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Weekly Links #14

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  • DataNucleus Access Platform – ODF Documents

    “DataNucleus supports persisting/retrieving objects to/from Open Document Format (ODF) documents (using the datanucleus-odf plugin). Such documents can then be used in applications like OpenOffice and KOffice. It makes use of the ODF Toolkit project.”

    tags: ODF

  • Producing ODF spreadsheets

    “So, the remaining question is: How to produce the ODF XML?

    What I did was, open the original content.xml and start to strip away anything that seemed useless. Repeat it untill things stop working.

    So this is an unoficial guide for people writing ODF spreadsheet documents on their own. This is the bare minimum XML I got”

    tags: ODF

  • How To Judge Your Vendor’s Support for a Standard

    “For people who adopt software, trying to judge the value of so-called “standards support” in a product can be an incredibly frustrating experience. Standards implementations often fail to live up to their promises and, worse, it can be very hard to tell in advance of installing and running the software whether or not the “standards support” it supposedly provides is actually going to meet your needs.”

    tags: standards

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

ODF 1.2 Begins Final 60-day Public Review

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A major milestone was reached for the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF) TC last week.  The latest Committee Draft of ODF 1.2 (CD 05) was sent out for a 60-day public review.

As you may recall, ODF 1.2 is a single standard in three parts:

  • Part 1 specifies the core schema, and was send out for public review in January.
  • Part 2 is OpenFormula (spreadsheet formulas)
  • Part 3 defines the packaging model of ODF, and went out for public review back in November

The current public review is the first complete review, presenting all three parts of ODF 1.2, including the new Part 2, OpenFormula, which is our spreadsheet formula language.

We will accept public comments (and that includes comments from technical experts in ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34) through September 6th.  Comments should be submitted via the TC’s public comment list, which you can join via these instructions.  You can monitor incoming comments also by subscribing to the comment list, by searching the archives or unofficially via the ODFJIRA Twitter feed.

The OASIS ODF TC will track and review all received comments and produce a report indicating how we have resolved each comment.  If we decide to make substantive changes to the specification based on comments received then we would approve such changes in a Committee Draft (CD 06) and send that out for a 15-day public review of the changes made.  I expect this will occur.  Then, the TC may vote to approve the public review draft as a Committee Specification.  Then we can have a ballot of the OASIS membership to approve it as an OASIS Standard.  And finally (after some additional administrative paperwork) we can submit ODF 1.2 ISO/IEC JTC1 according to their PAS process.

I think we can finish up the above remaining formal steps in the 4th quarter.

As I mentioned, the biggest difference in CD 05 over previous Open Document Format public review drafts is the inclusion of the OpenFormula specification.  If you are interested in contributing comments during the public review, I’d especially encourage you to review this document.  The other parts have already gone through one or more cycles of public review.  This part has not.

An outline of the contents of OpenFormula is:

  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 Expressions and Evaluators
  • 3 Formula Processing Model
  • 4 Types
  • 5 Expression Syntax
  • 6 Standard Operators and Functions
  • 6.4 Standard Operators
  • 6.5 Matrix Functions
  • 6.6 Bit operation functions
  • 6.7 Byte-position text functions
  • 6.8 Complex Number Functions
  • 6.9 Database Functions
  • 6.10 Date and Time Functions
  • 6.11 External Access Functions
  • 6.12 Financial Functions
  • 6.13 Information Functions
  • 6.14 Lookup Functions
  • 6.15 Logical Functions
  • 6.16 Mathematical Functions
  • 6.17 Rounding Functions
  • 6.18 Statistical Functions
  • 6.19 Number Representation Conversion Functions
  • 6.20 Text Functions
  • 7 Other Capabilities
  • 8 Non-portable Features

The ideal reviewer for OpenFormula would have expertise either in formal descriptions of computer languages, e.g., know EBNF, type systems, numeric computing models, etc., or knowledge of one or more of the domains of knowledge we cover via the spreadsheet functions.  Honestly, I think we have enough “language lawyers” on the TC already, so I’m not so worried about that part.  And we did have direct participation by experts in some functional domains.  For example, the statistical and mathematical functions have been given a good scrub already by “Dr. G.”

However, the financial functions, these I think could use a thorough review by a subject matter expert, ideally an expert in financial accounting standards, actuarial sciences, or similar. If anyone knows such an expert who is willing to contribute comments on approximately 30 pages of function definitions related to loan amortization, bond coupon and yield, rates of return, day count conventions, etc., please let me know via email.

Note finally that although OpenFormula is part of the ODF 1.2 specification, it was designed to be a portable, embeddable expression language syntax.  It is a natural fit for a spreadsheet application, but it could be used wherever you need to encode a calculable expression with a rich library of domain-specific functions.  It was designed so it could be used in other contexts.

I think it would be a fun project to implement OpenFormula as a standalone library, Java or Python, where you feed it an expression, along with an “address resolver” object to resolve names (e.g., cell references) to values, and then have it calculate the output value.  This could be the first step toward some interesting things.  For example, I give you an ODF spreadsheet and you generate a web app that executes the same model as my spreadsheet.  (Many years ago, in the 1980’s there was a “spreadsheet compiler” that did something similar to 1-2-3 files).  Or I give you a spreadsheet and indicate some variable input cells and you execute thousands of variations on it via Monte Carlo analysis.  Or I give value ranges for you on input cells, and you calculate the sheet in variations via interval arithmetic.   This may be interesting for sensitivity analysis, risk analysis, analysis of propagation of errors, etc.

Think:  “Plugable spreadsheet evaluation engines, all understanding a common formula expression language.”

Once you have a standardized model for a spreadsheet and that model is independent from the calculation engine, then you have the ability to plug in in different calculation engines that conform to the standard, and these various calculation engines can have various strategies.  This is a very powerful capability, made possible via standardization.

Filed Under: ODF

Weekly Links #13

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Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

ISO/IEC JTC1 Revises Directives, Addresses OOXML Abuses

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On July 1st, 2010 a new set of rules (directives) took effect in ISO/IEC JTC1  including new processing and voting rules for JTC1 Fast Track submissions.  If these rules had been in effect back in 2007, OOXML would have died after its initial ballot.

Let’s take a look at some of the specific changes that were made in reaction to the events of 2007-08.

First, we see the elimination of the contradiction phase in Fast Track processing.  If you recall, under previous rules, a Fast Track begin with a 30-day NB review period, sometimes called the “contradiction period”, where NBs were invited to raise objections if they think the Fast Track proposal contradicts an existing ISO or IEC standard.  This was followed by a 5-month ballot.   The problem was that the word “contradiction” was not defined, leading to various irreconcilable interpretations.  In the case of OOXML 20 JTC1 National Bodies (NBs) raised contradictions.  Evidently, the passage of time has lead to no progress on defining what exactly a contradiction is, so the contradiction period has been eliminated entirely.  Instead, looking for “evident contradictions” (still undefined) is given to JTC1 administrative staff, which is the surest way of guaranteeing that we never hear of contradictions again.  The Fast Track DIS ballot remains at 5-months, so net-net this accelerates processing by one month.

Next, we see some clarification around how NBs should vote on Fast Tracks.  Back, during the OOXML ballot,  Microsoft made a huge effort to convince NBs to vote “Yes with comments” if they found serious flaws in the text, with the promise that they would all be addressed at the BRM.  Well, we now know that this was a big lie.  Very few issues were actually discussed and resolved at the BRM.  And most of them were addressed by merely saying,  “Sorry, no change”.  At the time I argued that the rules were quite clear, that disapproval should be voiced by a “No, with comments” vote.  Well, we now see another small slice of vindication.  The revised rules now state:

If a national body finds an enquiry draft [ed.  A Fast Track DIS is an ‘enquiry draft’] unacceptable, it shall vote negatively and state the technical reasons.  It may indicate that the acceptance of specified technical modifications will change its negative vote to one of approval, but it shall not cast an affirmative vote which is conditional on  the acceptance of modifications. (ISO/IEC Directives, Part I, Section 2.7.3)

I assume this is clear enough now.

Another change is that if the DIS ballot fails to get sufficient votes, meaning less than 2/3 approval of ISO/IEC  JTC1 P-members, or more than 25% disapproval overall, the proposal dies at that point.  It doesn’t go on to the BRM.  Game over.  If this rule had been in place back in 2007, OOXML would not be an ISO standard today.

Finally, we see the requirement for a Final DIS (FDIS) text for review and approval by NBs.  Back in 2008 I was quite vocal about the absurdity of having NBs vote on a text that they were not allowed to read.  Several NBs lodged formal objections at the time as well.  All this was dismissed by JTC1 staff.  But reality struck when NBs reads the actual published version of OOXML, and saw that it did not contain all of the changes mandated by the BRM.  So belatedly, but better than never, the rules have been changed.  Fast Tracks now require an FDIS text for NBs to review,  along with a 2-month ballot on it.

There are also smaller, less substantial changes.  For example, the dedication to Jan van den Beld, the former head of Ecma, for his “unwavering dedication to the development and evolution of the JTC 1 procedures”, has been removed.   Ironically, both Ecma and Microsoft have indeed made long-term contributions to the evolution of Fast Track in JTC1, but probably not the way they intended.

The new ISO/IEC Directives are posted online.  Note that one document expresses the common rules for ISO and IEC, while another is a set of supplemental rules which apply to only ISO/IEC JTC1.  Evidently, we’re supposed to consult both documents and mentally merge them whenever trying to determine what the rules are.

Weekly Links #12

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  • TeX4ht: LaTeX and TeX for Hypertext

    Appears to offer TeX to ODF conversion support. Would be interesting to see how well this works.

    tags: ODF

  • ODF visualization using WebKit | kdedevelopers.org

    “Today is day 1 of of the OdfKit Hack Week. We wrote a list of things we want to achieve this week. In order to avoid embarrassment, we’ll spare you the details and go straight through to an explanation of how you can use WebKit (or any modern browser) to visualize ODF documents. The general idea is to incorporate the ODF XML into a live HTML document.”

    tags: ODF

  • Joining the OASIS Consortium’s Board of Directors

    From Charles Schulz: “That’s something of an announcement for me. I have to say that I believed all the way during these elections that the odds were very much against me, but I was obviously wrong: I have been elected at the Board of the Directors of the OASIS Consortium. I feel both honoured and humbled by the trust and approval talented professionals and experts have put in me. I will try to show myself worthy of their esteem. To all of you, I would like to express my sincere gratitude.”

    tags: oasis

  • Moved by Freedom – Powered by Standards » See how you can use lpOD with simple examples and tools!

    “I wanted to highlight the fact that we have embarked in an effort to better educate developers on how to use the lpod technologies and develop on them. Because of this we have created some easy use cases for anyone who might be interested in using lpod. We will continue to expand these examples through various initiatives and we hope to be able to share these with them right on the ODF Toolkit website, as the lpod consortium and its leading contributors are now part of the ODF Toolkit Union.”

    tags: ODF

  • OdfKit Hack Week starts | kdedevelopers.org

    “OdfKit is a project that reuses WebKit technology in a toolkit for working with ODF office documents. KO GmbH is sponsored by NLnet to work on OdfKit for three months. This week, Chani, who is on her way to Akademy, is working with me on OdfKit and since she’s here an entire week, we’re calling it OdfKit Hack Week.”

    tags: ODF

  • Template based document generation using ODFDOM | Synyx Weblog

    “So far we are running code using ODFDOM for document generation successfully in two larger projects that have been developed recently. We believe that ODFDOM will help us delivering additional value for our customers with less development effort.”

    tags: ODF

  • KOffice.org » Blog Archive » Last Week in KOffice — Week 24

    “Google Summer of Code student Benjamin Port was amazingly productive, making Thorsten Zachmann, his mentor, very happy. Read his blog! Benjamin is working on implementing animation of objects on pages. This is a huge task, since ODF incorporates the SMIL standard for animations, and that’s a big document. Ben implemented support for SMIL duration, translations and keytimes — and fixed crash in page navigation. Another thing Ben committed was a sophisticated HTML export option for presentations.”

    tags: ODF

  • Support for the OpenDocument Format in Microsoft Office 2010 – Word – Microsoft Office

    “For more information on the level of support in ODF 1.1 for commonly used features of Office, see the links below. This shows which Office features are fully, partially, or not supported in the ODF 1.1 format.”

    tags: ODF, Office2010

  • OpenOffice.org Forum :: Email-based ODF-to-MSoffice converter?

    “I have an Apple iPhone that does not read ODF documents. So if I receive an email with an OpenOffice document attached, the only way I can read it would be one of those email-based converters, that if you send a file to, then you receive back the same file, converted to desired format.
    Is there any email based converter that converts from ODF to Microsoft Office format? “

    tags: ODF

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.