Big guns in the software industry are massing behind OpenDocument as government customers show more interest in open-source alternatives to Microsoft’s desktop software. IBM and Sun convened a meeting on Friday to discuss how to boost adoption of the standardized document format for office applications. The ODF Summit brought together representatives from a handful of industry groups and from at least 13 technology companies, including Oracle, Google and Novell.
Now is the best time to get rid of proprietary file formats. Free your data so it can be read by any OpenDocument-compatible software. 🙂
I tried to use the lastest KOffice (1.4x?) to save a rather simple expense-breakout spreadsheet to openoffice format. It seemed to work great but could not be read by openoffice.
It’s a nice idea for a common format, but everyone needs to get things right before it can be recommended for it’s open nature.
KOffice 1.3 to Openoffice 1.1 format was more of the same, I had to redo an hour of work on that error.
I’d love to use a lighter,faster product most of the time and still have compatibility with the full-service programs, but we aren’t there yet!
That’s a bummer. I hope you reported it as a bug, though, so that the rest of us won’t get that same problem 😉
I’m just hoping that all the major players will be “forced” to support ODF; that would really level the playing field and then we could finally see true competition based on technical merits. I’m still crossing my fingers. Which kinda makes it hard to type…
One thing ODF doesn’t cover is function names inside spreadsheets, so they aren’t going to be very portable for a while yet.
Or maybe your problem was something else. KOffice’s weakest point (for me) is its import/export filters.
I tried to use the lastest KOffice (1.4x?) to save a rather simple expense-breakout spreadsheet to openoffice format. It seemed to work great but could not be read by openoffice.
I had the same problem going back and forth between gnumeric and OO. It turns out that I got much better results saving/importing in excel format than in trying to save/read directly in gnumeric or OO formats. I guess they are much better at understanding the ms format than anyone elses.
what about odf-support for firefox and co.?
wouldn’t it be great to be able to create a document and put it online “as is” without any modifications?
in my opinion, this would be another step towards becoming a truly universal document format, usable everywhere.
also, it can’t be that difficult to add odf-rendering to browsers… in the end, it’s just another xml-dialect and probably a lot easier to implement than html-support, because it is brand-new and standardized, unlike html, where you have 90’s spaghetti code, quirks modes and so on…
well, just my 2 cents…
christian
That sounds like a good idea, but it have to be developed quickly. I would be very surprised if Microsoft won’t do something similar with their new XML format. But I expect that that would only run in IE.
You don’t hear many people use the word “Revolution” to describe what is happening in computing today, but that’s what this is… a Revolution. And, it’s only getting better.
Now that these options are gaining wide acceptance it’s becoming more and more important for those of us that support OSS to continue doing so.
The benefits of ODF alone are huge. The big benefit here aside from long term financial savings is accessibility. Having a document that can be accessed in the same way now as well as 100 years from now is very big.
Go ODF!
Everybody can chip in in this movement. But it takes guts. This is the Lions Cage.
How? Simply by starting to use .odf. Where- and whenever you send a document then use the .odf instead of the .doc format.
It will be struggle. You’ll get feedback like – What’s this? I can’t read that. Resend in .doc format! Or .pdf. So you do that – this time. Next time you again send in .odf instead .doc format. And you keep pounding, pounding and pounding on it until the feedback turns to… silence.
MS Office will eventually support .odf. MS might even try to proprietarize the format – as they did with HTML – for the lockin effect. But if MS doesn’t shape up then there’ll be 3rd party plugins that behave.
Freedom doesn’t always come cheap. The reward is getting them MSOffice shackles off and acceptance of Linux with native office packages on the desktop.
For now we need to wait for the .odf format to solidify.
I find it very difficult for odf (OASIS) to take off,
without the develpment of an MS Office ODF import/export plugin. How can companies and gonvernemnents adobt ODF without being eble to apply to their existing investements (MS Office). Lets don’t use odf standard as a way to bring opensource monopoly (OpenOffice/KOffice) in office suites, basicaly for 2 reasons:
1) This will never happen, its just ODF that will die
2) Its equaly unfair to the exiasting monopoly of Microsoft.
Microsoft will never develop this plugin (they don’t want ODF to take off!), so its the OASIS and the open source community that should had done it already.
I think the plan is is the governments get behind this Microsoft will follow. Heck the press alone on how MS is not going to support this may get others to download an Alterinative. Or Use a product that will open ODF. There are free alterinatives it’s no different then downloading and a installing PDF reader.
The governemnets will go easier though, if no extra cost/retraining is required for moving to the new standar. There would be absolutely no opposition in Massachusetts’ if a reliable opensourced plugin for MSOffice was out.
The cost of retraining/abandoning MS office is so high that adabtation of teh format will face oposition and critisism everywhere in the world. MS knows that so they will keep their taugh policy against ODF.