Completely native?
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| tmkinn May 13, 2009 7:22 AM EDT |
As I see it, there are to possible reasons for this: 1. The OpenOffice implementation of the MSO native format isn't good enough. This, I guess, can be checked by a person who sits down to compare to similar documents, one written in MS Office and one in OpenOffice. 2. M$ is actually sabotage the rendering of OpenOffice-made documents, on purpose. This, I guess, could be testet by removing all sorts of trackable information from the OpenOffce-document stating it's actually being written in OpenOffice. If MSO don't know, the two documents would look the same. If not, reason 1 is probably the case here. I don't know how to do this, but you seem to be a smart person, so if you can manage this, go ahead, and write the result of the test here if you go for it. Good luck! -- tmkinn |
| lacoute May 13, 2009 7:34 AM EDT |
With regard to M$ history, 2 seems more probable to me, although 1 can also stem from the fact that M$ does not disclose its MSO native format, making harder for any competitor... to compete. So, 1 and 2 probably are M$ weapons that serve a unique objective: M$ does not want to play fair in the first place (why on earth would they want to do such a thing???). In fact, 2 may not be as easy to detect as you describe. If I were M$, I'd design both the MSO file format and the editor in such a way that any single tiny deviation in the way things like formatting properties are stored leads to catastrophic rendering errors. So, there's no need to actually check if the file comes from a "genuine" office. Just my 2c. |
| tuxchick May 13, 2009 7:43 AM EDT |
Rob Weir tells all, and yes, MS is up to their old tricks: http://www.robweir.com/blog/ |
| keithcu May 13, 2009 9:07 AM EDT |
The article appears to about the use of Microsoft's file format, so the problem is #1. The OpenOffice team needs to keep working on improving the import/export converter. Maybe its 95% so most people don't see problems, but I have. |
| tuxchick May 13, 2009 11:33 AM EDT |
Rob Weir says it's mostly #2. He's a bit more clueful on this issue than most folks. |
| Sander_Marechal May 13, 2009 12:18 PM EDT |
tuxchick: That makes no sense. #1 is about writing binary MS-Office files (doc, xls, ppt) in OOo and opening them in MS-Office. #2 is about opening ODF files directly in MS-Office. The original article is clearly about #1Quoting:Our sworn enemy is M$ Office Suite which just refuses to read and display the documents created on OpenOffice properly, even though those documents are being saved as M$ native format (XP/2003 format) I'm pretty sure #2 is true, but it's not what is happening to the author of the article. |
| tuxchick May 13, 2009 12:31 PM EDT |
Thanks sander, my brain read it backwards. Sheesh. Must be a coffee deficit or something. |
| hkwint May 13, 2009 4:37 PM EDT |
Quoting:#2 is about opening ODF files directly in MS-Office. As far as I understood it's about opening .doc / .xls files created by OOo in MS Office. Might it be the case that newer versions of MS Office deliberately børk MS-Office files created by OOo? |
| gus3 May 13, 2009 4:54 PM EDT |
Quoting:Might it be the case that newer versions of MS Office deliberately børk MS-Office files created by OOo?If that is not the case, I'll eat my hat. |
| tracyanne May 13, 2009 5:32 PM EDT |
It's quite clear to me that Microsoft is deliberately sabotaging interoperability by being deliberately pedantic about standards specifications, when it suits them. |
| caitlyn May 13, 2009 5:43 PM EDT |
...and it ALWAYS suits them. |
| mdeguzis May 13, 2009 6:06 PM EDT |
Is this author brain dead, or does he not know what wine is , or the commericially support Crossover Office? It flawlessly runs M$ office 2007 and 2003, I mean COME ON, how does he not know about that.???? wow, see its people like this that give linux a bad name |
| Sander_Marechal May 13, 2009 7:20 PM EDT |
Ah yes, because shelling out for expensive MS-Office licenses makes sooo much sense when you're trying to convert away from Microsoft. |
| gus3 May 13, 2009 7:36 PM EDT |
Quoting:...and it ALWAYS suits them.Except with ODF. The standard clearly dictates spreadsheet cell address format, and Microsoft did not follow the standard. And let us not forget about their lack of PNG alpha layers, proprietary extensions to HTML and JavaScript, and their own internal incompatibilities with their published standards... Quoting:Ah yes, because shelling out for expensive MS-Office licenses makes sooo much sense when you're trying to convert away from Microsoft.When documents have a lot of scripting, as spreadsheets or text documents with some dialog forms, it may not be possible to ditch MSOffice. However, it can make a lot of sense to run MSOffice on an OS that is more stable and secure. |
| caitlyn May 13, 2009 8:41 PM EDT |
gus, let me rephrase. It always suits Microsoft to ignore and subvert standards. Customer lock-in is always good for business. |
| hkwint May 13, 2009 8:46 PM EDT |
Quoting:Customer lock-in is always good for business. I guess you should add: "But only for Microsofts business, not for the users business." |
| techiem2 May 13, 2009 8:46 PM EDT |
Of course, because your typical user will create a spreadsheet in excel and save it as odf cuz their friend set them up with OO at home and showed them how, then when they open it at home and find it "broken" they'll determine that OO is obviously to blame because everyone knows that MSO is the "best" and therefore can't be to blame, unlike that free thing their friend installed for them. |
| caitlyn May 13, 2009 9:06 PM EDT |
hkwint: In the context of my original comment that should have been understood. Microsoft does what's good for Microsoft. |
| keithcu May 13, 2009 9:30 PM EDT |
The problem is that the MS Office formats are insanely complicated, and so the OpenOffice team needs to do more work on it to increase the compatibility. I've seen problems, and so am not surprised that power users in enterprises who make complicated documents find things that are missing. |
| jdixon May 13, 2009 9:46 PM EDT |
> The problem is that the MS Office formats are insanely complicated,... I'd say that's both a fair and absolutely accurate assessment. :) They also apparently vary with the version of Office, and are not completely compatible between versions. |
| keithcu May 13, 2009 10:20 PM EDT |
> I'd say that's both a fair and absolutely accurate assessment. :) It should be, I was a programmer in the Office team at MS ;-) Yes, the formats change over time. Each new version of Office added new features, and so changed the file format to support reading / writing those new features. Several times, they would make major changes, like supporting Unicode in Office 97. While OpenOffice does a quite good job with DOC, XLS, PPT, they still have bits to do there. And they have a lot to do in the Access format. And they should also support Publisher. Etc. If I ran Sun / Oracle, I would double or triple the size of the OpenOffice engineering team. Last I heard Sun had only 30 programmers working on it. Microsoft has more than twice that much working on IE alone! It is almost like the people who fund OpenOffice don't appreciate the importance of it. My biggest complain with free software is that many of the people who proclaim they support it don't invest very much. A big part of Microsoft's success is the incompetence of its competitors. |
| tracyanne May 14, 2009 7:05 AM EDT |
Quoting:Last I heard it had only 30 programmers. Microsoft has more than twice that much working on IE alone! And IE is still a pigs ear, I'm impressed. But yes the OO team should be bigger, and there should be people working on interoperability with Publisher. |
| Arion May 14, 2009 9:24 AM EDT |
I'm not sure I get the issue here. If the entire company is switching over to OpenOffice.org then I fail to see the need for compatibility with MS Office. If you need to share documents between multiple organisations then use PDF. OOo has a nice PDF export button, and other word processors have add-ons to export to PDF. If however the is a legitimate need ( as opposed to familiarity-based-want ) for MS Office, then why not run it under Wine or Crossover? |
| Sander_Marechal May 14, 2009 9:43 AM EDT |
Arion: There isn't a legitimate need for MS-Office, but there may be a legitimate need to create documents in MS-Office's native binary formats. There's a difference. |
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