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MS vs. Open Source Office Suite Compatibility
Posted by
timothy
on Wed Sep 03, 2003 04:51 AM
from the file-formats-are-what-matter dept.
from the file-formats-are-what-matter dept.
Anonymous Coward writes "Though Microsoft may soon be blocking Office suite compatability with open source productivity tools, in the mean time Hal Varian (of Berkeley) has conducted the Microsoft Office-Linux Interoperability Experiment which shows a surprising amount of interoperability. Hey, another reason NOT to upgrade to the new version!"
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important to note (Score:5, Informative)
Sad but true
Re:important to note (Score:5, Interesting)
"forward compatibility has often been a problem."
Correct, but I'd venture that most software would suffer from that, not just M$ Office.
However, please note that backward compatibility is also problematic with (some/all) M$ software.
IMHO there is no guarantee that a newer release of a given M$ program will be able to open files from an older release of that same program. Again, this is not unusual for (a lot of/some) software. But of course, with open source this doesn't pose as much of a problem.
FWIW I seem to remember running into trouble when I used M$ Publisher. I have a newer version installed on one of these machines <<gestures>> that cannot open publisher files from an older version of Publisher. These 2 different version are sequential releases...I think that is unacceptable >:\
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Re:important to note (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:important to note (Score:5, Informative)
It's an unbelievable anachronism, but it's the truth.
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Re:important to note (Score:5, Funny)
Strange, I can open any document that I've created between 1989 & 2003 with any version of my word processor suite.
God love ya, vi & tex.
Belloc
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Plenty of reasons (Score:5, Interesting)
I use word processors to write school papers. When it comes down to it, writing a school paper requires one important feature, spell check. That was available on the C64. I'll bet most people are like me in that they NEVER need to upgrade (no, I don't have the trusty C64 anymore, but I haven't upgraded office since 97).
You really have to hand it to the Microsoft marketing dept for making everyone believe they need to upgrade every year.
Re:Plenty of reasons (Score:5, Funny)
Rus
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Re:Plenty of reasons (Score:5, Funny)
Now, whenever I open Word and I forgot to hide the assistant, my son (from the other side of the house, mind you) will run screaming from the other side of the house to play his game or type on Word. On the way, he usually racks up 1 or 2 cats, the dog, and at least one piece of furniture. When he gets to the computer, he finds me trying to get started on a report for school.
Him: "I want to play my game, daddy"
Me: "Not right now. I've gotta do something for school"
Him: "That's not fair."
Me: "Sorry, bud, but I have to get this done."
Him (Alternate 1): "You want a piece of me?" (Assumes Jet Lee pose)
Him (Alternate 2): "I'm gonna pop a cap in your ass, daddy." (Thank his mother for that one...)
I for one have happily made the transition to OpenOffice because, well, it's just safer...
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Re:Plenty of reasons (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Plenty of reasons (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Plenty of reasons (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, circa 1985-1990, was sorta pre-WYSIWYG. While the classic 8bit systems had "fonts" you couldn't really see them on screen. For the most part fonts were not proportional, as in print was typicaly in the form of a fixed number of characters per inch.
Some printers did have an option for proptional fonts, but this was not commonly used because you had to change your habits like using a tab rather then spaces.
There was NO real need to re-paginate if you just recycled your paper and just printed the number at the approperate point on each page. In fact, you can still do this in the 21st century if you had to.
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features (Score:5, Interesting)
Right there is where most problems will occur. Also, after reading enough of /., lack of support of VBScript would be another obstacle.
Also, I wonder how KOffice will do after they switch their file formats and stuff. It could only help, right?
Pretty light.... (Score:4, Funny)
As they say themselves, this was based on files downloaded from the Internet, which were probably designed in order to be viewed by the greatest number of people.
Hmmm... Then again, putting MS Office files on the Internet, instead of PDF of plain HTML probably means the user do not have enough computer knowledge to optimize said files. So, it's a good point.
On the other hand, I am surprised that the numbers for StarOffice are greater than the numbers for OpenOffice... How come?
Anyway, this is good news, and should be a valuable lesson for most people with PHBs... =)
Re:Pretty light.... (Score:5, Informative)
StarOffice 6.0 is based on OpenOffice.Org, which in turn is based on StarOffice 5.2
The reasons for the difference might be small differences between the OO.o version they tested, and SO6.0. If they use OO.o 1.1RC3, I suspect the results would be very different, as the MSOffice import filters are hugely improved in the new release.
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Anti-trust ruling (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly, the intention of this settlement wasn't so that everyone could simply see what's in, for example, a word document (which is a communication protocol in itself), but how to build program which interoperate with them. Shouldn't the developers of Open Office then be able to simply download the DOC specs off of Microsoft.com and build it into their system? Or, am I assuming that the "settlement" was an actual binding agreement?
Re:Anti-trust ruling (Score:5, Informative)
What I don't understand by this is that under the US anti-trust settlement, Microsoft were made to release the specifications of their communication protocols to competitors.
That's true, in spirit. In actuality, if I remember correctly, the conditions under which MS is required to open the protocols for the office products contain at least two rather difficult obstacles:
1 - Licensing fees [slashdot.org]
2 - J. No provision of this Final Judgment [usdoj.gov] shall:
MjM
Oops, they did it again...
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No, not licensing - more like this: (Score:5, Informative)
373. However, the major comments concerning file formats request disclosure of the file formats of Microsoft products such as Office. Office does not meet the definition of Microsoft Middleware, and so it does not fall under Section III.D. Nor is Office implemented natively in a Windows Operating System Product, so it does not fall under Section III.E. Thus, the file formats for Office will not be disclosed or licensed pursuant to the RPFJ.
Paragraphs 371-375 on the page contain more information about it but that's the main point.
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Office 97 - All You'll Ever Need (Score:5, Insightful)
Word 2004 can't be many lines of code from self-awareness.
MS went absolutely over the top with Office; you get "features" now that well over 99% of their user base will never even SKIM the surface of.
Clever marketing and PHB one-upmanship are what convinced the masses to go with this ridiculous and unnecessary upgrade path.
Operating Systems progressing through research and improved hardware I can understand; but you DO NOT need a new version of a bleedin' word processor every year.
Don't forget ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Don't forget incompatibility between formats used in some of their different MS Office versions.
zParent
Outlook 97 (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Outlook 97 (Score:5, Insightful)
so I buy an entire Office Suit for an email client?
Something must be amiss here.
It is starting to get funny sort off, as I unwrangled myself at home from Windows now for a couple of years and see just how far OpenOffice has come. Even at work most of the stuff I work on I create in OpenOffice and then save it into Windows format so that others can use it.
I was starting to think last night and realized the only reason I do HAVE to use windows at work is so that I can use Exchange (calendar) and get virus scanned 3 times a day from the Helldesk.
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Re:Office 97 - All You'll Ever Need (Score:5, Interesting)
And yet features that lots of people would find useful aren't incorporated because they don't fit in with MS strategy.
When I tell small business clients that OpenOffice will write PDF documents just by going "save as", their eyes light up.
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Re:Office 97 - All You'll Ever Need (Score:5, Interesting)
MS went absolutely over the top with Office; you get "features" now that well over 99% of their user base will never even SKIM the surface of.
Clever marketing and PHB one-upmanship are what convinced the masses to go with this ridiculous and unnecessary upgrade path.
The problem is, there are a lot of heavy-duty Office users who do use those features that somebody who just writes one research paper a month never uses. For example, some companies run their whole production and financial planning in custom-built Excel spreadsheets, and if Excel 2000/XP/2003 offers some feature OpenOffice doesn't they'll never switch in a million years if it requires them to rewrite the whole shebang.
Just because you don't use a feature of your Office suite, don't assume no one does. One percentage of ten million Office users equals a hundred thousand people who absolutely depend on that feature.
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It's been said before.. (Score:4, Insightful)
As soon as 'the boss' is unable to open your budget report written in OpenOffice, guess what he'll demand from you..
The magic of RTF and PDF (Score:5, Informative)
Not to mention the office copier at my only client site is Red Hat based and will take a scanned copy and email you a PDF. Very handy.
What I'm very curious about is will MS make Word be able to open sxw files by default? Perhaps when OO hits critical mass? Something tells me sxw support, if it comes, will be in some hard to find converter pack that asks you for your original office CD.
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Corresponds with my findings (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the problems are with word document are with imbedded graphics. Sometimes they show up in funny places. Sometimes not at all.
Large spreadsheets can be a problem (export from something). OOo has a limit at 32000 rows, it does give a nice warning about it, thought.
Haven't had any problems with powerpoint presentations.
If I could get the rest of the house to spend the time to learn to use OOo, MS-Office would be dumped in a second.
One thing is sure - we will not be buying new Ms-Office licences (but as we have already payed for those we have, I'll not be forcing something new on exsisting users, when it isn't nessesary).
Microsoft don't discriminate (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft may soon be blocking office compatibility with ANY productivity tools. They don't care whether the source is open or closed, just that it is not a Microsoft product.
office compatibility is not a problem (Score:5, Insightful)
If you want to send anything to outside your organization, send if in PDF format. Its portable and "write-protected".
And inside your organization, for sure someone already has ditacted a office package as "the standart". If it is Windows Office, KOffice or StarOffice, it doesn't matter, because everybody will use the same product.
If you get some of this files from outside, just use one of the many converters available around.
The problem with the Linux Office packages is simply one:
Everybody that already worked 2 days with a computer knows how to work with MS word, MS powerpoint and MS excel. Switching to another office package is seen as a dificult task, because the interface is always diferent.
My 2euros (cents dont buy you anything these days)
Maybe it's not just compatibility - but exposure (Score:5, Interesting)
No, I think that they will keep there advertising campaign going and offering the likes of MS Works as the alternative to their more expensive package. And how many basic system users do you know of that have been following the development of OpenOffice ??
The average user walks into a computer store and says "I need a computer to type letters / send mail / basic calculations", and I can almost guarantee that the salesman will make an MS Office
Nice to see... (Score:5, Insightful)
Although it must be said that this study is *quite basic*. The authors, to be fair, do point out however that "This particular experiment should be considered a pilot study that could be extended to a larger one.
Our experience in the 'real' world is exactly the same - compatiblity, for the most part, is *good enough*.
We have been rolling out small pilots with a number of clients using exactly this line of reasoning. For many IT departments who have lived through the *gratuitous incompatibilities* between succesive generations of Microsoft Office, this is all that is required to evaluate alternatives.
Yes, we should strive for 'perfect' interoperability. No, it is not necessary to begin migrating real businesses to an Open Source desktop.
Just my 0.02!
Format change (Score:4, Insightful)
What Microsoft is about to do, is to introduce an enourmously complex, ill-documented format. Just wait'n'see.
missing data? (Score:5, Interesting)
StarOffice is pretty good (Score:4, Informative)
SO 6.1 beta has PDF output (Score:5, Interesting)
In fact, 6.1 seems a nice product generally and is the first version of SO that I think I can actually recommend to clients when it is released. It may even be possible to train users to export PDFs for email, which would be a big win.
So does Open Office.org 1.1 RC3 (Score:5, Informative)
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Features (Score:5, Interesting)
Beside attempting to do table formatting with strings of spaces {I know this is acceptable, even encouraged, in programming, when monospaced fonts are used; but it totally breaks proportional spacing}, the author also had manually numbered the pages.
I was heavily tempted to refuse to do the editing on the grounds that (a) the original material was unfit to use as a starting point and (b) I was having difficulty finding a copy of MS Word.
And now, the point, part one. What I'm really looking for is a word processor that can take such childish attempts and format them properly. Work out where the author was trying to line up the tabs, and change the space-spaced stuff to proper tabbed columns.
Or, maybe someone could make a USB shotgun accessory that will blow a luser's head off if they try certain effects. Such as
- Attempting to format using spaces
- Attempting to generate page numbers, tables of contents, or anything else that the computer can do for you, by hand *
- Using more than three fonts in a document
- Using the font 'comic sans MS' for anything at all
The point, part two, is that WordPad is not a word processor. It does not incorporate a spelling checker. Whose priorities are so warped that they would omit such a basic necessity while incorporating changeable fonts and colours? It matters not what meretricious decorations are applied to the text if the spelling is all cocked up! It does not even qualify as a text editor; it is a viewing tool. And a poor one at that, because its output often does not resemble the output of Word.* I have actually heard of someone creating a spreadsheet, then adding up the figures with an idiot-calculator and entering this in the total box
Office 98 only exists for MacOS (Score:5, Informative)
The only version of Office that is called Office 98 is for MacOS, as far as I know. For Windows the more recent versions are 95, 97, 2000 and XP.
It is also very interesting to see the difficulties for Microsoft's Office suite when it comes to the interoperabilities between Office 97 on Windows and Office 98 on MacOS. At a company I worked at in 1998, we had both Macs and Windows machines, and amazingly enough, it was not trivial to make some documents written in Office 97 on a Windows machine work in Office 98 on a Mac (and vice versa).
They forgot to test FILE EXCHANGE options... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unfortunately, this tells us very little about interoperability, as needed in an office/colaboration environment, where people need to read my files and my revisions to their files.
Just to read other people's files, I prefer a format like PDF anyways.
Do we all have the attention span of ferrets? (Score:5, Insightful)
What good is OpenOffice if it's illegal? It'd get railroaded right off of the "legitimate" Internet just like DeCSS, and if someone finds out that you used it, you could very well go to jail. Not my cuppa.
I wish that we in the SlashDot community would have a longer memory, and that we would organize some sort of community against the DMCA (for it is the law which permits this sort of egregious BS). We should be rallying in the streets, but we're not. Pretty soon we may all be FORCED to buy a PeeCee with Windows and MS Office, or we will be completely unable to interoperate with the DRM-"protected"
On the net = prepped for sharing ? (Score:4, Informative)
It would be interesting to see how the non-MS products coped with semi-embedded documents which are references to network shares.
Office isn't 4 disparate applications it is an application framework that happens to have some pre-configured applications.
There might be an application you know as Word but it is quite happy to live as an ActiveX control instatiated in your IIS Application.
I used to use it as a report generator, fill in some web forms and out spits the documentation.
The ability to open every word document on the planet is only part of the journey.
Sad but troo.
Confirms the already known (Score:5, Informative)
Now, we just need to squash a few annoying bugs (like the print preview in the spreadsheet module, still not fixed in 1.1rc3), make a native OS X build and we got a free, open-source, efficient cross-platform office suite that works, no matter the OS it's running on, with a consistent UI. Hey, Netscape got popular back in the days also because it was available on all platforms...
Furthermore, the openoffice file format is so easy and straightforward (just zipped XML) it could just become the ideal ubiquitous file format we're looking for. Btw, I wonder why no other open-source office application can read and/or write it. Shouldn't be hard writing an import/export filter...
Just my 2 cents there...
Office 2003 fully supports xml documents (Score:5, Informative)
whitepaper [ftponline.com]
i've used the betas, i've seen it work. it's not a proprietary binary stream wrapped in xml headers - it's a fully ascii, 100% fidelity xml represented word document. with schema.
the binary formats always change every major version. it's doubtfully due simply to malice, it's more likely due to increased business pressure to cram more features in.
but all that aside, compatibility is the primary reason to upgrade to 2003.
Screaming at the top of my lungs (Score:5, Informative)
OFFICE 2003 DOES NOT BLOCK ACCESS FROM OPENOFFICE UNLESS THE USER TELLS IT TO!!!!
FFS, RTFA next time, people! Not only does the user have to tell Office2k3 to implement DRM and jumble the format, but there has to be a Win2k3 server on the network running the DRM manager application.
In order to use IRM (Information Rights Management), according to the article, the customer has to spend boatloads of money.
This feature is not about closing off office applications. It's about protecting IP and controlling access. M$ isn't selling O2K3 on the basis of "Hey, it's not compatible with other applications and that's why you should buy it!" They're selling it on "Hey, you can control who gets to read, print, and modify your documents, and that's why you should buy it!"
It has nothing to do with OSS, FOSS, Slashdot, or anything else. It's just a feature they want to sell to the intellectually paranoid at an extremely high price.
For the second time, there is nothing to see here, MOVE ALONG...
Re:New version of what? (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:New version of what? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. OpenOffice is pure evil and will bring about the rise of communism, followed by the fall of civilization. The skies will burn and the rivers will turn red with blood. The Great Old Ones will return to bring unimagined terror to mankind and it truly will be hell on earth.
Oh, wait, my mistake.. that's just the text of a Microsoft internal memo.
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Re:New version of what? (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, I keep hearing rumors about a Spice Girls reunion too.
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Re:Lock in (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is when someone important (a customer, a government) expects you to read a file in the locked-in format and you don't have MS Office. It's troublesome to convince your customers to save the files into HTML/CSV/TXT/whatever before sending them to you or publishing on the Web. So practically you have to pay for the MS Office licence to be compatible with everyone else. Hopefully this will change.
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No, you numpty (Score:5, Insightful)
Because PHB is their boss the rest of corporate minions now have to upgrade to the shiny new locked up tighter than a virgin's snatch version of Office in order to read the irrelevant inane bullshit.
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Re:Lock in (Score:5, Insightful)
My information is mine, Microsoft prevents me from exporting my data from its closed formats, that's vendor lock-in.
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Re:A spalling chackar (Score:5, Insightful)
Correct.
"which are the authority on spelling and usage of words."
Incorrect. So incorrect, in fact, that it betokens a complete lack of understanding of the English language and how she is spoke; and spelled.
C has an authority. Java has an authority. French and Icelandic have authorities.
English does not. Nobody died and made Noah Webster king. Dictionaries are snapshots of the language as it exists in the majority opinion of a panel of experts ( who often disagree) and many ( if not most) dictionaries disagree with each other on certain particulars.
English is open source and we make it up as we go along.
KFG
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