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Advogato: Proprietary File Formats conflict with Equal Opportunities
tags: standards
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Bob Sutor: What would ODF support for WordPress look like?
tags: ODF
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Lotus Solutions Development Lab: Lab 04: ODFDOM: Generating ODF Documents from a Notes Agent
tags: ODF, Notes
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Gwennel – A WYSIWYG and WYSIWYM editor
“Gwennel is a free WYSIWYG and WYSIWYM editor for Windows supporting natively the Open Document Format.”
tags: ODF
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OSOR.EU: Danish state administrations to use ODF
“The open standard ODF is recognised by many European member states. Next to Denmark it is also a national standard for public administrations in Belgium, Germany, France, Lithuania, Sweden and the Netherlands. ODF is recommended by Norway and it is one of the document standards at NATO.”
tags: ODF
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Copenhagen Post: State dumps Microsoft
“After years of deliberation, parliament has voted to stop using Microsoft’s Open Suite file format and switch to ‘Open Document Format’”
tags: ODF
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ZDNet: IBM launches Lotus Symphony 3 beta; Office alternatives pile up
“Jeannette Barlow, Symphony’s product manager, called the latest release of IBM’s free office suite ‘the most significant investment and enhancement from that original delivery.’”
tags: Symphony
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Denmark adopts ODF and PDF/A – ZDNet.co.uk
tags: ODF
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Integrating OpenDocument Format with Microsoft Office Document Formats
“In this guide, you’ll learn how to implement and integrate the OpenDocument Format into your environment where other file formats are also in use. Topics include advantages of ODF, best practices for common scenarios, developing an action plan for ODF adoption, document management systems, and collaborating with Microsoft Office users.”
tags: ODF
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Doc or Docx?
“For those using older versions of Microsoft Word, or other non-Microsoft word processing software, the new .docx format can be a real pain. It has caused dissension in some workplaces. “
tags: OOXML
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lpOD: Git repository access available!
lpOD is a powerful new python API for reading, writing or manipulating ODF documents.
tags: ODF
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
Salt and Fresh-ground Pepper (photo by author)
A major milestone was reached for the OASIS ODF TC today. The latest Committee Draft of ODF 1.2 Part 1 was sent out for a 60-day public review.
“What does this mean, and why should I care?” you might be asking. That’s a fair question.
First, a quick review of the OASIS standards approval process. The stages look like this:
- TC creates one or more Working Drafts
- A Working Draft may then additionally be approved as a Committee Draft
- A Committee Draft may then be additionally approved as a Public Review Draft
- After addressing received public comments, a Committee Draft may be approved as a Committee Specification
- Finally, a Committee Specification may be voted on by OASIS as an OASIS Standard
There is the possibility of iteration at most of these stages. So we’re not done with ODF 1.2. There is still work to be done, but we are certainly in the endgame now.
Also, it is important to remember that ODF 1.2 has been factored into three “parts”:
- Part 1 specifies the core schema
- Part 2 is OpenFormula (spreadsheet formulas)
- Part 3 defines the packaging model of ODF, and went out for public review back in November
Part 1 is by far the largest of the 3 parts, at 838 pages. Here is a high-level view of what is covered:
- Introduction
- Scope
- Document Structure
- Metadata
- Text Content
- Paragraph Elements Content
- Text Fields
- Text Indexes
- Tables
- Graphic Content
- Chart Content
- Database Front-end Document Content
- Form Content
- Common Content
- SMIL Animations
- Styles
- Formatting Elements
- Datatypes
- General Attributes
- Formatting Attributes
- Document Processing
- Conformance
- Appendix A. OpenDocument Relax NG Schema
- Appendix B. OpenDocument Metadata Manifest Ontology
- Appendix C. MIME Types and File Name Extensions (Non Normative)
- Appendix E. Recommend Usage of SMIL
- Appendix G. Acknowledgments (Non Normative)
If any of this interests you I’d encourage you to take a look at the draft and submit comments per the process defined in the public review announcement. I expect few will review the entire specification, but even if you can review only a chapter of particular interest to you, or even do a random page review, that will help. We’re looking for any reasonable feedback, from typographical errors, to ambiguities to new feature proposals. It is all good.
You can follow the incoming comments via the TC’s comment list, or unofficially via the ODFJIRA Twitter feed.
Now, I know that a vigorous public review, with many reviewers and many comments, is seen in some quarters as inconvenient and troublesome. It is thought better (in those circles) for standards to sail by, unread, unchallenged and unimplemented. I do not subscribe to that view. I ask you to not be gentle on the ODF 1.2 public review draft. Send us a lot of comments, so we know where we need to improve. Send us a lot of defect reports, so we know what to fix. Send us a lot of feature proposals, so we know what to do next. Short of joining the ODF TC directly, this is the best opportunity to give us feedback.
Sunset at First Encounter Beach, Eastham, Massachusetts (photo by Rob Weir)
As my readers have no doubt heard by now, today the EC cleared Oracle’s proposed acquisition of Sun Microsystems. This will undoubtedly have a significant impact on all Sun employees, many of whom I have worked with toward common purposes, on standards or open source projects, and whom I am proud to call my colleagues. I wish them all best of luck.
I know a little of what they will be going through in the weeks and months ahead, having worked for Lotus Development Corporation when IBM acquired it in 1995. So here is my unsolicited advice. Some day they will come. It may be in weeks, maybe months from now, maybe early in the morning, maybe after hours or on the weekend. But that day will come. They will come and strip the Sun logo from the wall in the lobby and replace it with the Oracle logo. Watch for that day, that narrow window of opportunity. Save the logo. It is your trophy, your icon, your totem. You will always be Sun. Don’t let them take it away.