in "Unifying" those models, or perhaps this is scheduled for a future version of the report. (I would agree that Unification is not a good choice for harmonization.)
This is great progress; I am interested to see how the project develops.
Patrick Durusau has picked up on a thread that I regard as somewhat important (and underplayed) in the Open XML and ODF discussion. Supporting ODF does (should) not require opposing Open XML. There is a growing middle ground of consensus building around supporting multiple standards, despite any end games and trickery employed by a small (and shrinking) minority.
Patrick's letter got my memory jogging about some of the old psychology courses I've been through. It's fairly well documented in psychology circles that young (adolescent) boys tend to define themselves in opposition to other things, (more or less) for fear of being ostracized, bullied and harassed by their immediate peer groups. You can insert a lot of references here (Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, etc.)… The behavior is easy to recognize, but hard to appreciate.
Let's take a look at one of the primary offenders. It appears that the ODF Alliance believes that defeating Open XML is critical to achieving its mission… "to promote and advance the use of ODF."
I've posted before about the quality and accuracy of ODF Alliance material, others have as well. Given that this is such a core focus of the ODF Alliance, you'd think they'd try a little harder. But what is more interesting is the lack of material touting the benefits & merits of ODF. Even the "ODF Annual Report" is largely about Microsoft and Open XML. At best, 2 of the 9 "New and Noteworthy" links offered by the organization dedicated to promoting ODF are about ODF. 7 of 9 are hit pieces against Open XML. Much like Rob Weir, it would seem the ODF Alliance has little / nothing to discuss with ODF, and is totally preoccupied with Open XML. Should we interpret this to mean that they've given up on ODF…?
So what happens when someone doesn't meet the ODF Alliance definition of being the right kind of boy? Andy Updegrove steps in:
"Unfortunately, the negative statements that the Foundation's leaders made over the past six months, their general secretiveness and the abrupt way that they closed up shop with little or no explanation is likely to be what people will remember, rather than anything positive that they might have done during earlier days," he said.
Rob Weir steps in:
"However, in recent months the OpenDocument Foundation has found itself more and more isolated, outside of the mainstream debate. How far they have fallen can be seen in the fact that Microsoft has gone from ridiculing their conspiracy theories to using them to support their arguments. At the same time the Foundation's membership has dwindled to the point where only a small number remain."
Interesting to note that for all the Anti-Open XML rhetoric that came from Rob, and all the lobbying in Canada, Korea, and so many other countries, he couldn't convince the membership of his own country's committee.
Ultimately, (ironically similar to what Updegrove believes), the ODF Alliance will not be remembered for anything it has done to advance ODF. Regardless of the outcome of the ISO vote, the ODF Alliance will always be seen as the negative, defeatist camp with a loose grip on the facts. Rob Weir is the chair of the ODF Technical Committee in OASIS, who has now taken it upon himself to attack ISO and JTC1. This doesn't seem like a great way to warm people to future versions of ODF, but we'll see how that works for him.
Seems that the cost of being a boy in the ODF world is very high. I continue to observe the disconnect between Durusau and Weir, waiting to see where it goes…
Here's an interesting development (anyone for pun-free Fridays?)
Intergen, a New Zealand based company, has developed a viewer for Open XML documents. You can get take a look at TextGlow for yourself: http://www.textglow.net/.
The viewer allows you to pan through Open XML documents using Silverlight 2.0 runtime. (Get the details from the developer here) Much like the current viewers for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents, TextGlow requires no paid-for product, only to install the Silverlight 2.0 runtime. This is a Microsoft Office-free rendering of Open XML documents.
"TextGlow is a unique product combining Office Open XML and Silverlight for the first time," says Chris Auld, Intergen's Director of Strategy and Innovation.
"Microsoft Office documents have traditionally required software to be installed on the local machine. The new XML- based file format, coupled with Silverlight, has allowed us to make documents viewable directly through users' web browsers. Having an internationally documented standard such as Office Open XML allows innovative New Zealand companies such as Intergen to reach a global audience," says Mr Auld."
I had the pleasure of attending a Standards New Zealand Open XML workshop last year, where I met Chris and had the chance to chat with him during the breaks. (I'm a bit amused recalling a discussion where the folks in the room discussing intellectual property issues all had to preface their comments with "I am not an attorney but…[I am going to interpret IP law like I am one anyway]…" Chris, as I recall, does have a background in IP law, so he was unique among his peers in offering some thoughts about bogus claims of Open XML IP risks.)
During that workshop, several developers in the room claimed that implementing Open XML was not possible by New Zealand (or more to the point, non-Microsoft) companies. (Worth noting that one of the companies making these claims already had a full implementation of VML in its "Maps" product.) Another of these companies eventually implemented Open XML in a handful of its products, to the chagrin of Bob Sutor and Rob Weir.
It is great to see Chris and Intergen offer this viewer. I suspect this should have a good silencing effect in New Zealand, because this is such a great example of how Open XML and the compatibility it brings is a boost to local economies, it is also a testament to the openness of the spec. Not only will I use this in discussions around the world when highlighting Open XML, I am also recommending this tool to our account teams in need of document viewing solutions. I'm also hopeful that the participation of Intergen in the broader Open XML community will bring them fame and fortune as well. (After all, building community is the point, is it not?)
I guess this is pretty clear evidence that New Zealand companies can successfully implement Open XML. It's a good reminder to me that when we look at facts rather than reading fiction, we can interpret the "nobody can implement Open XML" claims as more of "I can't" than "nobody can."
Truth (2) will carry the day over fiction.
In case you want to read more about Text Glow:
http://www.920.co.nz/?p=81http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/SC0803/S00016.htm http://www.geekzone.co.nz/content.asp?contentid=7673 http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/tech/6845F290082F5A7BCC2574030018AD4A http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2211395/open-xml-docs-accessible-via http://www.first.org/newsroom/globalsecurity/218004.html Tim Sneath https://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2008/03/06/a-great-early-silverlight-2-showcase-textglow.aspx http://geeks.ms/blogs/roller/archive/2008/03/06/a-great-early-silverlight-2-showcase-textglow.aspx http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/3963.aspx http://www.sunherald.com/447/story/414469.html http://www.topix.com/tech/ms-office http://newsblaze.com/ http://www.golem.de/0803/58225.html http://www.itnews.com.au/News/NewsStory.aspx?story=71552
"I recommend approval of DIS29500 as an ISO standard."- Patrick Durusau
Mr. Patrick Durusau has again commented on Open XML. It is great to see at least part of the ODF camp coming around to consensus on a point which I've been saying for a while (a lot of people have been saying). Ratifying Open XML means giving a voice to the international community in the development of the standard, at least more so than with Ecma. Microsoft has one vote in Ecma TC-45, just like everyone else. But within ISO, "Microsoft" does not exist; ISO is represented by countries.
I fear that the vocal minority will crucify Patrick for saying such a thing. As I have commented before, supporting one standard does not require opposing the other. The Bush-ian "You're either with us or against us" mentality is a difficult one to appreciate, given the multitude of document formats in use by every product today. It is great to see Patrick supporting DIS29500, and people who are truly interested in seeing Microsoft become more open should follow suit.
I agree that DIS29500 should be ratified as an ISO standard.
While folks were busy at the BRM, I was becoming a new father. My daughter was born on February 29th, so my week last week was filled with hospital visits, family visits, hugs, tears and very helpful nurses. I'm back now, and it looks like there's no shortage of material that requires comment. It's great to see such a positive result from the BRM; it's another step in a long journey.