OK, so I admit that I am baiting Charlie with that title, but I would like to ask a few questions to get a sense of everyone's investment in open source vs. proprietary file formats. For those who haven't followed it, here's the backstory (as I understand it):
As an answer to proprietary file formats (particularly Microsoft Word's .doc and Excel's .xls), the open source community has long sought a standard, universal, xml-based file format for office software documents. One leading contender has been the open document format or ".odf" from Open Office suite. Here the standards were developed by Sun, but implemented by the Open Office development community. The open document format received ISO certification in November of 2006. Odf is used by applications like Open Office, Google docs, NeoOffice, and IBM's Lotus Symphony.
Meanwhile, as a counter, Microsoft has sought to create a rival universal proprietary standard. Named "Office Open XML" MS's standard is quite bloated and originally given little chance of gaining ISO acceptance. Yet, amid great controversy, it recently did just that.
There's more to the story (this background has been unfolding for several years), and I would welcome additions to help flesh that our further. But in a few weeks we're planning to open the 2008 Computers and Writing Conference on this very topic. My question: Are open, universally-accessible formats important to you? If so, why? And could you not live in a world with both ooxml and .odf?
Format Warz...do they matter?
I guess I just need a break from research papers, cranky students, thesis reviewing, and a major presentation due to the Provost tomorrow...so I'll jump in and start a debate with people I don't know. (I promise to buy beer or coffee to anyone I tick off.)
Sure, Bob, format warz matter...People expect the products they use to work when called upon. When documents won't open because .docx or .xlsx files are sent to students/faculty/colleagues who aren't tech savvy or don't have the proper converters, the issue matters -- vendor politics and Microsoft's incessant need to have a stranglehold on software aside.
From what I remember, ODF was granted ISO standards in 2006. Yes? Now China, from what I hear, is proposing its own national document standard -- the Uniform Office Format. Yikes...3 options?!
Document harmonization would be great from a pedagogical standpoint (as an author, I know I'll most likely always have to be linked to MS in some way). Document harmonization might happen in the future. Maybe.
I'm always in favor of Open Source. The instructor or the department's tech needs combined with the pedagogical focus of the class are paramount. I love Moodle LMS (as do my students) because we don't have the huge tech issues
with Moodle that we do with BBCe. Not just the cross-platform concerns; BBCe/WebCT doesn't work well with AOL and Comcast (the two broadband providers most of my students have) and it forces students to use our campus's highly unreliable IT system.
I love having my students learn 'real' tech stuff -- Wordpress, Zotero, Digg, Google Docs, and such. They're ready to accept changes in tech once they learn non-proprietary software.
So, here's my end of rant: There are information literacy issues to consider. If document standards are selected that are based/biased solely toward vendors that supply the applications, aren't we simply creating (or helping to create) a generation of brand users rather than tech users who are information literate?
I'll start collecting spare change from under my couch cushions and car seats for that beer/coffee...
Standards that Last
I read an interview last week with TeX creator Donald Knuth. He suggested that while TeX has been very stable as a format and ideal for some uses, commercial applications did have features he thought OSS projects might never match. I was surprised to read that he can't imagine switching from MS Office for some tasks.
Knuth said TeX was good because it didn't try to be multipurpose. It was for academic writing, nothing more. Of course, it is used for a lot more. The feature set, though, is locked and has been for years. You can't add anything to TeX, at Knuth's insistence.
Think about TeX and GIMP vs. InDesign and Photoshop. There are some things when TeX is "sufficient" (academic papers, certainly), but I would never use the OSS combo to create a full-color catalog.
New features do require changing file formats. The shift from ASCII to Unicode would even require a file change, technically, unless you stick with ASCII characters and entity codes instead of the actual characters in a file.
Every file format is doomed, in some way.
I am, however, sick of MS changing formats without adding features. There is no reason at all that I should have to buy a new version of Word or install a convertor just to open files from students. (I ended up using Pages and doing a "Save As..." because installing Office 2008 on my Mac would cost me lots of VBA macros.)
As long as there is a "Wow! I need that!" feature, I don't mind a file format change. I simply worry we are making "XML" formats into a great and wonderful mythology that will eventually disappoint us. We've all seen this happen with file formats. (How many variations of JPEG, GIF, and TIFF are there? And software has to support them all.)
Think about TeX and GIMP
You would just be choosing the wrong oss combo. Scribus and gimp or inkscape can create very nice full-color catalogs.
format eVolution
Though all (including MS) would have benefited from a single (and by most accounts concise and elegant) document standard, i.e. ODF, the pace of change in document production and exchange will be only modestly slowed by having two standards.
The OS community has quickly produced XSL translators that (since the formats are standardized and accessible in XML) ultimately will be ubiquitous, free and even invisible. When combined with cloud apps and storage (with server-side transformations), the only question will be what format do you want...?
To offer a different, though related, format digression, I'm beginning to wonder when the hegemony of the 8.5*11 page will decline. I recently heard Terry Kay muse about writing for the Kindle.
We look forward to seeing you all in Athens.
baiting
That seems a contradiction, then. You already know what I think, so why are you baiting me if you don't want me to respond? ;-)
Well, I hope the better standard will win out. That being said, I think we are stuck with OOXML being around for a long time. But there's no doubt in mind that we are in the for the format wars, but not in the way that I believe you are thinking. More like with the browser wars. Microsoft has every reason not to fully support OOXML between versions, but to change it, leave bugs in it, and do whatever it takes to make certain that file format incompatibility is still an issue.
BTW: If I'm not mistaken, the history of ODF is that it is based on the earlier OpenOffice file format implementations--thus Sun deserves credit for that--but that OASIS took it over in 2002. I have no doubt that Sun has continued to have influence over the standard as an OASIS participant, but other interested parties have had opportunity to assist in ODF's refinement (I think even Microsoft has been or still is a member of OASIS). The differentiation is important because OOXML has not been reworked by an open standards organization--that is until now, and it remains to be seen whether or not ISO can improve what is considered to be an awful XML specification.
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Charlie | cyberdash
Scribus and gimp or inkscape
No doubt. Although GIMP's traditional lack of CMYK support makes it a worse choice for high quality, consistent color printing. Have they added support for it now?
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Charlie | cyberdash
baiting redux
Charlie, you're right about ODF based on the earlier OpenOffice file format and OASIS.
While I too hope that the better standard will win out, I think of the industry with which I'm most familiar (communications and print media). In those fields, a standard seems to live forever. Many times, the standards aren't particularly well thought out -- which I guess works in Microsoft's and Adobe's favor.
At least Adobe has been reasonable in moving PDF to ISO review (I've switched to FoxIt and like it very much).
I teach composition and communication courses. For composition classes, from a pedagogical standpoint, I think ODF is great. With communication courses, especially for those who are headed toward high end ad agencies and graphics houses, for the moment OOXML seems to be winning out.
It may be that "vendor locking" is what eventually drives the decision rather than ISO improving the "awful XML specification" you rightly describe. A vendor lock happens quite frequently on university campuses, especially ones like mine where state budgets are ridiculously tight. MS is certainly biased in its reasoning for having ISO standards for OOXML -- after all, MS submitted its own standards rather than engage in conversation. Railroading standards is far different than having OOXML subject to review under planned standards.
Back to writing pedagogy in all this: vendor locking seems to me to infringe upon a professor's academic freedom to teach those tools s/he sees fit. If OOXML is incompatible with what we need or have to do in the classroom, then ODF must be taught. Perhaps we need to consider what our purpose is for having students use a certain application first, then plan whether ODF or OOXML is a better choice to learn.
Scribus is no InDesign
Scribus is not supported by most print houses, nor does it support enough import formats.
The reality is that publishing uses InDesign and QuarkXPress. A few academic presses support LaTeX, as do many technical publications.
I tried Scribus a year ago with students and the number of technical glitches was simply unacceptable -- especially on Mac systems. GhostScript problems, EPS errors, and dialog boxes with messages "trimmed" on the right-hand side made the program amateurish at best.
Favorite error in Scribus 1.3: "Error: You cannot use P--" with no idea what "P--" was because the dialog text didn't wrap and you couldn't resize the message to contain more.
Sorry, but OSS is sometimes just not ready for heavy use. Sometimes, commercial applications are worth the money -- said as a programmer with a serious love for Linux and BSD.
Somewhat important
Bob asked "Are open, universally-accessible formats important to you? If so, why? And could you not live in a world with both ooxml and .odf?"
If this were a survey question and the choices were:
__ unimportant
__ somewhat important
__ important
__ critically important
I'd choose somewhat important.
It would be excellent if there were one standard that ruled them all, one true format. But whatever it was would become hegemonic and it would make coders who wanted to do something different for whatever reason chafe.
Coders don't chafe well. They code. Microsoft bucks perceived limits of set standards by creating bloviated code in a hurry and because of their market share that code permeates the file landscape quickly.
OpenOffice offers an alternative. But if everyone, even Microsoft and Apple, accepted .odf, then very quickly many would dislike .odf because there would be things they want to do and sticking to .odf would hold them back. So someone would do an iteration of open office that slightly breaks .odf standards.
What I really like is reasonable translation. When students send me a .docx and I can't open it in Word 2000, I send it back and they have to resend in .rtf or something I can read.
I guess I'm so used to "save as" as an alternative and to the courtesy involved in figuring out what people one is working with can read, that I'm not too concerned about a single universally-accessible format existing.
I don't believe it's possible to make that happen or to enforce it. I don't believe, in the end, it's particular practical.
As long as there are reasonable alternatives and things that can be done, that's enough.
Nick Carbone
OOXML specs
Gotta love this strip from Bazaar Cathedral:
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Charlie | cyberdash
every choice has a bias
Diane asks a qood question:
If document standards are selected that are based/biased solely toward vendors that supply the applications, aren't we simply creating (or helping to create) a generation of brand users rather than tech users who are information literate?
I'm not sure that this is happening, despite compromises on OOXML. That is, I don't think standards are chosen based "solely" on what vendors supply.
We're already "brand" users. I prefer Firefox to Explorer. Apple to Windows. OpenOffice to Word. But I use Outlook, have a pc laptop and use word a lot with that.
I have to be multibrand; I choose to be multibrand, using a mix of open source and closed source products and file formats depending upon a variety of things: what I'm given, what I can choose, what others are using, what I want to do.
I think most consumers today --especially younger consumers-- trend this way. Brand loyalty doesn't exist the way it used. I also think that richer literacy comes from this habit, this ability to jump brands and formats, to move among brands of formats, the ability to recognize strengths and weaknesses of brands and formats.
I guess I want reasonably aligned standards, not rigidly imposed standards, no matter who is imposing them or for what reason or ethos.
Nick Carbone