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Archives for March 2009

Project BudBurst

2009/03/29 By Rob 2 Comments

Drift of Crocuses

The crocuses have bloomed here in Westford, one of first four flowers of my spring garden, the others being Galanthus nivalis (Snowdrops), Iris reticulata (dwarf Iris) and Eranthis hyemalis (Winter Aconite). But the crocuses are the most noticeable, since I have naturalized them in small drifts over the lawn.

For a few years I’ve been keeping a garden journal and have recorded the dates of first bloom for various flowers. So I see that for the snowdrops, the first bloom was March 14th this year, March 26th in 2008 and March 24th in 2007. Is this global warming? From just three observations, there is no way of telling.

But what if we had thousands of people record such information all over the country and pool their observations? Then we might be able to observe some interesting patterns. That is the idea of Project BudBurst, a distributed public field study run by a group of researches from UCAR, the Chicago Botanic Garden and the College of Forestry and Conservation of University of Montana. You sign up for a free account, state your location (US only, sorry) and pick from a list of local plant species that you can observe.

The emphasis is on widespread, native species, so the exotic bulbs I have in my garden won’t be of use. But I can report observations on things like dandelions or white pines. Depending on the type of plant, you report the date it reaches each of various “phenophases” such as first flower, fully flowering, pollen release, first ripe fruit, etc. Different types of plants will have different phenophases. Volunteers enter their observations which are then plotted, along with all the other data on Google Maps.

Aside from climate change research, I wonder if this might also be useful for predicting the onset of spring allergies?

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Filed Under: Gardening Tagged With: Crocus, Galanthus, Project BudBurst

Taking Control of Your Documents

2009/03/24 By Rob 12 Comments

How to free yourself from Microsoft Office dependency in three easy steps

The Objective

When you save a document in your word processor, your work is encoded in a particular file format. You often have a choice of formats that you can use, with names like DOC, DOCX, RTF, WPD or ODT. Your choice of format will influence whether others can easily read your document today, whether you yourself will be able to read your document ten years from now, and whether you will be able to migrate painlessly to another word processor or operating system if and when you choose to do so.

Although many users simply click “Save” and give no thought to which format is being used under the covers, this unthinking use of the word processor’s default settings is a recipe for vendor lock-in. In fact, several vendors intentionally set their default format to be ones which will only work well with their own software, fostering dependency on that vendor’s software and lessening the user’s ability to take advantage of other options in the market. The more documents you save and accumulate in a vendor’s proprietary format, the harder it will be for you to consider any other choices.

The objective of this paper is to show you, the user, how to extricate yourself from this cycle of dependency and take control of your documents. Specifically, we show how you can, in three easy steps, free yourself from a Microsoft Office dependency. In the end you may, of course, choose to remain on Microsoft Office. You may decide to migrate to an alternative word processor. That, in the end, is your choice. But by following the three steps outlined below, your freedom of action will be preserved, and your choice of word processor will be based on your priorities and your needs, and not forced on you by your current application vendor.

Step 1: Take control of the default format

The older versions of Microsoft Office, Office 97-Office 2003), by default save documents in a family of binary formats with the extensions DOC (Word), XLS (Excel) and PPT (PowerPoint). Although these formats are proprietary Microsoft formats, over the past decade 3rd party applications have developed the capability to read and write these formats.

However, starting in Office 2007 Microsoft suddenly switched the default format to something called Office Open XML (OOXML). This format is not widely supported outside of Office 2007. So if you save a document in the OOXML format you make it harder for anyone else to read your document unless they are also using Microsoft Office 2007. In almost all cases, the same document, if saved in the legacy DOC format will be more interoperable. Staying with the default choice, OOXML, only restricts your choices and make you more dependent on Microsoft Office. Of course, that is why Microsoft made OOXML the default format.

The first step to liberate yourself from Microsoft Office dependency is to change the default format in Microsoft Office 2007 away from OOXML and back to the early binary formats supported by Office 97-2003, which are widely supported by 3rd party applications. This is a neutral step that preserves the status quo. By making these changes you will still be able to read and edit any OOXML documents that are sent to you, but all new documents you create will be saved in the more widely supported DOC/XLS/PPT formats.

If you are using Microsoft Office 2003 or earlier, then you should skip this Step and move on to Step 2, since OOXML is not the default format in those earlier Office versions.

To change the defaults, you will need to load Word 2007, Excel 2007 and PowerPoint 2007 and follow the following steps.

Word 2007

  1. Click the Office Button (the unlabeled logo button in the upper left of the program).
  2. Click “Word Options” at the bottom of the dialog.
  3. Go to the “Save” section.
  4. For the “Save files in this format” setting, choose “Word 97-2003 Document(*.doc)”.
  5. Click OK.

Excel 2007

  1. Click the Office Button (the unlabeled logo button in the upper left of the program).
  2. Click “Excel Options” at the bottom of the dialog.
  3. Go to the “Save” section.
  4. For the “Save files in this format” setting choose “Excel 97-2003 Workbook (*.xls)”.
  5. Click OK.

PowerPoint 2007

  1. Click the Office Button (the unlabeled logo button in the upper left of the program).
  2. Click “PowerPoint Options” at the bottom of the dialog.
  3. Go to the “Save” section
  4. For the “Save files in this format” setting, choose “PowerPoint Presentation 97-2003”.
  5. Click OK.

Administrators should also note that these settings may be made directly in the Windows Registry, and automatically pushed out to a work group via a login script or group policy. The registry settings corresponding to the above changes are:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Word\Options
Add String DefaultFormat=Doc

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Excel\Options
Add DWORD DefaultFormat=38 (Hexadecimal)

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\PowerPoint\Options
Add DWORD DefaultFormat=0 (Hexadecimal)

Step 2: Enable OpenDocument Format Support

Now that you’ve made the first steps towards taking control of your documents by preventing the lock-in effects of the OOXML default, it is time to take further control. You’ll now want to enable OpenDocument Format (ODF=ISO/IEC 26300) support in Microsoft Office, so you can save and exchange documents using the free and open International Standard while remaining in the familiar Microsoft Office interface.

ODF is an XML-based, open document format standard, designed to be platform- and application-neutral and support interoperable use across applications, eliminating vendor lock-in. ODF is supported by many applications, including office suites from Sun, IBM, Novell and Google, as well as open source projects like OpenOffice, KOffice and AbiWord. Additional applications supporting ODF are listed on Wikipedia.

Microsoft Office does not currently support ODF “out of the box”, but you can enable ODF support in Office by installing a “plugin”, sometimes called an “add-in”. A plugin will add additional options or menu items to the Microsoft Office UI, allowing you to open and save documents in ODF format. In some cases you can even set ODF as the default format for new documents.

There are three main choices for adding ODF support to Microsoft Office:

  1. Sun Microsystems has published an “ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office” which supports Office 2000, XP, 2003 and 2007 SP1.
  2. Microsoft has sponsored an open source project on SourceForge for an “ODF Add-in for Microsoft Office”, which supports Office 2007, and also Office 2003 and Office XP if the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack is also installed
  3. Microsoft has announced that Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) will enable ODF support in Office 2007, but this code is not yet available.

Step 2 is to evaluate and adopt a plugin to add ODF support to Microsoft Office. Start using ODF now, saving your documents in the open standard document format. This allows you to remain in Office, for now, while building your familiarity and comfort level with ODF.

Step 3: Exercise your Right to Choose a Native ODF Editor

The plug-in approach is a transitional approach. It allows you to continue working in Microsoft Office while you enable ODF support side-by-side. But at some point you will want to consider your options. Maybe you find that converting back and forth to ODF format in MS Office is slow. Maybe you are using Office 2003 currently, but want to avoid paying for an Office 2007 upgrade when mainstream support for Office 2003 comes to an end on April 14th, 2009. At some point you will want to move to an application that supports ODF natively. You are free at this point and have a wide variety of choices.

  • You can stay on Windows or consider moving to Linux or the Mac.
  • You can stay with a traditional client editor, or move to a web based editor.
  • You can use commercial software, or use open source software.

The important thing is that you have taken control of your documents. You are no longer dependent on Microsoft Office and its file format. You have broken free of the vendor lock-in. You are free to choose an alternative word processor when you want to and if you want to. Until then, be comfortable in knowing that you are keeping your options open while remaining in control of your documents.


This paper is also available in ODF and PDF formats.

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Filed Under: ODF Tagged With: Microsoft Office, ODF, Open Standards, OpenDocument

Introducing Planet ODF

2009/03/23 By Rob 8 Comments

I have an early Document Freedom Day present for you. Planet ODF is a feed aggregator based on Sam Ruby’s Planet Venus, which itself is a refactoring of Planet 2.0.

Planet ODF aggregates several blogs, news sources, discussion forums and other online services related to ODF. I’ve tried to be semi-intelligent so you don’t get random stories about the Oregon Department of Foresty or non-ODF blog posts by me. I’ll tune the feeds over time, but the hope is to make it 100% ODF relevant content.

If you have a blog, discussion forum or any other ODF-related content with an Atom or RSS feed and want it included, then please let me know. It doesn’t need to be 100% ODF. You can discuss your cats 90% of the time and ODF 10% of the time and I can set up a filter to bring in the relevant content.

Also, I’ve set up an OpenDocument Format group on the social bookmarking site Diigo. (I abandoned del.icio.us when the Microsoft/Yahoo takeover rumors started.) Even if you don’t have a blog or a web site with a feed, you can use Diigo to bookmark any articles you think are relavent to ODF. If you send those links to the OpenDocument Format group, then they will automatically be included in the Planet ODF feed.

Enjoy, and pass on the good news.

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Filed Under: ODF

From the Statute of Frauds to WYSIWYS: Document Format Implications

2009/03/04 By Rob 11 Comments

I’d like explore the topic of electronic documents, digital signatures, and what properties are required of them them to be considered accurate and reliable written records. Since this is as much a social question as it is a technical one, we’ll start with some history.

“An Act for prevention of Frauds and Perjuryes” 29 Carol. II (1677), commonly called “The Statute of Frauds”, begins:

For prevention of many fraudulent Practices which are commonly endeavoured to be upheld by Perjury and Subornation of Perjury Bee it enacted by the Kings most excellent Majestie by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spirituall and Temporall and the Commons in this present Parlyament assembled and by the authoritie of the same That from and after the fower and twentyeth day of June which shall be in the yeare of our Lord one thousand six hundred seaventy and seaven All Leases Estates Interests of Freehold or Termes of yeares or any uncertaine Interest of in to or out of any Messuages Mannours Lands Tenements or Hereditaments made or created by Livery and Seisin onely or by Parole and not putt in Writeing and signed by the parties soe makeing or creating the same or their Agents thereunto lawfully authorized by Writeing, shall have the force and effect of Leases or Estates at Will onely and shall not either in Law or Equity be deemed or taken to have any other or greater force or effect, Any consideration for makeing any such Parole Leases or Estates or any former Law or Usage to the contrary notwithstanding.

Or, to loosely paraphrase in modern English: “We’ve noticed that verbal agreements are being abused. So in certain specific important agreements you better put it in writing and sign it, otherwise don’t bother to bring any dispute to court.”

A few things to note about the Statute and its context:

  1. As the preface notes, frauds were being perpetrated, involving oral contracts and perjury. Before this Statute, oral testimony, even without any evidence of a written agreement, could be used to deprive a person of real or personal property.
  2. The Statute is concerned with private agreements. Although it was already well-established practice by this time for official acts, writs, etc., to be recorded in written form and sealed, literacy, even among tradesmen, was not high, and private agreements were made only orally.
  3. The imposition of a stamp duty or tax to seal official documents, followed this Statute a few years later, ostensibly to raise funds to fight a war against France. But like all forms of taxation, they seem to outlive their original intent, and exist even to the present day, even though England apparently is now at peace with France.

This Statute spread to the American Colonies, where in modified form it lives on in various state laws, and in the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC) today, in §2-201:

A contract for the sale of goods for the price of $5,000 or more is not enforceable by way of action or defense unless there is some record sufficient to indicate that a contract for sale has been made between the parties and signed by the party against which enforcement is sought or by the party’s authorized agent or broker.

I’d like to look a little at what it is about a written agreement that gives it its particular value. Why did they require it to be written? Why not just require witnesses to an oral agreement?

A few salient properties of a written agreement:

  1. A written agreement states the parties to the agreement, the terms of the agreement and is signed by the parties.
  2. Once signed, the agreement may not be altered but by mutual consent of the parties. In the judgement of Brett v. Ridgen, Plowd. Comm., 345, Lord Dyer wrote that “…men’s deeds and wills, by which they settle their estates, are the laws which private men are allowed to make, and they are not to be altered, even by the King in his court of law or conscience. We must take it as we find it.”
  3. The “mirror image” rule applies. Both parties must agree to the same terms. If part A makes an offer, and party B says they accept, but in fact adds or qualifies the terms of the offer, then this is properly treated as a counter-offer. The agreement is not made until both parties agree to the same terms.
  4. The underlying mechanics and notation of the agreement are flexible, unless otherwise specified. Whether scribbled with a crayon on a napkin, sent by telegram, teletype, fax or email, these may all be considered written agreements.

The affordances of paper and ink, which lends itself particularly well to the above concerns include:

  1. Paper/ink expresses symmetric information. What you see is what I see and is what will be seen in court if we end up there some day.
  2. There is no invisible ink, no hidden pages. The text of the agreement does not say something different under the florescent lights at the court house versus the sunlight at the construction site. Although these things in theory could be done, via special inks and papers, the use of these techniques in an agreement would be prima facie evidence of fraud.
  3. Certainly, if it is poorly written, the terms of the agreement could be ambiguous and subject to various interpretations. Paper/ink cannot make you or your lawyer smarter. It only makes the agreement an accurate and reliable record. If a particular word is smudged or a number is crudely written, I can see this flaw and you can see this flaw and either of us can require the flaw to be fixed before we sign the agreement. If there is text that is unclear in meaning, I can ask my lawyer to explain it. I am able to understand the document perfectly should I take care to do so.
  4. Paper/ink is accurate and reliable over the time scale of personal and commercial contracts.
  5. A person’s signature or mark on an agreement, absent evidence of fraud or coercion, clearly indicates their assent to the terms of the agreement. We do not commonly write our signature unless we intend to express assent.

Jump ahead to the present day, with the increasing use of electronic documents and digital signatures. Digital signatures offer some of the same affordances we traditionally had with paper/ink. Provided the chain of certificates and keys have not been compromised, that the underlying applications have not been compromised and that the act of signing requires an affirmative and unambiguous action by the signer, a digital signature is evidence of:

  1. What was signed
  2. Who signed it
  3. the intention to sign, i.e., give validity to the agreement

However, there is a weakness in electronic agreements, even when digitally signed. The weakness is in what is signed. When you sign a electronic document, you are signing the stream of bits and bytes that comprise that document in a particular document format. The average person lacks the ability to directly inspect or understand the underlying representation of an electronic document. They can only see what a particular software application running on a particular operating system running on a particular computer shows when loading the document. Will that signed document appear the same on a different computer, to a different person using a different software application or a different operating system? That is the critical question. Unfortunately, the affordances of paper/ink for symmetrical information, lack of hidden information, invariability over time and venue changes, etc., are not necessarily guaranteed with electronic documents.

The digital signature guys call out an additional requirement needed for a digital signatures to give the same guarantees as paper/ink agreements. It goes by the acronym WYSIWYS, or “What You See is What You Sign”.

So what is required for electronic documents to have the same affordances as paper/ink for use as accurate and reliable records? I suggest the following:

  1. The format used by the electronic document must be specified in an open standard.
  2. The format standard must define the characteristics of semantically equivalent documents and specify the format sufficiently so that implementations of the standard can display semantically equivalent renderings of the document. Semantic equivalence is not broken by minute differences in layout, so it should be possible to have semantically equivalent renderings on different devices, e.g., a laptop versus a smart phone versus a screen reader.
  3. The application used to view and sign the electronic document must conform to standard, specifically those stated parts of the standard necessary to render a semantically equivalent document.
  4. The document must be strictly conformant to the standard, with no extensions. Just as you would not physically sign a paper document that contained interpolated text in a language that you do not understand, you should not sign an electronic document that contains unknown extensions. Otherwise semantic equivalence is not guaranteed between the two parties and a “mirror image” problem.
  5. Semantic equivalence must not rely on graphics. Although graphical content is permissible, such content must be redundant with respect to the text. Otherwise the “mirror image” problem is unresolvable between sighted and blind persons.

Further, I believe these criteria are of more general applicability. Although the Statute of Frauds may have been intended for marriage contracts and the like, the need to have accurate, reliable written records is a ubiquitous requirement for business and public administrations today. Wherever misunderstanding would be liability, where it is particularly important for multiple parties to be “on the same page” with respect to the contents and meaning of a document, these considerations apply.

For editable formats like ODF, I think it points out the need to describe a formal content model that describes the semantic content of a document, aside from its formatting and layout. So text + lists + tables + headers + footers + footnotes + images + captions, etc. Visual appearance is nice to have as well, but it is less robust when rendered on different devices, different operating systems, and is less likely to be robust when rendered on OpenOffice 10.0 in 2015. But the equivalence of the semantic content of an unextended ODF document should provide the same ability to have an accurate and reliable record in an electronic document as we have had traditionally with paper and ink.

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Filed Under: ODF

Low-Fat ODF

2009/03/03 By Rob 2 Comments

Jack Sprat could eat no fat.
His wife could eat no lean.
And so betwixt them both, you see,
They licked the platter clean!

Is dietary fat good? Or is it bad? Without getting into a discussion of saturated versus unsaturated fats, or the virtues of omega-3 oils, let me make a few basic, reasonable observations:

  1. Individuals differ in their preferences and requirements for fat intake. There is no single answer for all people at all times.
  2. Experts differ in their recommendations for fat intake.
  3. Standards exist for how to measure and report the fat contents of food products.
  4. Standards also exist for the specific conditions under which a vendor may call their food products “low fat” or “light” or “fat -free”. For example, “low fat” products must have 3g or less fat per serving.
  5. The government requires vendors of retail packaged food to label the fat content in accordance with standards #3 and make only claims regarding fat content that conform with standards #4.

The above system generally works. Food vendors have the freedom to add as much fat as they want to their products. If they want to sell deep -fried bacon-wrapped cheese, then fine. No problem. It is a free country. But this is balanced by the consumer’s ability to know the fat content of the products that they purchase. This gives control to the consumer, allowing informed choice.

But take away the standards, take a way the reporting requirements, and the manufacturer has all of the control. Let’s imagine a world where there were no such fat content standards. Medical research would still progress and the long-term dangers of high-fat diets would still be known. But the consumer’s ability to control their fat content would vastly reduced. There would be no informed choice.

Imagine further that Company A, observing the medical research and consumer interest in healthy food, decides to offer a low-fat cheese. But if Company A sells their low-fat cheese, the label “low fat” itself would have no formal meaning. In this hypothetical, there are no standards. Nothing prevents Company B and Company C from also advertising their existing cheeses as “low fat”. Without standards there is no differentiation. Since consumers have no effective way to test the fat content of cheese on their own, they are at the mercy of the non-verifiable claims of vendors and the advertising agencies. Because there are no acknowledged standards for fat content, the market for low-fat cheese is stunted. The consumer does not benefit and the innovative Company A does not benefit. No one wins.

This is a general concern for markets where the consumer cannot directly verify the quality of the goods, because they are packaged and inaccessible to inspection, or because the consumer lacks the technical ability to determine the quality themselves. From fat content to auto gas mileage efficiency, this leads to standards for measuring and reporting qualities of interest to consumers.

So back to reality. We do have fat content standards, for measurement and reporting. Suppose that Company A sells its low-fat cheese and it is very popular, because it is what the consumer wants. Company B is envious of the higher margins on low-fat products, but it would take too long for them to revamp their production line to make a cheese with 3g or less fat per serving. They can only get it down to 5g per serving. What can they do? Well, they can hire a lobbyist, go to Washington, DC, and spread some influence around. They could try to get the FDA to change their definition of “low-fat” so it includes their higher-fat products as well. If you can’t change your product to meet the standards that consumers want, then dumb down the standards!

Sound far-fetched? This is actually happening all the time with certified organic food in the United States. Non-organic ingredients are routinely being allowed in organic food products based on requests from big food manufacturers. The consumer has very little visibility or voice in this process.

So what does this all have to do with ODF? Fair question. The analogy is to extensions of ODF, a topic currently being hotly debated on the OASIS ODF Technical Committee. Extensions are additions to an ODF document which are not defined by the ODF standard. They may be proprietary vendor extensions, or extensions using other open standards. But regardless, since their use in an ODF document is not defined by the ODF standard, they are difficult or impossible to use in an interoperable fashion, at least by those who do not know the secret details of the extension. However, such extended documents may be immensely useful in some situations.

So are extensions good? Are they bad? Are you more concerned with interoperability? Or with a particular use that requires the extension? There is no single answer for all people at all times. Because of this, it is important to put control firmly in the hand of the consumer of ODF products, so they can make the appropriate choice for themselves.

Similar to the mechanism of food labeling, putting control in the consumer’s hands requires that we:

  1. Have a formal definition of what an extended ODF document is versus an unextended ODF document.
  2. Have something like a reporting requirement, so it is clear to the consumer whether a particular document is extended or not.

The proper pace to address these points is in the conformance clause of the ODF Standard. To that end, the current draft of ODF 1.2 defines two conformance classes, one for extended documents and one for unextended documents. The aim, in the end, is to give the consumer greater control and allow them to make a more intelligent choice. We can’t force vendors to implement one or the other conformance class. And we can’t force consumers to use one or the other. But we can formally define what an extended document is and let the free market operate based on the additional information made available.

This is a small step and I know it doesn’t sound like much, but even this modest step provoked such a paroxysms on the ODF TC that you would have thought I was splashing holy water at an exorcism. I suspect this means that I must be doing something right!

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Filed Under: ODF

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