In a local office somewhere near you, someone wants to send someone else a electronic document. Once there was a fairly broad agreement about the way such documents were prepared and delivered, before the advent of the computers and the Internet.
Today there is also a fairly universal agreement about how such tasks are carried out, central to achieving this fairly common task is the ubiquitous Microsoft Word. With a form of Windows on virtually every corporate desktop, the pervasiveness of Word documents in business is understandable. MS Word and .doc may appear to be a standard way of doing business but are they a standard?
The wholesale adoption by large corporations and government of .doc as a standard form of electronic documentation is profoundly wrong, it is largely responsible for the single largest amassed fortune in recent history and has unfortunately also created a defacto standard that undermines a fundamental process in the world of business and government, the process of standardization.
What do we mean by standards anyway? Why bother? How do they fit into the computing picture?
Standards are relatively commonplace and provide important functions in the world of commerce and industry. Ranging from common standards for measurements to complex standards for business accounting, they help to define benchmarks by which things or processes can be measured.
Ok I hear you say, we have standards for how food might be prepared and how much is a gallon of fuel or what voltage comes out of your wall outlet, but how do we apply standards to the evolving world of computing? A number of organizations are charged with just that task. Bodies such as W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) who develop a range of specifications and guidelines for technologies that power the Internet. In the wider world, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) which publishes over 14,000 standards, has recognized the importance of what they term “E-business”. They are currently publishing a memorandum of understanding that begins like this:
“E-business is becoming a cornerstone of the world economy …
Full benefits for consumers, industry and government demand a coherent set of Information and Communication Technology standards which are:
1. open
2. interoperable
3. internationally accepted”.
This memorandum of understanding has the support of other standards organizations like IEC and ITU.
What helps to define such organizations and provide them with their authority is the need in business, industry and government for STANDARDS. These bodies and others like them have a variety of members with their own viewpoints, who are unified in their desire to provide a common platform for their own benefit which also benefits the general public. Have a look at the membership of the W3C and you get the idea. There is a very diverse range of interests represented by the membership of W3C.
So standards are a good thing. But back to the discussion about MS Word.
If you search through the Library of Congress subject catalog you will find a couple of references to some current “standards” in computer software that are interesting. Aside from the references to such things as Base Computer Standards, version 2.0. which was published in 1995, there are books about “Microsoft .NET framework – 2001” and “Java data objects – 2002”. Books about software standards are likely to be quickly dated however the library’s catalog items seem to point to the area of software environments.
A quick Google search for something like “Desktop Computer Standards” results in a list that seem to indicate that the “standard” Desktop Computer is a PC running some form of Windows! Similarly, results from a search for computer software standards turns up a surprising number of references to Microsoft and Windows and Word and .NET. This simple search also highlights the common perception that because something comes pre-installed on a PC then that software is the standard. This is often aided and abetted by advertising which proclaims that your new computer comes “standard” with the latest version of Windows and Office.
Microsoft Windows and its product family are not standards. At best they are defacto standards, more accurately they are simply the “standard” offerings from a specific vendor. .NET may become another another defacto standard for world, courtesy of Microsoft.
Remember the bit about standards and how they are developed? I would draw your attention to the bit about independent member organizations making informed decisions. Whilst we have agreed standards for publishing on the net with HTML and XHML for example, standards that are open for all of those who care to look, no such standard exist for coding a document to adhere to the Microsoft Word “standard”. Why? Because by its very nature MS Word is not a standard, it is merely a common form of word processing.
The very good people at Microsoft (and others) might disagree with me here, and just as likely point to a variety of standards that do apply to Microsoft products, which is good because I will certainly sleep better knowing that Microsoft adheres to other peoples rules as much as it would like the rest of the world to adhere to the rules of Microsoft. But I digress.
Standards have a definite benefit for the end user. Having standards for making nuts and bolts, benefits almost all of us, particularly if we happen to flying across the world, thousands of meters up in the sky. But tangible items like nuts and bolts and mundane tasks like book keeping are fairly straightforward. How would we go about defining a standard for word processing, or any other common piece of computer software? Can we define a standard for something that seems to undergo almost daily transformation or should we just accept that real standards do not apply here, and the defacto standards are the best we can get?
If we want to able to take our nuts and bolts and build a better airplane, then we need standards. If we want to take the tools that computers provide us and build a better tomorrow, then we need standards. And if we continue to allow defacto standards that are propagated by powerful vested interests to supplant real and measurable standards, then opportunities for future development will defined by closed boardroom decisions and their market strategies.
Governments can play a key role is this process, one which does NOT seek to tell the software business what to do, merely how they should do it. Standards are a big deal for democratic governments and rightly so. By demanding and then adhering to standards in software applications, the existing closed shop situation is turned on its head, without the need to proscriptive legislation. Sure you can continue to use the old product, provided it meets the standard, but then you are also free to use a competing product because it also meets the required standard. If governments adopt standards based formats, this in turn will drive business and so on.
Unfortunately, standardization of computer documents has not achieved the uniformity that is hallmark of web publishing. The lack of an agreed format is conspicuous, the void is filled by a the dominant format (.doc) with clear financial benefit to its vendor. Microsoft can clearly afford to ignore calls for an open standard, just as clearly, it has by far the most to lose from an open document standard.
The subject of closed formats is a part of the overall discussion on open source software. The importance of a suitable document format, which sounds simple, cannot be understated. Consider the Internet with its profusion of content, and users who can access an array of services based on common protocols. The success of the Internet is directly related to wholesale adoption of standards. The widespread adoption of a suite of open standards for computer documents would create a software environment that encourages innovation rather than current monopolistic regime.
In the next article I will explore some of the current developments in computer document standards.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
wee that is a nice standard
If you want to distrubute a document, just send it as PDF…MS Word can be coverted to PDF, LaTeX can be converted to PDF (why the above poster wants to force people to write LaTeX doc is beyond me).
PDF can be read in Windows/Mac/Linux, no need to create some new “standard” for people to adopt when everyone can view PDF already.
Yes and the good thing is, that it is so easy to edit pdfs, oh wait …
Eureka. We’ve now at the nucleus of the problem with MS’s stranglehold on the industry. Proprietary closed file formats. If ISO gets any following with establishing (open non-proprietary) file formats – and I sincerely hope so – then we’ll start to see some real competition, innovation and price control in the industry. Even MS will have to come out of hibernation. Suddenly everybody will be on equal footing. Someone could right now make a competing wordprocessor. But it would have to use another file format. And people don’t want multiple file formats. It’s a mess. They want one – but not a propietary one. Luckily MS was “not interested” in the web in its dawn. Otherwise the web might not have had non-propietary file formats today.
What’s XHML? Is that some new standard I’ve never heard of?
I think, it was just a typo.. It should be XHTML.
“Yes and the good thing is, that it is so easy to edit pdfs, oh wait …”
Sometimes it can be an advantage if the document can’t be esily edited.
However that advantage seems to slowly go away as the ability of word processors like kwod to edit pdf is improves.
99% of the time you do not need to edit other people’s documents. If you really do need to edit, you can ask for the source document.
PDF is an end document format for print. It’s not meant for editing. By using the PDF document, one can view it on any number of platforms because nearlly all of them have a viewer. A PDF viewer is really pretty trivial to implement. All the display smarts are in the PDF language which is basically postscript with a lot of the printer programming features removed.
I do not want to have to install a big (often time expensive) software suite just to view someone’s article. There should be a seperation between the document’s working source and the final display format. LaTeX -> DVI/PS/PDF is the perfect example of how it should be done.
The open source community can avoid the problem of incompatible file formats, by keeping the source code open and also writing good documentation. Standards are no good, because they can be patented like XML, so the software should instead be licensed under the GPL. Writing quality software can ease the process of finding the information you need, and being able to make changes. We just need an open community, and the confidence to take on system implementation, we need the support and stability of a stable environment. That will provide us with the opportunity and the time to acquire and share knowledge.
software standras are great!
I think everyone should have their own..
at least if their open life is better (eg. koffice open OOO formats)
Editing is not the only problem with pdf format. Another one is that pdf documents tend to be quite big. You don’t usually want to send documents that are several MB in size via email, especially if the content is basically just text.
For the kind of basic, mostly textual documents that MS Word format is mostly used for, a proprietary format like MS Word doc is only a big PITA, IMHO. The solution? Well, MS could, for example, try to learn to behave & cooperate, like use more open standards – and not try own the whole industry. Or if that is not possible for MS people, well, I simply suggest that people start to seek for alternatives to anything MS as soon as they can.
the author claims that Windows and Office aren’t standards, or, at best, are de facto standards.
FYI, a de facto standard is a standard. Everybody else wants to eat Microsoft’s lunch, but nobody has made a product that can replace Windows and Office without impaired functionality; whether Microsoft deliberately makes it hard to migrate is irrelevant.
Did you read the interview with Miguel de Icaza at NetCraft, and what Miguel has to say about MS Longhorn, Avalon and XAML? Do we really want MS soon to control even the next generation WWW with their new proprietary standards? IF MS cannot see themselves that their efforts to own the whole industry are bad to everyone, then it is up to someone else, us, to stop them.
@ Debman: that was precisely what I was thinking when reading the article. BTW a good article.
@ Robo: to convert LaTeX to PDF you have to write a LaTeX document anyway, and this can be done transparently (after all, who has ever writen a Word document using the code?).
Standards are no good, because they can be patented like XML, so the software should instead be licensed under the GPL.
No that is exactly the problem. Standards are not to be published with a copyleft license. The point with standards is that you can make a standard and then make solution under whatever license you like… preferably PD so that people easily can adapt it to different platforms and so forth without having any issues with some stupid license issues or non business friendly license.
Intel has done this many times, so has many others…
What do you think PDF is all about? IT’s about setting a standard and let people implement it however they like, may it be proprietary, GPL, BSD, MPL or whatever license… that’s why it’s successful and that’s why many others aren’t.
Legal documents? What’s wrong with .txt? Covers 19/20 cases, unambiguous, small files, even opens in MSword without trauma.
Also (note this SCO and friends) doesn’t contain a whole history of possibly embarrassing corrections and document sources when viewed in a hex editor.
Well, apart from notepad note handling other systems newlines properly…
I’d agree with you, but it seems some people aren’t happy unless they get to put all sorts of extratonous crap in their documents?
You know the type, a 3 MB email of animated gifs, flash files, and god knows what else for;
Dear Edward, How about Van Hellsing at the movies this Friday?
Cheers, Beatrice
*sigh*
I blame crap like incredimail.
Standards are great, the more the better..
I do agree that .txt is a good filetype… but as far as I know underlining, bold text, italics is impossible in .txt.
.pdf is ok, but it’s only when used in a good way… I hate it when people put in a colored background, many pictures, …
Sometimes I don’t want to print everything. You know what, maybe .html isn’t such a bad filetype to send textfiles. Browsers like Dillo, K-Meleon start fast and you can read it instantly, there are many options in html and every computer has a browser. A simple html WYSIWYG editor (with only basic functionality like bold,italic,underline, other fast implemented things) could be used to write them. Something with functionality like Wordpad but for html. And a bigger app could be used by people who need more functions, but it’s still same filetype… .html. I don’t know if anyone tought of that , and if it’s a bad idea. It just came up in my mind now :p
If you keep your corporate information in MS Word format; a format that is unknown to all, except Microsoft, you can not make a decision to switch to an alternative environment because you will be under the danger of being Alzheimer. It’s better to switch to OpenOffice as soon as possible, since it’s format is zipped xml, defined and open.
Lots of talk about pdf:s, laTeX, xhtml, separation of data/presentation etc. Isn’t this exactly DocBook ?(http://www.docbook.org)
What about RTF. Its a published standard (even though it appears to have been created by Microsoft). Most platforms can read it. It is simple and powerful enough for most word processing tasks.
Everybody else wants to eat Microsoft’s lunch, but nobody has made a product that can replace Windows and Office without impaired functionality; whether Microsoft deliberately makes it hard to migrate is irrelevant.
I think it’s very relevant. The simple fact that so many companies have allowed themselves to be locked into a proprietary format like .doc with no easy way to migrate out, makes it very difficult for anyone to break that monopoly, no matter how good their application is!
—
Till
You know what, maybe .html isn’t such a bad filetype to send textfiles.
Yeah, agreed, basically it might be not a bad idea. But guess what? MS has almost succeeded to make it impossible to use HTML format for non online documents, at least as long as people use MS Word to save their HTML documents. If you’ve ever cleaned HTMl documents from all the MS Word HTML carbage, you know what I’m talking about. (And you can bet your shoes that they did it intentionally at MS.)
It is a bit same with, for example, RTF (Rich text format), too many non standard things to make it really usable as a standard document format. And guess why?
As to pdf format, yet another problem – besides of filesize and editing problems, is that saving documents in pdf format is not a piece of cake. Only a few programs can do it well enough. Because it is a proprietary Adobe format, just like MS Word/doc. Though one must admit that Adobe, like most other companies too, has better business manners as they don’t try to control the whole IT business the way MS does.
Generating pdf shouldn’t be a problem, about every Linux installs ghostscript standard, and OS X can generate is even more easily. On Windows, ghostscript + ghostview/cutepdf-writer is good enough for most uses. With cutepdf, pdf appears as just another printer. And as for proprietary, yes Adobe controls the format. But the entire specification (1000+ pages) is in the open, see
http://partners.adobe.com/asn/tech/pdf/specifications.jsp
I must say I agree with the author– but we cannot simply ignore ‘the world’ today. .doc might be a defacto standard, (instead of a ‘real’ standard) it still is a standard . It might not be the best standard either, but hey, why are the Amercians and British still buying gas per gallon, and not per liter? The metric system (not a standard by itself, but a collection of standards) is far superior to the collection of logic-less miles/yards/gallons stuff the British/Americans tend to use.
Still, they do that. Why? Because it’s their habit. The people want it that way, and who are we to tell them otherwise? I feel the same about Software standards; of course it would be a good thing to have a real ‘open’ document standard, but hey, if the people are fine with .doc, then so be it! Who are we to tell them otherwise??
As always, just my opinion
______________________________________
–Dutch translator for SkyOS, v5.0–
“Editing is not the only problem with pdf format. Another one is that pdf documents tend to be quite big. You don’t usually want to send documents that are several MB in size via email, especially if the content is basically just text.”
Text-only PDFs are small. Looking in a directory full of PDFs that I have downloaded, the majority are 200k or less, many are less than 50k.
The big ones are those containing large images.
I think you will find that eqivalent Word docs are larger, but I have very few here to compare.
I think that XML is the ideal tool for this. You can easily difine different document formats both simple and complex. Define style sheets to present the information in multiple formats, and there are multiple tools to allow you to convert the document to other formats such as Word, PDF, PS etc….
“I think that XML is the ideal tool for this.”
That is exactly what OpenOffice.org is using, although they save it using gzip in order to safe space:
http://xml.openoffice.org/
They are also working with the OASIS technical committee to create an open standard that is based on it:
“XML file formats allow a user to regain ownership to his/her own data, by allowing access and manipulation of office documents by arbitrary tools which support the file format. To make such capability ubiquitous, we believe it is necessary to standardize file formats. Thus, we have contributed the OpenOffice.org XML File Format to OASIS. The OASIS Open Office XML Format Technical Committee will work on creating an open XML file format for office documents, using the OpenOffice.org format as a base.”
<sarcasm>
Imagine how wonderful it would be if you could just exchange a simple letter with anyone without needing to know what program your peer uses!
That would be just like, sending a fax! Or making a phone call!
</sarcasm>
I wish I could get one 1000th of a cent for every Euro or dollar spent on converting documents from one format to another. I would be an instant millionaire!
GPL is not good for standards. If you want to make a good standard, you should get no closer to the FSF/GPL/GNU/whatever than LGPL. If you want to establish a standard, you got to be willing to let others make use of your code and not try to control what they use the standard in or for.
BTW GPL does not prevent patent probs… and just cuases more problems in the area of copy right and the like and limiting uptake of a system. The reason this is, is that it takes a hostile approach to what ever libs and the like it uses, in that it effectively says other licenses may not exist, which is the end goal of GPL.
Actually, this could be said about any sort of data container… XML is not special in this regard.
“Everybody else wants to eat Microsoft’s lunch, but nobody has made a product that can replace Windows and Office without impaired functionality; whether Microsoft deliberately makes it hard to migrate is irrelevant.”
Ask any thoughtful person who has used Windows and OS X, OS X is superior in almost every way. So there is your Windows replacement, and you can even get Word for it.
As for Word, well you could use Star Office it should do all the functionality that 99% of people use in Word (whilst eliminating the document history problem for companies wasteful enough to internally communicate with .doc). I’m sure there are a host of other Office apps for OS X. I use ABIword for word processing and I’m very happy with its functionality and it’s standard file (abw which formats with xml).
I don’t think anyone can eat Microsofts lunch, Microsoft can’t even eat its own lunch. They have more money than they know what to do with.
A unpublished standard is not a standard regardless of how used it is.
BTW good non-ms word processors do exist. Check out AbiWord and ect… It does every thing I need, except out put and inport PDFs. And for most tasks, alternatives do exist and are just as good as many MS products.
I think the Author is one from the thounds of open source fan that hates Microsoft very much. In their mind they love to influence others to hates microsoft the same way they did. They hates it because they can’t win the battle with fair competition and they try to do with the dirt cheap way to archieve the goals. Every times this kind of person talk there must be relate with microsoft and how bad this company are. To me this article has no point at all and it bull s**t.
i still don’t understand why there isn’t wider use of XHTML + CSS, you can do eveything you’ll ever need, and once you put SVG in the game you’ll also have vectorial graphics, you can then gzip everything and distribute a nice and small file.
blah. software standards.
the only standard is what the most popular company puts out. its always been that way
it has a point. imagine attaching a .doc file to an e-mail and sending it to a non-ms office user without knowing that he/she does not use ms office. how can he/she read it?
http://www.1dok.org
that could be a common standard
… but if you have remotely tried to play (including develop and extend) the capabilities of Office 2003, and then tried to compare that experience with developing and extending alternatives… you would instantly see how more user-friendly and developer-friendly MS Office truly is.
The alternatives have a bunch of admitted builds… with no shareholder pressure, no goverment pressure, and no other pressure… to deliver!?! As such, the only way any alternative would truly become pervasive was if they would grow the product ALONG with the USERS.
(Mind you, most open-src projects are used/modified by random folks… no actual enterprise. The few that are do not receive/utilize real-world pressures and demands… only technobuff-driven jargon and requests.)
Alas, the best way is not to build an alternative from scratch, but to extend and build a competitor that is most suited for the direction of the world… and not for a single company. Think about it…
Uhh… as for the story… yeah… standards are good… but if nobody follows them, then what’s the diff?!?!
Oops… meant to say “have a bunch of admitted bugs…”
chose the defacto standards and they work just great thank you.
i can chose to not use them or I can chose to get along in the smoothest way possible.
no government made the choice for me.
long live freedom. funny how open source folks would like some regulatory body or govt. agency to come along and set some standard for them.
if you have the goods, the market will choose you freely.
this guy should work for Real.
If I/we lose in the marketplace we will get the government/courts to save us.
you couldnt be more wrong:
“Only a few programs can do it well enough. Because it is a proprietary Adobe format, just like MS Word/doc. Though one must admit that Adobe, like most other companies too, has better business manners as they don’t try to control the whole IT business the way MS does.”
see instead for the real info:
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/adobepdf.html
“An open file format specification, PDF is available to anyone who wants to develop tools to create, view, or manipulate PDF documents. Indeed, more than 1,800 vendors offer PDF-based solutions, ensuring that organizations that adopt the PDF standard have a variety of tools to leverage the Portable Document Format and to customize document processes.”
its old (10 years), well established (the reader alone has been distributed over 500 million times), and the pdf standard is OPEN.
if you don’t know what you are yakking about, then dont yak.
come on – that’s not how it works. if you actually OWN the market, there is no freedom left, no competition. i would agree with you if every competitor had the same chance to succeed or to fail. but that was 25 years ago and the us government did not realize (did not want to realize) what ms is and what they are doing. they bundle windows with the ie and netscape dies. they bundle windows with a media player and all other players and formats die. they bundle windows with a “insert program” and again a competitor dies. doesn’t it make you uncomfortable that there is just one big OS-manufacturer which provides anything and anywhere in your life (ms on phones, stereos, and so on). imagine there would be a single manufacturer for cars and gas. funny, eh? ms should be splitted like at&t, making a clear “ground”. then you can have your “free market”. within a really free market, ms probably would not exist anymore… but since this does not happen, you can have a superior product and still you’ll fail…
i dont own the market
netscape was a fine product at one time
ie beat it and is now a better product
windows media player and real and apples quicktime to this day have about equal usage figures
the best product will win
ms office wins because it is the best and people want that standard that says send me your docs in x format.
if you are in school your teachers tell you that you must submit work in x manner.
if i start a biz tomorrow and need to communicate with partners, vendors, and clients i will choose ms office to do so because i know its what is out there. it doesnt hurt my feelings to know that ms is making money by helping me do my work.
if i have a wad of cash in my wallet i can choose to spend it on computers in many ways. i can go linux, mac, or windows without much fuss. all buyers likewise make that choice daily and they overwhelmingly choose windows and ms office because it works well, it is inexpensive, it is easy to use, folks are familiar with it, new hires come pretrained on it, etc etc etc.
if what you say is true, then the mac would still have 20% market share and linux would not even make it past a hobbyists toy.
only sad losers and underdogs think otherwise.
I prefer to view standards in terms of what they do. The existence of standards for wrenches and nuts allows different tool makers to make a set of wrenches with a limited set of sizes that will fit well with the limited set of different sized nuts that meet a given standard. The standard functionally accomplishes the following:
As a result of the standard being publicly known or open, it promotes interoperability – brand X wrenches with brand Y nuts. (Compare to Microsoft’s secret document formats.)
As a result of the limited and unchanging nature of the standard, it allows a person to buy a single set of wrenches, from his choice of manufacturers, which will then work with the nuts for that standard. (Compare to Microsoft’s contiunuous changes to the .doc format. Granted for the software world some changes might be reasonable, but not a new format for every version.)
Microsoft’s “defacto standards” are functionally not standards at all.
…if I make a word processor but save to my own file format because the “standard” file formats are missing some features I want to provide?
That’s not rhetorical either, brother! Really, am I evil?
ie has been a lot worse than netscape for a long time (and is still worse than firefox). but why did ms “win”? it’s quite easy: bundle it with a OS for which you already have a monopoly. most users don’t know that there are any other programs. in fact, they think that the blue “e” means “internet”. they use what is pre-installed on their computer. so if you have a monopoly for pre-installed systems, you can gain more and more by just adding software to the OS. why install another browser if you have one pre-installed, even if it is worse? why install another office-suite if you have word pre-installed?
to conclude: there is no choice. the choice has been made for you by ms. you want to start your biz and communicate? so you MUST buy ms office. that’s the deal. there’s nothing wrong in making money but there is something wrong in FORCING you to buy a product.
i start to repeat myself – there is no free market when there is a monopoly. and how break a monopoly if the user does not know about it, if ms is “standard” for him?
you can buy any car by any manufacturer and still you can drive any street with it – try this with software.
I prefer to view standards in terms of what they do. The existence of standards for wrenches and nuts allows different tool makers to make a set of wrenches with a limited set of sizes that will fit well with the limited set of different sized nuts that meet a given standard.
Note, however, that nuts and wrenches are based on standards of measurement and a (to some extent) de facto agreement on the number of sides on a nut or bolt. This is why there are many different types of nuts and bolts and the associated wrenches, some of which are proprietary in nature, but most people use the same types of nuts and bolts, which at best have not been proprietary for quite some time, and therefore have the same types of wrenches.
The standard functionally accomplishes the following:
As a result of the standard being publicly known or open, it promotes interoperability – brand X wrenches with brand Y nuts. (Compare to Microsoft’s secret document formats.)
Compare with a number of different types of nuts and bolts. This is further complicated by the fact that reverse engineering of software is somewhat harder than reverse engineering of hardware, especially when you’re talking about developing a wrench for a bolt rather than a word processor for a document. In the meantime, in both the case of the bolt and the document, people have developed alternatives for the wrench and the word processor by looking at the bolt and the document.
As a result of the limited and unchanging nature of the standard, it allows a person to buy a single set of wrenches, from his choice of manufacturers, which will then work with the nuts for that standard. (Compare to Microsoft’s contiunuous changes to the .doc format. Granted for the software world some changes might be reasonable, but not a new format for every version.)
Microsoft hasn’t made a change to most of the Office formats that broke compatability with older versions since moving to Office 97 from 95. This means that documents produced in 97, 2000, XP, and 2003 are almost all interchangeable, and after the outcry from end-users over the changes in 97, many of them can be used in 95 as well. Additionally, there are a handful of competitors that have been able to produce and consume these formats for quite some time (especially Corel’s office suite, which even has some support for macros embedded in MS Office-generated documents).
Meanwhile, to work on my car I need both metric and standard (US) wrenches and sockets, as well as possibly a couple of allen wrenches and at least 3 types of screwdriver (not including the need for varied lengths of screwdriver).
Microsoft’s “defacto standards” are functionally not standards at all.
No more so than many of your wrenches, which can generally only be produced by multiple manufacturers because the patents and other protections related to those “standards” ran out a very long time ago. Many of the standards for hardware and tools that are in common use across a great number of fields were created long after their original introduction because they were de facto standards which were no longer covered by IP law (because patents had expired, for instance).
On the other hand, Microsoft has integrated a lot of XML read/write capability into Office over the last 3 versions, most (if not all) of it in compliance with existing XML standards, but would still meet outcry from their customers if they moved over to an all-XML-by-default format because they have to maintain support for versions of Office that can’t deal with XML (97 and before as well as some limitations in 2000 and even XP).
Furthermore, opening the current de facto Office standards before deprecating them would cause issues with their licensees, many of whom paid large amounts of money for access to those formats for use in their own products.
Still, I would have absolutely no problem with using other document formats, so long as any format intended to replace an MS Office format were submitted to a standards body such as ISO. Leaving anything under the control of one company, even if the revision process and specifications are claimed (and appear) to be open (such as PDF or Java as two instances from differing fields), is no substitute for submission to a true standards organization which can maintain the standard outside the total control of the originating company (of course the originating company will still have influence over the standard’s evolution, that’s a given when they’re the most familiar with the original standard).
IE worse than netscape for a long time? Why is it then, that Netscape’s 4 version and communicator were so slow compared to IE 4? Yes, IE was worse before version 4, which is when everyone used netscape. With version 4, netscape was left behind and engaged in a large-scale rewrite (why would a superior browser need to do this?). Firefox came out fairly recently and it is better than IE. That’s why I’m writing this message right now from Firefox running under Windows. Big, bad Microsoft never prevented me from downloading this and using it. One thing is true, though… with Microsoft including all of this free software into the OS, only Free and Open Source software will be able to compete with MS for things which MS includes in Windows. Office is not such a product because it’s definitely not bundled. Anyone can compete with MS if they make a better and cheaper product. Word and Excel have gone through so many revisions, though, that this task is very hard, but that is certainly not MS’s fault.
in fact, there are better and cheaper products. but – and that’s what it’s all about: how and WHY change? even word is pre-installed when you buy a new computer. maybe there is ms works pre-installed (that’S word 2002 afaik).
ie 4 was bundled with win95. maybe netscape 4 was slow. but if the ie had not been bundled, it would not be the “standard” browser. firefox is better and it’s free. still, no-one uses it.
of course ms cannot prevent you from using firefox. but it certainly does prevent you from using other word processors. and it will prevent you from using another OS through DRM and TCPA. you want to watch a DVD? so, use longhorn. html and tcp/ip are FREE techniques, anyone can implement them so there is a real chance to win a (still unfair) competition.
and yes – you’re right: it is not ms’s fault that they “use” their monopoly (maybe i would do it too). it’s the fault of wrong political decisions. in a really free market, something like microsoft should not happen. or another possibility: monopolies are the true nature of free markets…
good night, i have to get up early tommorow…
“if i have a wad of cash in my wallet i can choose to spend it on computers in many ways. i can go linux, mac, or windows without much fuss. all buyers likewise make that choice daily and they overwhelmingly choose windows and ms office because it works well, it is inexpensive, it is easy to use, folks are familiar with it, new hires come pretrained on it, etc etc etc.”
Pass the peace pipe sonny, because whatever you’re smokin’ must be incredible.
Inexpensive? …Really? I suppose for pirates, people who get it bundled with new lappies/desktops, and some of the lucky students that get discounts. The rest of us are getting fleeced when we need to buy it.
Works well? I worked in a comp lab two semesters at University. I was quick to discover Office (and Windows, come to think of it) accumulated so much bad karma from frustrated students and their recently crashed senior papers and projects. Naturally it wouldn’t load their last saved version either, y’know, cos it *works so well.*
Easy to use? That’s subjective. Majority of people I know still don’t know what most of the functions are. I find it fairly easy to use, but many others may disagree.
Familiarity? Doesn’t validate whether it is a *good* product or not. Just means force of (forced) habit.
Your arguments look trollish, smell trollish…but who am I to judge 😉
foo
experience of a computer platform in school labs getting hammered by dozens or hundreds of different users per day and running on probably out of date hardware (edu low budgets) is not a fair approximation of how any os or platform can run in a well cared for situation.
suse linux is what $29 or $89 dollars depending on version.
red hat linux now used to cost what $79 to $179 and is now $179 to $18000 or so.
yes you can get free linux of different varities off the net but that is not a mainstream method of utilizing os software for either home or business users.
via any shopping engine, http://www.pricewatch.com for example
ms windows home license (if you already own cd and want to add to other pcs) $58
ms windows xp home full version oem $75
ms windows xp home retail upgrade (full support) $92
ms windows xp home full retail standalone $158
ms windows xp pro license (if you own a cd and are adding to multiple computers) $85
ms windows xp pro full oem $134
……
max os x costs $129 and is upgraded once per yr for the last 3 years so if you want the latest you pay an annual subscription for it.
sorry most folks like familiarity and ease of use and they say so and they speak with their wallets and that is why ms makes so much money.
with the pc they buy they get an even better deal
or for the overwhelming majority that are buying the os stand alone they are adding it to a pc that has windows already so they get upgrade pricing.
the few that are building pcs from scratch and adding a new os without upgrade tend to be avid computer users with strong skill sets and can easily afford to skip a retail version with support from ms and instead buy oem that does not include phone support.
everyone still has access to many other forms of support whether it be friend or family that again is familiar with what everyone else is using or they can go to myriad online sites for help or if worse comes to worse they can pay for support like you do with red hat linux and many other types of software.
Despite what the evangelists say, Linux still has at least 3-5 years (minimum!) before it could be considered a serious desktop alternative.
Not just in what it has to offer, but the _huge_ drag of (a) bringing all the hardware vendors online to support devices under Linux in a timely manner, (b) bringing all the software vendors online to start supporting their applications under Linux [apart from the viable open source alternatives – which need to improve their stability and functionality].
On the other hand, in the server market, Linux has already arrived and is a viable alternative right now (despite a few shortcomings). Equally, though, the other BSD variants are reasonably good offerings. You need to stick to mainstream hardware though.
Over the next 3-5 years, expect to see:
(a) large watershed in the generic server market as Linux takes ground and a lot of jockying (novell, suse, sun, hp [well, already dead and gone!]) as they all clamber with no clear leader. There’s still a lot going for Sun in the mission critical market.
(b) Linux becoming an increasingly viable desktop option and taking some MS thunder, but still not a big threat.
I really liked the article, as it seems to have a lot of common sense in it. I personally use Microsoft software on a daily basis and I do like it.
@Claus: MS was really interested in the web at its dawn, hence the fight between Microsoft and Netscape, where they both added their proprietary tags. Hopefully, the W3C standardized things, and now everything works fine, in browsers, PDA’s, phones, screen readers, … (except some incompatibilities with the open standards, but that’s another problem).
@Anonymous(…): XML is not patentent … it seems like it’s owned by the W3C (I can be wrong on this one, but I doubt it).
@Anonymous(out to lunch): Star Office/Open Office can not yet fully replace MS Office, but they are on their way. The fact that the coders of that project had to reverse-engineer the .doc format to be able to read and write .doc documents seems fully relevant to the fact OO/SO is having a hard time working with those file types … that seems like making it hard for people to use alternatives, at least to me.
About .pdf … why not use (X)HTML (and CSS) instead, like GuNNiX and EcHo2K have said.
@Thom Holwerda: let’s say we won’t tell the people who bought MS Office how to do, but what about the others ?
@V. Velox: “A unpublished standard is not a standard regardless of how used it is.” I completely agree.
@Simple-Plan: I think you should learn about the history of the web, really, since HTML was (like I said above) a subject of war, and I really think standardisation (the W3C) did a lot of good to everyone, including Microsoft, of course.
@hmmm: “the only standard is what the most popular company puts out. its always been that way” you’re wrong, I’m afraid, look at HTML and the W3C again.
@Anonymous(free markets all over the world): what freedom is it if I can’t access a document ? Free market zealots go easily on my nerves as everything said rests on misunderstanding (the laws of economics say that there needs to be a lot of preconditions -which aren’t near to be met- to have an efficient market … learn about “educated fools”, on that matter).
@Anonymous (no i am not worried): “if what you say is true, then the mac would still have 20% market share and linux would not even make it past a hobbyists toy.” If you want to play on that ground, then think about your PC being a toy running mostly Windows, and servers being professional tools running mostly Unix/Linux.
one, ms has more installed servers than linux or unix.
windows isn’t a toy on the desktop. nearly every major professional piece of software is available on windows. is autocad a toy? is 3studio max a toy? is accounting software a toy?
two, no one really cares if you can’t get access to a file. if you cant, then buy the software and you will be able to. if you don’t want to buy it or you can’t afford, join the club. i cant afford a home in malibu. but, you have the freedom to choose. its up to you, not some Red Chinese bureaucrat in Peking.
there is no law that says if i make some software and it is good and it is proprietary and people like and want it and they buy it that I have to somehow let others use it unless they too pay me for the right. i can even sell it with an 87% profit margin if the demand is strong enough….see MS Windows.
Send all documents in SWX format and tell everyone that complains – that they can just download and install OO.o for free to read it. At least unlike the idiots that use DOC format that costs great sums of money to read. Yours will cost only a little time. This will also make MS Office’s inability to read the SWX format a true liability.
So some ppl make bad choices in choosing a proper OS(OpenBSD, NetBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, some Linux Distros) and go and choose windows. Yes, you can get work done in it, it has commercial support, and ect… heck, I even have several MS certs, but that does not change the fact that for many jobs it is nothing more than a awkward toy. Yeah, back in the DOS days there versions of QB aimed at proffesionals and proffesional apps, it was common, and if for some bloody reason you could right professional stuff in it if you wanted, but still those do not mean it was good, proffesional, or any thing other than a toy.
BTW nice commie ref there, but tobad the want for standards is driven by industialism, which runs agains’t communism.
BTW I don’t remember once reading that MS should give away word.
Not workable in a bussiness setting where allowing ppl to do stuff like that is a liability… plus, afaik, to use it in a commercial setting you have to pay for it…
in fact, there are better and cheaper products.
Better and cheaper products than what? If you’re talking word or office in general, then it really depends on what your requirements are for the product(s). For most people, this is absolutely correct. You can get solid replacements for Office for prices ranging from free to $150, which, in general, increase in their capabilities and ability to replace Office as their prices increase (though I reiterate the “in general” part, because there are exceptions all over the place where free products do certain things better than products that cost money).
For some business users, there isn’t a replacement yet at any price. For other businesses, Office isn’t even an option; except on the one computer everyone sends documents to for conversion when they’re sent from other people/companies.
but – and that’s what it’s all about: how and WHY change? even word is pre-installed when you buy a new computer. maybe there is ms works pre-installed (that’S word 2002 afaik).
Some computers come with the full Works Suite 2004 (which comes with Word 2002), some don’t. For most desktop users, Works 7.0 is overkill, never mind Word 2002 (or Word 2003). At the same time, most of these people aren’t writing their email in word or works, and only use it when they open a document someone sent them, or for pointless things that could be done just as easily in notepad (like recipes and shopping lists), most of which aren’t sent out over a network or are given to other people only as print-outs rather than in soft copy.
ie 4 was bundled with win95. maybe netscape 4 was slow. but if the ie had not been bundled, it would not be the “standard” browser. firefox is better and it’s free. still, no-one uses it.
The last version of IE shipped with Windows 95 was IE3.0 (Win95SR2). Windows 98 shipped with IE4SP1.
When Netscape Communicator 4.0 came out, IE was still at 3.0. When Netscape Communicator 4.5 came out, IE was at 4.0, and had been for a year. Netscape skipped v5.0, as it still didn’t work when they released the source for it, and released 6.0 in Nov. 2000, 3.5 years after releasing Communicator 4.0. Microsoft had released IE5.5 4 months earlier and had not skipped 5.0. IE5.0 was significantly faster than 4.0, and was the first MS browser I didn’t use to find the download site for a Netscape browser (in other words, the first MS browser I used as my primary browser). I didn’t touch a Netscape/Mozilla browser again until the release of Phoenix, and did that because it was supposed to be precisely what it is: a light-weight browser with the features IE is still missing (unless you use a browser wrapper for IE).
Guess what… it’s 2004 and IE6.0 didn’t bring a lot to the table for non-XP users. Essentially MS’ browser has had few obvious changes for most users in about 7 years, and Phoenix/Firebird/FireFox represents IE’s first significant threat on the Windows platform since IE4 was released. I think the whole issue of why MS has let IE rot from the users’ perspective is something a bit too tricky to address without direct quotes from MS employees (possibly executives), because there are a lot of different possible reasons. On the other hand, the reason that developers working with Mozilla would incorporate features from other browsers like Opera and go for a trimmed-down profile is quite obvious: it’s the only way to even try to compete with IE.
Unfortunately, FireBird/Fox is going to have to settle on a name for more than 6 months before anyone puts some muscle behind it to sell people on the thing. It would probably also help if they could register a top-level domain for FireFox instead of forcing people to go to a mozilla page. That would simply make it easier for people to recommend the browser to friends, family, and co-workers face-to-face.
of course ms cannot prevent you from using firefox. but it certainly does prevent you from using other word processors.
How? WordPerfect and many other word processors work great on Windows machines, and many of them (especially WordPerfect) handle Word files quite well.
and it will prevent you from using another OS through DRM and TCPA.
Yes, because we all know that TCPA is evil, as is DRM. Oh, and TCPA has been TCG for over a year now, and most of it’s major promoters are invested in Unix and Linux (HP, IBM, Sun, Intel, AMD, Sony). I’ve got to say, though, that you probably can’t find another group of corporations with as much antitrust action under their belts in the last 100 years as that one.
you want to watch a DVD? so, use longhorn.
Yes, because nVidia, ATI, Sony, and everyone else on that list of promoters and contributers for TCG that distributes DVDs and DVD software is really interested in subsidizing Microsoft.
html and tcp/ip are FREE techniques, anyone can implement them so there is a real chance to win a (still unfair) competition.
That all depends on what you’re competing for and what you think it will take to win it. Microsoft’s TCP/IP stack still has BSD’s name all over it, and their browser still supports a large amount of the html standards. Tabbed browsing, content/popup blocking, and other features are where the browser war is being fought today, and who knows where it will be tomorrow. The real issue is letting people know they have options, because most of those people that started using Internet Explorer because it was bundled with Windows are pissed about popups and adware and every other problem that comes with a base IE install.
If you’re talking about something else, that’s fine, because you’re right, there’s still plenty of room to fight. In the end, that’s what Microsoft’s really afraid of. They know better; they were once the little guy.
and yes – you’re right: it is not ms’s fault that they “use” their monopoly (maybe i would do it too). it’s the fault of wrong political decisions. in a really free market, something like microsoft should not happen. or another possibility: monopolies are the true nature of free markets…
The latter is the case, and the reason why the US does not have a completely free market economy. It’s a capitalist economy to be sure, but there’s a long history of antitrust action. I don’t necessarily agree with it, and think that many areas of law, including antitrust, have a great deal of problems handling technology issues especially. For instance, when the antitrust actions were brought against Microsoft in the US, they had a miniscule share in the internet browser market; by the time the actions finished, though, the market turned completely in MS’ favour, and in the end whether they had acted legally or illegally in terms of how they shipped the browser with the OS, the law would have done little to stop the reversal in browser market share unless they had managed to stop Microsoft from shipping a browser at all.
Nope. They might be a standard, but what good are they if we don’t know how they work? They’re a closed standard. Get over it. RTF (rich text format) and HTML/XML can do 90% of what users want and they’re free / open standards, yet do we use them? Think about it.
Actually, I meant to say “RTF (rich text format) and HTML/XML can do 90% of what users want and they’re free / open standards, so why aren’t we using them? Think about it.”
Actually Thom we are buying it by the litre. You have some old information
Re standards, RTF is pretty good if you need to edit. Else PDF is great since all the platforms will read it.
Microsoft hasn’t made a change to most of the Office formats that broke compatability with older versions since moving to Office 97 from 95. This means that documents produced in 97, 2000, XP, and 2003 are almost all interchangeable, and after the outcry from end-users over the changes in 97, many of them can be used in 95 as well. Additionally, there are a handful of competitors that have been able to produce and consume these formats for quite some time (especially Corel’s office suite, which even has some support for macros embedded in MS Office-generated documents).
If these formats are so interchangeable, then why have I heard more than once the excuse, from one business to another, both using MS Word, “We were not able to open your document with our version of Word”? I know that in at least one such instance, the sending company was using Word from Office 2000.
While supposedly maintaining “backword compatability”, Microsoft has changed the .doc format with each new version such that if you are using an older version of MS Word you may not be able to open documents generated with newer versions. On the other hand, I received, as a gift, some wrenches (both metric and US) in 1981 that still fit nuts manufactured today.
And at least in the case of OpenOffice.org, I know that their ability to import MS documents has not been because of published specs from Microsoft. I know you made no claim that they were published, but I deem the concept of “secret standards” to be worthless, while you seem to allow it some value.
I won’t attempt to dispute your version of how some of these standards came about, because it does not change what I expect, functionally, from a standard (features that I don’t get with Microsoft products).
I think openoffice.org is doing good job and openoffice file format should be accepted as a standard.
Why? It can’t even do basic things like annotation and revision tracking.