European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenOffic

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henke54
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European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenOffic

Post by henke54 »

Standards icon IT authorities from Germany and Switzerland have announced that they are working together, under the auspices of the Open Source Business Alliance, to improve the way that LibreOffice and OpenOffice.org display and process OOXML-formatted documents. The authorities involved include the IT groups from the cities of Munich, Jena and Freiburg im Breisgau, the Swiss canton of Waadt, the Swiss Federal Court and the Schweizer Informatikstrategie Bund (Swiss IT Federation) whose representatives met at a workshop in Zurich in October to launch the "Precise reproduction of OOXML documents in Open Source Office applications" project. Slides for the workshop provide more details of what was discussed.
http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/159651/index.html
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

Post by Villeroy »

In the long run this will be the end of ODF. All competing software is condemned to struggle with Microsofts unilateral document concept. They control everything. Their software will be the one and only which fully supports all aspects of that file formats. They will extend the standard in whatever way they want so any standard conform product will look dumb.
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

Post by Hagar Delest »

+1.
They even need a specification to talk about... a so called ISO standard!
I can't understand how those people can support open source by promoting such a thing...
LibO had started to split the user community, they are killing ODF now to get a wider adoption of LibO.
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

Post by floris v »

Come on folks, several years ago nobody knew OOo and the ODF existed. ODF was safe as long as it was irrelevant.
I can't repeat often enough: OOo is a productivity suite - it's supposed to be used for work. You know, what people do to make a living. Well, you can't use OOo for work if you do business with users of MS Office and OOo can't handle the MSO formats properly. It's the old saw of brainless trendsetters who start using the latest version of MSO and send files in the new format to everybody else, thus forcing everybody else to get the latest version of MSO as well.
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

Post by mriosv »

+1 Villeroy + Hagar,
Seems clear what is the real target and how is hidden as if was an open source support.
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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floris v wrote:OOo is a productivity suite - it's supposed to be used for work. You know, what people do to make a living. Well, you can't use OOo for work if you do business with users of MS Office and OOo can't handle the MSO formats properly.
I agree, that's why I don't use OOo to send files in MS Office file format :lol:
From the few trials I've made in this forum to help users having problems with .doc files, I've concluded that there is too much risks of data loss or formatting troubles to bother using something else than ODF when using OOo.

Note that personally, I've switched to ODF after losing data in a .doc file with MS Office. When I discovered that I had absolutely no control on the file format used for my own data, I decided to get something more documented and ended up with OOo and ODF.

Since even MS Office doesn't use the ISO version of OOXML, what's the point using it???
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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Since even MS Office doesn't use the ISO version of OOXML, what's the point using it???
You attract people to use OOo/LiO because it can handle MSO formats and then you can, in this forum, convince them to switch to the ODF format, something you would not be able to do if they'd simply stick to MSO.
The only hope for the open standard is that governments somehow get convinced that they have to enforce open standards and forbid proprietary standards. Considering that in the USA lawyers have sunk to the level where they can't make a case for MS being a monopolist abusing its power, chances that it will ever happen are slim.
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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floris v wrote:The only hope for the open standard is that governments somehow get convinced that they have to enforce open standards and forbid proprietary standards.
It's the main lever indeed. It nearly worked in France but recently the MS lobby managed to change the direction in which the French administration was heading...
As it changed also the vote of the National Body for the OOXML ballot...
And same for the European paper about office documents...
floris v wrote:You attract people to use OOo/LiO because it can handle MSO formats and then you can, in this forum, convince them to switch to the ODF format, something you would not be able to do if they'd simply stick to MSO.
That's a point but I don't think you can educate users through forums. Most of the users go the minimal effort path: if they achieve their task in MS Office format, why should they change then? Why bother with a different format they haven't ever heard of? I think you need a trigger to make the change. Had I not seen my data vanish in a .doc file, would I have perhaps never switched to OOo and would be still using MS Word for my records.
And very few people use forums IMHO. At my office for example, there are forums about all the applications deployed but the volume is not that high because people don't really care. If they can't do something, they will find another way to fake it or just forget about it or cope with a dirty workaround. Very few will take the time to look for a real answer, they don't have the time for that. I think that most users here are just individuals who look for help because there is nobody next desk who can give them an advice (even being: "no, you can't do that, forget about it").
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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I don't really see the problem. Okay, most people aren't interested in ODF, they're only interested in a cheap or even free surrogate for MSO. I guess that very many people who report problems here are really having conversion problems because they insist on saving in MSO's formats (but they generally forget to tell us so, wasting our time). You won't change that. MS doesn't have to kill interest in ODF, because the number of people who are interested in ODF is too small to pose a threat to MS. The problem is the indifference of the average computer user, even the intelligent user, who might ask why he'd download and install Firefox when he gets IE pre-installed (I know somebody who works in the IT and did ask me that same question. My answer was that MS was still developing new versions of IE because other people do use Firefox.)
So what remains is: if OOo and/or LiO will get free code to improve compatibility with MSO, that will simply free the developers of OOo and LiO from writing that code so that they can instead spend their time improving the support of ODF in OOo and LiO. Unless you think that they'd stop coding then.
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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Image
Neelie Kroes should 'correct' this 'lying' or whatever you call this :twisted: :
.....meaning that saving the document in the ODF format could lead to losing content, formattting and usability.

http://www.ghacks.net/2010/07/08/config ... fice-2010/
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

Post by floris v »

Henke: you're totally wrong here. You claim that there's a 100 % compatibility between the two formats when in fact there isn't - if there were, one of them would be redundant. That message in the dialog box is not a lie, not even simply a disclaimer, it's a warning, and considering how many people come here to report compatibility problems, that warning is perfectly justified. Besides, OOo warns you if you don't save a file in OOo's default format that you can expect formatting or data loss. Is that a lie too?
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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floris v wrote:Henke: you're totally wrong here. You claim that there's a 100 % compatibility between the two formats when in fact there isn't
I have not ever worked with MSO .... i am not claiming a 100 % compatibility between the 2 formats...i just want to ask/point out that, if a MSO 2010 user starts with ODF as default, and then makes and sends a ODF document to a OOo/LiO or other MSO 2010 user, that , as i understand that you 'proclaim' , that this ODF document is 'corrupted' ?? :?
floris v wrote: That message in the dialog box is not a lie, not even simply a disclaimer, it's a warning, and considering how many people come here to report compatibility problems, that warning is perfectly justified.
What do you think, when someone who starts with this MSO 2010, and sees that 'warning/message' .... he/she shall NOT, or at least, 'hesitate' to select ODF as default ... isn't it ?? ... so... 'mission accomplished' for M$ ....
floris v wrote: Besides, OOo warns you if you don't save a file in OOo's default format that you can expect formatting or data loss. Is that a lie too?
No, i understand that .... but ODF IS DEFAULT of OOo/LiO . ;)
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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henke54 wrote:I have not ever worked with MSO .... i am not claiming a 100 % compatibility between the 2 formats...i just want to ask/point out that, if a MSO 2010 user starts with ODF as default, and then makes and sends a ODF document to a OOo/LiO or other MSO 2010 user, that , as i understand that you 'proclaim' , that this ODF document is 'corrupted' ?? :? (...)
What do you think, when someone who starts with this MSO 2010, and sees that 'warning/message' .... he/she shall NOT, or at least, 'hesitate' to select ODF as default ... isn't it ?? ... so... 'mission accomplished' for M$ ....
If the user is enabled to insert features that exist in the MSO formats and don't exist in ODF, file corruption will certainly occur - and if you have chosen .doc as default format for OOo and you apply page style elements that aren't supported by the conversion filter of OOo, file corruption will occur as well. I just checked that - made a doc with two pages with the First Page style attached to the first, and hey presto, the header on the second page disappeared on re-opening. No warning for data loss was issued. I can't say how much I prefer a warning, even an unnecessary warning, for data loss to not being warned about it and being confronted with data loss, especially if a customer tells me that the file I sent him/her isn't up to scratch. You don't want to take any chances with data or formatting loss, it's the :fist: duty of programmers to warn/protect users against risky behaviour - I still feel that the absence of a warning against paragraphs longer 64 K in older versions of OOo is almost criminal, but certainly irresponsibly indifferent.
floris v wrote: Besides, OOo warns you if you don't save a file in OOo's default format that you can expect formatting or data loss. Is that a lie too?
henke54 wrote:No, i understand that .... but ODF IS DEFAULT of OOo/LiO . ;)
No, it's the native format of OOo/LiO, just as doc or docx or (in the future?) docxxx is the native format of MSO. If they both perform poorly when it comes to conversion and MS at least has the grace to warn its users, then I say: :super: for MS and :twisted: (off topic: why don't we have a thumb down smiley here?) for the developers of OOo.

----
Look, you are an advocate for ODF, and you see two parties engaged in a fight, and you think that only one of them can win or lose. You forget that there's a third party as well, who should get more attention from you than he does, and who loses almost all the time - I mean the user of course.
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

Post by Villeroy »

The new XML based file format does not change anything nor did the aproval by the international standardization boards. Just like the majority of innocent users, the above mentioned "authorities" won't be satisfied until each and every aspect of OOXML and VBA is implemented in the exact same manner as in MS Office, standardized or not, extended or not, reasonable or not, open or closed source. All they want is a clone of that software at any cost but for free download.
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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Note that OOo displays a warning when you don't save in ODF but the first time only. Once you discard the message, it doesn't show anymore. So you may have done that a long time ago.

I think that the problem is with the use of OOo/LibO indeed, when taken as a free replacement of MS Office. But there is a difference between clearly stating that you're not compatible and trying to use a format that will never be fully compatible because features are different between both suites. Once you say you can save in .docx and users face problems, then they will complain that OOo has not the quality level required, even for an ISO standard. The confusion with the ISO aspect is problematic here too: it makes users believe that OOo should be able to cope with such a "documented" format. We are back on the ISO issue with 2 standards for the same thing.

If users are ready to pay for additional features, then let's buy MS Office and use .docx but there was no need to ISO certify a format that nobody use but fuels the FUD about interoperability. Users should be given a clear choice: either use a standard to exchange files in an interoperable format (ODF), but restricted features or use the native format of your suite if the priority is the specific features of that suite.

+1 with Villeroy too. Before there was a kind of war for the formats (hence the MS battle for the ISO ballot). Now that LibO proposed to comply with OOXML (the slides mentioned in first post come from the LibO conference at Paris), ODF is completely forgotten. They now focus to the MS compatibility and many will support that in order to get a free version of MS Office. What's next? Get a ribbon interface?
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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I am really curious what the ODF Plugfest in April in Brussels is gonna bring : http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/ ... 39#p202928
:roll:
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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Note that OOo displays a warning when you don't save in ODF but the first time only. Once you discard the message, it doesn't show anymore. So you may have done that a long time ago.
I changed the default format this morning, just to test how that'd work out. I didn't get a warning.
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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Villeroy wrote:In the long run this will be the end of ODF. All competing software is condemned to struggle with Microsofts unilateral document concept. They control everything. Their software will be the one and only which fully supports all aspects of that file formats. They will extend the standard in whatever way they want so any standard conform product will look dumb.
+1 Villeroy ->
PL: 'Government use of proprietary software locks-in local administrations'

Poland's government's use of proprietary formats is making it difficult for local public administrations to rid themselves of software vendor lock-in. The national government is relying on proprietary solutions for financial reporting, obstructing for instance the move by the municipality of Goleniów to gradually increase its use of free and open source alternatives.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/pl-gov ... istrations
BE: Municipalities' PCs 'completely locked-in' by proprietary software

The desktop IT systems of many public administrations in Belgium are 'completely locked-in by one proprietary office suite', public IT administrators said at a conference on open source, which took place in the city of Schoten on 18 October.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/be-mun ... y-software
UK: 'Government use of ODF would help break vendor lock-in'

A UK government's decicion to use ODF (Open Document Format) for its electronic documents, would help public administrations overcome vendor lock-in for office applications, says Liam Maxwell, councillor for Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead. He says the move will start the process to the billions of savings that British government needs to find in unproductive areas of spending.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/uk-gov ... endor-lock
FR: Marseille city administration can't get rid of vendor lock-in

The administration of the French city of Marseille is giving up its plans to decrease it's IT vendor lock-in. The move to OpenOffice is almost completed, but about 35 percent of all workstations are forced to continue to also run a proprietary office suite, because of applications that link exclusively to that suite's spreadsheet and text editor.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/fr-mar ... endor-lock
EU institutes' vendor lock-in no example to other administrations

The European institutions' use of proprietary office applications and proprietary document formats is keeping others in the EU from increasing their use of open source software, according to public administrations in Finland, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.

"There still is not the 'big name' weight of some EU institution that would really shake the civil service out of their conservative viewpoint", says Mark Wright, city councillor for the Bristol in the United Kingdom.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/eu-ins ... istrations
IT: Bolzano facing protests over licence deal forced by vendor lock-in

The decision on Tuesday by the administration of the Bolzano region to renew the proprietary software licences for its servers, will be challenged by Associazione per il Software Libero (Assoli), an advocacy group on free and open source. The group says the region should have investigated alternatives and should have issued a call for tender.

The Bolzano administration on 25 May decided to spend 2.2 million Euro to renew proprietary licences for the next three years. In its decision, the administration admits it is forced to renew the licence contract: "There are no alternatives for the development of the IT system. Changing these essential and central servers would be irresponsible. The administration lacks the resources and expertise for such a change."
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/it-bol ... endor-lock
CH: Parliament members say vendor lock-in desktop is causing chaos

Members of the Swiss parliament (Nationalrat) say that the government's dependence on a single IT vendor for its desktop operating systems is causing a chaos and is leading to increasing IT costs.

The government three years ago decided to pay for proprietary licences in order to standardise on the then current version of Microsoft's operating system. This standardisation was estimated to save some 15 million CHF (about 9.9 million euro). However some departments now prefer to move to the company's newest edition, according to Swiss newspaper reports.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/ch-par ... sing-chaos
NL: 'Vendor lock-in no excuse to avoid migrating to open source'

High exit costs are no excuse for public administrations to avoid migrating from proprietary applications to open source software and open standards, says the Dutch minister for Foreign Trade Frank Heemskerk.

"Open standards offer long term benefits, including interoperability and lower costs. At times a migration to such software can be tricky, but public administrations will be supported in these cases", the minister wrote in reply to questions regarding software procurement by the city of Utrecht.

The ministry last year developed the Dutch policy on open standards and open source, known as the 'Heemskerk action plan'. As part of this policy, Dutch public administrations need to provide explanations if they do not use open standards and if they decide against using open source software when making procurement decisions.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/nl-ven ... pen-source

etc...etc.....
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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Hagar Delest wrote:+1.
They even need a specification to talk about... a so called ISO standard!
I can't understand how those people can support open source by promoting such a thing...
LibO had started to split the user community, they are killing ODF now to get a wider adoption of LibO.
Didn't they read this ? : http://www.zdnet.co.uk/blogs/earthed-10 ... -10008487/
:P
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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Again, what version of OOXML are they talking about?
Of course MS don't care about their OOXML ISO standard since it doesn't support all the MS Office features IIRC. So they can say that THAT format is almost dead. The real problem is with the transitional version of OOXML used in MS Office.
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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Hagar Delest wrote:Again, what version of OOXML are they talking about?
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/suppor ... s-adoption
Hagar Delest wrote:Of course MS don't care about their OOXML ISO standard since it doesn't support all the MS Office features IIRC. So they can say that THAT format is almost dead. The real problem is with the transitional version of OOXML used in MS Office.
+1
http://www.noooxml.org/
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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Hagar Delest wrote:Again, what version of OOXML are they talking about?
I was talking about Microsoft spokesperson (Microsoft national technology officer Stuart McKee). But I was answering my own question: the ISO version is dead.

OF course others want the compatibility with transitional/proprietary version of OOXML, because they want a no cost MS Office version.
the article you pointed out wrote:The IT department from the city of Freiburg, for example, has repeatedly expressed frustration over the lack of interoperability between the open source office suites and the proprietary one. "Two decades of monoculture in office applications mean there is no pressure on interoperability", lamented Andreas Kawohl, project leader on open standards at the city's IT department, at a workshop in July in Berlin aiming to improve ODF, an alternative and ISO approved document standard.
How do you want to put pressure on interoperability if you admit that you've to be compatible with a proprietary format???
ODF is the solution, period.
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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Hagar Delest wrote:ODF is the solution, period.
Yep :super: http://opendocumentformat.org/ :
ODF.png
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

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Hagar Delest wrote:How do you want to put pressure on interoperability if you admit that you've to be compatible with a proprietary format???
ODF is the solution, period.
OK, i wrote an email to Neelie Kroes' office, for what they think about this discussion ... here is their answer :
Sent by ROHEN Mechthild (INFSO) <Mechthild.Rohen@ec.europa.eu>. All responses have to be sent to this email address.
Envoyé par ROHEN Mechthild (INFSO) <Mechthild.Rohen@ec.europa.eu> . Toutes les réponses doivent être effectuées à cette adresse électronique.

Dear Mr Henke,



Thank you for your email of 20 December 2011 sent to the office of Vice-President Kroes, who kindly asked me to reply on her behalf.



The Commission's communication on the Digital Agenda [http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/Lex ... 245:en:NOT] proposes actions for the further development of interoperability through standards. In particular, a communication is planned for providing guidance on the link between ICT standardisation and public procurement and for helping public authorities to reduce lock-in.



Public bodies could more often mandate the support of ODF/OOXML when procuring office suites. Improving the implementation of both standards should be encouraged by all Office Suites to enable more choices.



In addition, standardisation bodies should improve both standards to ensure better interoperability between them and in a long run one option could be a convergence between them.



Background information:

The reference to "European IT authorities" in the title of the referenced openoffice.org forum article "European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenOffice" may be misleading, as this only concerns public authorities in Germany and Switzerland. (Note also that those are not standardisation authorities; according to http://www.osb-alliance.com/index.php/d ... officeorg- they are "IT authorities from the cities of Munich, Freiburg im Breisgau and Jena, the Swiss canton of Waadt, the Swiss Federal Court and the Schweizer Informatikstrategie Bund (Swiss IT Federation)".

The Commission is not a party in this initiative.



The OOXML document format (an ISO standard) is overly complex. The OOXML supported in the Microsoft office suite (.docx format) is often mentioned as not being a full or conformant implementation of the ISO standard. Due to its sheer complexity, OOXML is in practice not creating a level-playing field for office suites, contrary to ODF (Open Document Format), the competing ISO standard. Despite those difficulties, better support for OOXML in open source office suites would help breaking the lock-in of many users in Microsoft's office suite. It would play a role similar to the support of Microsoft's proprietary .doc binary format in open source office suites. It should be noted that the two competing standards address the same purpose but are not fully compatible one with the other.



For public administrations, selecting one of the two standards for internal document exchanges may make sense for the sake of efficiency but even if all Member States would like to take the same position on that topic (which is likely to be difficult because of many divergent positions) document exchanges with the external world will anyway remain an issue. The two main options are either ensuring a full compatibility between the two standards or moving towards one standard worldwide, convergence of the two standards.



I hope this will be of interest to you.



Kind regards,

Mechthild Rohen
===========================================
Dr Mechthild Rohen
Head of Unit
Unit H2 "ICT for Government and Public Services"
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
Information Society and Media Directorate-General
Mail: European Commission, BU 31 02/66, B 1049 Brussels, Belgium
Address: Avenue de Beaulieu/Beaulieulaan 31, B 1160 Bruxelles/Brussel
Tel: +32-2-296 36 74 - Fax: +32-2-296 17 40
E-mail: mechthild.rohen@ec.europa.eu
eGovernment: http://ec.europa.eu/egovernment
CIP-ICT PSP: http://ec.europa.eu/ict_psp
eParticipation: http://ec.europa.eu/eparticipation
ePractice: http://www.epractice.eu
eTEN: http://ec.europa.eu/eten
ICT for governance and policy modelling: http://ec.europa.eu/egovernance
8-)
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Hagar Delest
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

Post by Hagar Delest »

It should be noted that the two competing standards address the same purpose but are not fully compatible one with the other.
But that's the main point! As long as there are 2 "standards", the situation won't evolve.
Imagine a firm (IF) that sells expansive rules to measure in the Imperial system. The measurement is done with complex calculation, hence the price.
Then another firm (MF) that makes free rules to measure in the metric system.
MF shows its products and shows that the measurements with its system is fully documented, let's make a standard of it.
The problem is that IF may lose customers now... So let's make a standard too (big bucks available for that).
If nobody takes the responsibility to say: use the fully documented standard and that's all, then what's the use of any standard?

Of course features may be more advanced for MS Office but what is the target of administrations? Keep being locked with a not that documented format? Have to upgrade the OS, the machines and the applications when a single editor wants it? Or say no, we will use an open standard and will buy your product only if the productivity and reliance of the format is superior to other applications (even free)?
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henke54
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Re: European IT authorities want better OOXML in Libre/OpenO

Post by henke54 »

Hagar Delest wrote:Of course features may be more advanced for MS Office but what is the target of administrations? Keep being locked with a not that documented format? Have to upgrade the OS, the machines and the applications when a single editor wants it? Or say no, we will use an open standard and will buy your product only if the productivity and reliance of the format is superior to other applications (even free)?
EU institutes' vendor lock-in no example to other administrations

The European institutions' use of proprietary office applications and proprietary document formats is keeping others in the EU from increasing their use of open source software, according to public administrations in Finland, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.

"There still is not the 'big name' weight of some EU institution that would really shake the civil service out of their conservative viewpoint", says Mark Wright, city councillor for the Bristol in the United Kingdom.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/eu-ins ... istrations
The German city of Freiburg will end its use of OpenOffice, an open source office suite, and go back to a proprietary office suite, according to one well-informed source. The source blames a lack of support for open document standards by other local, regional, federal and European public administrations as the main reason for the failure of the project.
https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/news/lackin ... rce-office
:ucrazy: :crazy: :knock:
Open letter to the City of Freiburg : http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2012 ... -freiburg/
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