Ian Landsman is Starting From Scratch, May 27, 2005:
Whew, We Can All Delete MS Office Now
If you're in the market for a powerful and user friendly Help Desk solution, please take a look at my company's flagship product HelpSpot.Oasis announced that the OpenDocument format is now an "offical" standard. Tim Bray says anyone who's putting anything in "other" document formats is stupid. So I guess he's talking to basically everyone in the world.
OK you say, but now there's a standard! Oh boy great. So now I can put my data in this great format that 99.9% of the world probably can't open.
But now new applications will spring up around this format you say! Really? It's a revolution you say? I say no.
Go ahead and download the 706 page spec doc. Just a little light reading. Got any great ideas on how to implement it in your app? Any guesses at the number of years it would take to build an app that supports it?
Microsoft isn't going to blink an eye at something like this. No single company (or organization) can compete with them in the office document world and with a format like this only large companies can even afford to build to it.
I still say the office document revolution either IS RSS or needs to be something simple like RSS. A simply format like that would let an entire community of apps be developed and that would have a chance, maybe, of beating Microsoft.
So after you download the PDF above, take a look at the RSS spec. You can build a useful app with that spec in an afternoon.
Discussion
I don't think you can ever have a document format which is as simple as RSS. You see, RSS is more about delivering the *raw* content rather than delivering content as author would like consumer to *see*. RSS's strength is that it allows easy discovery of new fresh content as opposed to content's presentation.
And it's not surprise that the format which has to describe how content should look like would be complex.
I think only way out is to open the PDF format. It's cross platform, it's been around forever and most importantly there are number of tools to create PDF content. Currently, you can use tons of applications to create PDF content or export your content to PDF format. (isn't it ironical that they are using PDF to specify the new document spec?) Now, it's a different issue about how to get Adobe to open up the format.
Seriously, you can't really expect much from new document format now.
JD
Created by JD on 05.27.2005 1:06 pm
Yeah I thought that it was in PDF was interesting.
Well I see what you're saying and in some ways I agree, but I'm kind of thinking ... perhaps hoping that things are changing.
See to me RSS is an indication that people are willing to forgo "pretty" formatting because of time constraints, etc. All we really want/need is the data. So if that trend continues into the mainstream then why bother with 700 page docs that basically just cover how to describe what color something is. I mean we could all be viewing this blog in our browser and see my pretty Hawaii picture at the top but most people just take the text in their readers.
Now there are times where you do need formatting. Sometimes I need it on this blog. When that happens I use HTML. I could use XHTML if we want to keep things XML. There are tons of tools to edit HTML.
I don't have the answer, but I'm pretty sure that there's going to need to be a simple type of format developed if people want to get rid of MS. I just don't see the cost/productivity savings over using MS products in this spec.
Why do I want to swap out MS for Sun or IBM? They're pretending that this is an open format as if that matters. It doesn't matter because I can't get that data out effectively without using some big company/organizations tools anyway. Sure if I'm Tim Bray I can just whip up an XML parser on my server and get my data out. If I'm John Q in my cube at work it's just as "closed" a format as any Microsoft product.
Created by Ian on 05.27.2005 1:06 pm
You know I always used to think that presentation is not important. It's the data which matters more.
But let's imagine a scenario where you have to create requirements specs for your client. Are you going to create a document with tons of useful and meaningful text? Even if all you have written is gold, client (or anybody else) is not going to read it. Yes, content is important but it's not the only thing. Style is equally important. In fact, the style can sometimes make you use content even if it's not all that great.
Have you read any of ChangeThis.com manifestos? They are so beautifully laid out! It just begs me to read! Imagine if it was just block of text with minimum formatting. I would have still read but the content have to be rather very very important to me. In its current form, ChangeThis has made me read more content than I would have consumed otherwise.
I really don't think XHTML/HTML is at the stage where you can create content + style *easily*. Keyword is *ease*. Yes, Douglas Bowman and Dave Shea would create beautiful presentations using only CSS + XHTML but that's of no use because an end user can't create similar document with his/her knowledge.
I very strongly feel that PDF is the document format which has the potential to become a defacto standard. (I guess it is indeed a defacto standard more or less)
JD
Created by JD on 05.27.2005 1:06 pm
PDF is a fine format for interchange, but I haven't seen anything to indicate that it's a good format for actually working on a document.
I agree with Ian's original point that creating a "standard" document format is pretty meaningless by itself. Microsoft's formats are the de facto standard and it will take *a lot* to supplant those standards. That would be akin to replacing HTML. It would take a long time and there would have to be a compelling reason to do it.
I do agree that RSS is a convenient expression of certain types of data, but it's not, as JD says, rich enough for many common office document tasks. It sounds like OpenDocument is taking on the whole Office format suite, not just Word. I wouldn't want to express a spreadsheet in RSS.
An open XML format would be great, particularly as the tools for working with XML get easier and easier... but, Microsoft has no incentive to get on board with this, unless governments can be successful in threatening to not use Microsoft products otherwise.
My guess is that Office formats will continue to dominate for at least 5 more years (and that PDF will continue to be the most popular, non-HTML distribution format for that time as well).
Created by Kevin Dangoor on 05.27.2005 1:06 pm
True, I'm being a bit hard on them, but I just can't help but think that all these really smart people are wasting their time. They should be out building the new generation of applications which make Office irrelevant instead of building meaningless specs that try and copy what Microsoft already does extremely well.
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Created by Ian Landsman on 05.27.2005 1:06 pm