Is ODF the new RTF or the new .DOC? Can it be both? Do we need either? - O'Rei... - The Diigo Meta page

• 28 Jul 09
  

  Graham Perrin

  ODF HTML standard XML RTF doc Microsoft binary OpenOffice.org FOSS Sun IBM dataloss Portable Document Format 2009 Office Open XML World Wide Web Consortium

  • 

    
    

    Again, the centre requirement is the document packaging
    mechanism, enhanced to allow unpackaging and web service. The following
    diagram, though almost uselessly general, lists various components that are
    entirely common to both websites and XML-in-ZIP compound documents: why are we
    squabbling in such minute detail on solutions to XML-in-ZIP formats that do
    nothing to address this tectonic rift between documents and websites? Because
    we allow our expectations to be dictated by menu bars: something that currently
    has a Save As.. or Open menu item is real...

  • Is ODF the new RTF or the new .DOC? Can it be both? Do we need either?
  • 87 more annotations...
  • • <!-- RSPEAK_START -->By Rick Jelliffe
      October 21, 2008
    • recently wrote an article concerning the position of ODF,
      Open XML and PDF
    • Jon Bosak
    • Jon's public writings are rare, well-considered and
      always of interest.
    • Jon
      has been exemplary
    • he has a side, he does not take
      sides
    • a potted history of the document format landscape over last 25 years

    • One Thousand Islands

      
      
      

      At the start of the 1990s, the document landscape looked a
      little like this:

      
      
      

      In the above diagram, each of the bubbles represents
      numerous formats

    • One Thousand Islands

      
      
      

      At the start of the 1990s, the document landscape looked a
      little like this:

      
      
      

      In the above diagram, each of the bubbles represents
      numerous formats

    • Consolidation

      
      
      

      By the mid 1990s, this had changed, in a period of massive
      consolidation as the web, Microsoft and Adobe starved rivals of oxygen

    • Consolidation

      
      
      

      By the mid 1990s, this had changed, in a period of massive
      consolidation as the web, Microsoft and Adobe starved rivals of oxygen

    • Standard Generalized Markup Language SGML consolidated many
      divergent capabilities of existing markup languages
    • • 
      
      
      

      One fairly unheralded aspect of this was the rise in the publishing
      community, including high-end vendors, of an awareness of the benefits of
      co-operation and standardization of different kinds. SGML was born out of such
      cooperation at ISO

    • • 
      
      
      

      One fairly unheralded aspect of this was the rise in the publishing
      community, including high-end vendors, of an awareness of the benefits of
      co-operation and standardization of different kinds.

    • Realignment

      
      
      

      By the end of the 1990s, there had been a realignment of the
      rationales for the formats: in particular, HTML had moved from the dumb end of
      town into having its own compelling rationale

    • Realignment

      
      
      

      By the end of the 1990s, there had been a realignment of the
      rationales for the formats: in particular, HTML had moved from the dumb end of
      town into having its own compelling rationale

    • 

      
      
      
      

      Of these formats, Microsoft controlled .DOC, .RTF, and was
      actively involved at W3C in XML and HTML development. PDF was controlled by
      Adobe.

    • 

      
      
      
      

      Of these formats, Microsoft controlled .DOC, .RTF, and was
      actively involved at W3C in XML and HTML development. PDF was controlled by
      Adobe.

    • Digestion/Stagnation

      
      
      

      The early part of the 2000s was a period of extraordinary
      growth for applications of XML, matched by stagnation in the other areas.

    • Digestion/Stagnation

      
      
      

      The early part of the 2000s was a period of extraordinary
      growth for applications of XML, matched by stagnation in the other areas.

      
      
      

      The dynamism of the open standards was in marked contrast to
      the stagnation of the corporate-controlled formats.

    • to prevent HTML from taking
      market share
    • Microsoft adopted a policy of containment
    • notoriously with an unwillingness
      to support CSS thoroughly
    • to prevent HTML from taking
      market share from .DOC or even .RTF systems:
    • notoriously with an unwillingness
      to support CSS thoroughly
    • either import or export to a foreign format, but not
      both
    • provide either import or export to a foreign format, but not
      both
    • remain non-standard.
    • animation areas
      (e.g. Flash)

    • Standardization

      
      
      

      In the late noughties, a period of standardization broke
      through, with all the major formats being taken by their stakeholders through
      industry consortia and on to ISO.

    • Standardization

      
      
      

      In the late noughties, a period of standardization broke
      through, with all the major formats being taken by their stakeholders through
      industry consortia and on to ISO.

    • The enormous controversy over the standardization of OOXML
      comes largely down to, in my opinion, two different views of the emerging
      landscape.

      
      
      

    • The enormous controversy over the standardization of OOXML
      comes largely down to, in my opinion, two different views of the emerging
      landscape.

      
      
      

    • Business as Usual

      
      
      

      The first landscape (lets call it business as usual)
      sees ODF as superseding RTF

    • In other words, the primary
      role of RTF is for medium quality
    • OOXML distinguishes itself from ODF by being DOC-in-XML-in-ZIP, with an
      emphasis on fidelity to a particular rich feature set rather than
      RTF-in-XML-in-ZIP, with an emphasis on interchange between systems with a basic
      feature set.
      

    • The Bermuda Triangle

      
      
      

      The second landscape (lets call it the Bermuda triangle)
      sees ODF as replacing .DOC, with RTF becoming swallowed by both ODF and HTML. I
      think this is the landscape anticipated by people who don't see much value in
      IS29500 or multiple targeted fornats.
      

    • This second approach has a lot to commend it: HTML really
      does supersede RTF as being the interchange format for simple rich text.

    • Getting There

      
      
      

      My own view is that the Bermuda triangle would be preferable,
      and it may be where we end up,

    • standardize business as usual
    • but that the only way there is to first
    • hope of moving
      forward, but only if ODF, HTML and even PDF are significant improved, with
      proper vendor support:
    • HTML needs to be developed further.
    • ODF (2.0) needs to be re-developed with a view to better
      supporting alternatives and graceful degradation.
    • Microsoft has its XPS format (another XML-in-ZIP),
    • PDF has three challengers, none particularly serious at the
      moment:
    • there is a mooted Chinese push for the OASIS
      UOML (Unstructured Objects Markup Language: a simple modern PDL) to be
      standardized.
    • Adobe has some
      similar technology (MARS)
    • various efforts to standardize profiles of PDF
    • the challenge is for PDF with embedded SVG,
      and for ODF (2.0) with embedded PDF alternatives, and so on.
    • So what are common threads required
    • if we are to move from business
      as usual to the Bermuda triangle?
    • Support for a common next-generation document packaging
      (XML-in-ZIP) format to be assertively supported by W3C, ODF (2.0) and
      son-of-PDF.
    • Ubquitous support for unvarnished SVG Tiny, MathML, and XForms by
      W3C, ODF (2.0) and son-of-PDF.
    • A co-operative carve up of RTF's functionality between HTML and
      ODF 2.0.
    • with an emphasis on graceful degradation
    • A real effort to add support for features in IS29500 and UOF etc
      to ODF 2.0,
    • More support for richer XML media and specialist content types.
    • down the path
      towards the Bermuda triangle.
    • Carrots and sticks to entice and direct Microsoft
    • these are just for word processing

      • 

        Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29

        !
    • The Real Present and the Real Future
    • the looming
      challenge for document standards is
    • in integrating the packaged world of documents with the fragmented world of web
      resources.

      • 

        Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29

        This is very thought-provoking.
    • Page description files with external
      resources.
    • Documents that can be websites.
    • Arbitrarily nestable documents.
    • Web applications that are single
      files and editable as applications by word processors
    • in this vision, Open
      Office or MS Word (or perhaps MS Powerpoint) should be able to open up and edit
    • or their successors.

      • 

        Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29

        I imagine a gradual increase in awareness of potential benefits of WebArchive — within and without WebKit.
    • a .WAR web archive file
    • almost uselessly general

      • 

        Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29

        :-)
    • not an outlandish vision: there is piecemeal
      support for many parts already
    • We need to be able to have our cakes and eat them.

      • 

        Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29

        +1
    • support plurality
    • I don't have high expectations of leadership from many other
      groups.
    • FOSS people often are concerned with pioneering individual efforts
    • rather than collective efforts.
    • the large
      vendors or open source projects which straddle both documents and the web, such
      as Sun, IBM, and Microsoft, are still (I think) focussed on the dubious
      delights of business as usual and the Bermuda triangle

    • Towards Web-able Document Formats

      
      
      

      So what is there that we can do to nudge us in the direction
      of this large-scale interoperability?

    • encourage them to support plurality
      (modularity, alternatives, feature harmonization with each others standards,
      graceful degradation) and the dissolution of the great website/document divide.
    • Participate in the most congenial
      standards body to your interests,
    • foster good reasons (carrots and sticks) so that the large developers
      see value in this kind of enabling standard.
    • make browser
      plugins that locate resources in an unzipped XML-in-ZIP document delivered
      from a vanilla web server
    • enhance the existing XML-in-ZIP formats to cope with web
      formats (ODF and OOXML with CSS and SVG Tiny, for example) better
    • round-trip
    • lots to do —unblock
      the plumbing:
• 24 Oct 08
  

  Marc Lijour

  ooxml doc format standard ITC

• 

  Gary Edwards

  Jon Bosak, who founded the XML and ODF efforts among many other achievements, recently wrote an article concerning the position of ODF, Open XML and PDF Jon's public writings are rare, well-considered and always of interest. As with other Sun-affiliated people in recent times, Jon has been exemplary in that even though he has a side, he does not take sides. I think I can agree with much of what he says, though I would note Don't forget about HTML.

  odf ooxml html-css-svg

  • Unless governments and other stakeholders can get beyond the
    narrow view of documents and interoperability as merely being exchanging data
    from one similar application to another, and move towards the view that
    documents and web resources need to be end points on the same interoperable
    spectrum, we are selling ourselves short.

    
    
    

    It is here that standards bodies should be more help: but I
    don't know that they can be unless there is a stronger commitment to supporting
    each others' visions better. W3C's mission statement is concerned with bringing
    the web to its full potential, and W3C have traditionally used this to justify shying
    away from old-fashioned compound file-based issues: the lack of standards for
    the *SP (JSP, ASP, PHP) class of documents is a symptom of this, and it is
    notable that much of XML's uptake came because it did take care of practical
    production issues (i.e. issues pertaining to the document as it existed before
    being made available as a resource —PIs
    and entities—and after
    it had been retrieved—character
    encodings.) The industry consortia such as ECMA and OASIS are organized
    around interest groups on particular standards, which makes it easy to fob off
    discussion of interoperability. And even ISO, where the availability are
    topic-based working groups with very broad interests should provide a more
    workable home for this kind of effort, have a strong disinclination to seek out
    work that involves liaison with other standards groups: satisfying two sets of
    procedures and fitting in with two sets of deadlines and timetables can be
    impractical and disenfranchising for volunteers and small-business/academic experts.

    • 

      Gary Edwards on 2009-07-27

      Good question. Where are the governments on this issue? The Web is the future, and the language of he Web is HTML+ (HTML5, CSS3, SVG/Canvas, JavaScript).

Public Stiky Notes

• 
  Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29
  !
• 
  Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29
  This is very thought-provoking.
• 
  Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29
  I imagine a gradual increase in awareness of potential benefits of WebArchive — within and without WebKit.
• 
  Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29
  :-)
• 
  Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29
  +1
• 
  Gary Edwards on 2009-07-27
  Good question. Where are the governments on this issue? The Web is the future, and the language of he Web is HTML+ (HTML5, CSS3, SVG/Canvas, JavaScript).

Page Comments

• 
  Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29
  A fabulously written, very readable article with great insight.
• 
  Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29
  HIghlights are very disorderly (sorry) so be sure to read them as overlays to the original page.
• 
  Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29
  Quoting Gary Edwards, from his group on Diigo:
  
  "The Web is the future … HTML+ (HTML5, CSS3, SVG/Canvas, JavaScript)."
• 
  Graham Perrin on 2009-07-29
  Highlights here are not only disorderly, I now realise that many of my highlights are lost :-(

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