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Q&A: IBM’s Alistair Rennie on the big picture for Lotus | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com
“Ultimately, new types of documents are possible. I don’t see my kids creating content 5 to 10 years from now going into a dumb text editor and doing a presentation. I see them using rich media and aggregating small bits of data from the Web. The office suite box is constraining. People should interchange content over time, use collaborative Web-based editing and components that can be shared. Symphony is fundamental to changing and enabling open standards.”
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“ODF Import allows a user to import ODF files into drupal nodes. Currently the module can import content from ODT files only. No style information is imported in current release.
Future releases will support other ODF formats as well as importing of styles from an ODF document.” -
WP-United User Manual: Help Needed!
“You can download the manual from SVN, here. It is in ODF, and it would be great if it could stay that way — if you are using software by The Man, you can download an ODF add-in to open and save the format. (For downloads, I will convert it to PDF, and probably many other formats. The key is keeping the source in ODF).”
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Digital Investigation : Data concealment and detection in Microsoft Office 2007 files
“As more offenders attempt to conceal incriminating data or stolen information, it is important for forensic examiners and computer security professionals to know where to look for concealed information. This paper demonstrates how data concealment in Microsoft Office 2007 files is possible. The Office Open XML (OOXML) format forms the basis of Microsoft Office 2007, and an individual can use OOXML to define customized parts, relationships, or both within a Microsoft Office 2007 file to store and conceal information”
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OpenOffice.org 3.2: 10 Years in the Making
“File format support gets a boost in 3.2, including better compliance with the Open Document Format (ODF). One of the sad facts about ODF support, at least at the moment, is that multiple suites support ODF but do it differently — thus making the interoperable format rather less than interoperable. OpenOffice.org supports a “superset” of ODF 1.2, and the latest release will now warn users if they are using Extended features that may not be supported by other suites. “
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Jochen Friedrich’s Open Blog: Relevant link of today: OOXML not suitable for Norwegian government
“A study published by the Norwegian “Direktoratet for forvaltning og IKT” (Agency for public adminstration and ICT) comes to the result that OOXML is not suitable for being used by the Norwegian government. The study is available online in Norwegian. Amongst the reasons that are given are that the standard with its more than 6000 pages is not appropriate; it is not suitable for collaboration; and there is only one software that can implement it and produce the respective file format. Norway recommends pdf for electronic document exchange of documents that don’t need to be edited and ODF (open document format) for all other documents.”
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http://odp-view.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/src/test1.html
“Web based Open Office Presentation Viewer -v0.0000 – A effort to make a pure Javascript ODP Viewer”
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monkeyiq: KOffice & RDF: Who, What, When, Where?
The first of a series of posts on what KOffice is doing to support the new metadata framework in ODF 1.2. Some good work shown here in the videos.
Weekly Links #1
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Advogato: Proprietary File Formats conflict with Equal Opportunities
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Lotus Solutions Development Lab: Lab 04: ODFDOM: Generating ODF Documents from a Notes Agent
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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.”
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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.”
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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’”
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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.'”
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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.”
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“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. “
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lpOD: Git repository access available!
lpOD is a powerful new python API for reading, writing or manipulating ODF documents.
Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.
ODF 1.2 Part 1 Public Review
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.
At the Setting of the Sun
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.
The Duel: A curious mathematical puzzle
Captain Galaxy and Commander Glarcon are locked in mortal combat. Each mans a battle tank armed with N photonic missiles which move at the speed of light. They move toward each other at constant velocity=v on a 1-dimensional track, unable to stop or reverse direction. Assume v << c. The probability of scoring a kill with a missile is described by a function f(d) which monotonically increases from 0 to 1 as the distance between the tanks decreases from infinity to 0. If the distance closes to 0 and no missiles are fired, both tanks are destroyed in the collision. Assume each combatant attempts to maximize their own probability of survival.
Note that this is not strictly a zero-sum game, since it is possible for neither player to survive. But it is impossible for both to survive.
The state of the game is thus described by three variables:
- d=distance between the players
- N1= number of own missiles remaining
- N2= number of opponent’s missiles remaining
A strategy S(d,N1,N2) would describe a combatant’ actions (shoot or don’t shoot) for all possible states.
- If each player has exactly one missile what is the optimal strategy? Clearly, if the first player shoots and misses, the 2nd will win by waiting for d to approach 0 and then make a last minute shot.
- What if each player has exactly two missiles?
- What if each player has N missiles?
It may simplify the problem to assume f(d) is proportionate to 1/d or 1/d^2 and then solve the general case.