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Last week I asked if anyone knew of some code that would allow me to directly use WordPress to digest the daily links I collect rather than use del.icio.us as the middleman. Though it is certainly technically possible, there doesn’t seem to be a ready made solution. Sam Hiser suggested that I check out Diigo. I like it so much that I deleted my del.icio.us account.
While still being the middleman, Diigo has a much more modern feel that del.icio.us. It’s more general, though it does has a much smaller user base. It was easy to set up the daily blog postings which are the primary reason I use such a service. Indeed, it was easy to send the links I collect to either sutor.com or nigelparavane.com: one service to handle multiple daily postings. Since it appears to be pretty new, I feel that I have a chance via suggestions to help improve it. Indeed, I suggested three things:
- Better CSS and HTML options when pushing the links out to the blog.
- More options for when when digests are sent to the blog. For example, I may set up two jobs that publish to the blog at 8 AM and 8 PM, respectively, each one only including the links I saved in the 12 previous hours.
- A weekly digest sent to the blog for low volume link collections.
With such a new service, I have no idea how long it will be around. Since the information I save is sent to my blog, I have a permanent copy that is independent of the service.
I still wouldn’t mind having such a thing hosted on sutor.com rather than another service, though.
(This is a daily blog posting from Diigo – thanks to Sam Hiser for the recommendation. I’m still experimenting with it.)
Diigo – Web Highlighter and Sticky Notes, Social Bookmarking and Annotation, Social Information Network! Annotated
tags: no_tag
Diigo is a powerful research tool and a knowledge-sharing community
I thought I would put together a list of some of my blog entries that touch on the OOXML issue now being considered in the JTC1 Fast Track Procedure. This isn’t everything I’ve ever written, but it includes most of the main points. I’ve also included a few related entries.
- Regarding OOXML and the need for change
- Critical questions for national bodies considering OOXML/DIS 29500
- OOXML: More defects that originally reported
- OOXML IPR problems
- To be clear: IBM is opposed to OOXML/DIS 29500
- CNet: “Free-software lawyers: Don’t trust Microsoft’s Open XML patent pledge”
- Some “OOXML has trouble” items from around the web
- The OOXML BRM: Secrets and statistics
- links for 2008-03-03: Special OOXML BRM Edition
- Dow Jones MarketWatch: EC investigation regarding OOXML
- OOXML is too hard to implement … even for Microsoft
- While you’re waiting, don’t save in OOXML format
- Becta in the UK says “no no” to OOXML
- 2. OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting: Why You Should Worry About All Comments
- OOXML, the past. ODF, the future.
- Microsoft cannot resolve OOXML JTC1 ballot comments
- The ODF vs. OOXML numbers. Hint, OOXML is doing poorly.
- OOXML and Standards Australia – an important correction
- What comes after September 2
- Secrets and anonymous comments
- Why OOXML will not be an ISO/IEC standard in 2007
- No is no, to OOXML
- The OOXML battle – get the information out
- Questions for your national standards body
- New ODF Alliance Newsletter available + info on fighting OOXML
- No discussion topics were cut off by the OOXML Contradiction Period
- Which National Standards Bodies can vote regarding OpenXML/OOXML/DIS 29500?
- “Achieving Openness: a closer look at ODF & OOXML” by Sam Hiser
- In case you were wondering how big 6000 pages is: OpenXML/OOXML/whatever
- Microsoft must love ODF, and that’s fine, but this is not about ODF
- Technical comparison of ODF and OOXML
- Why OOXML is not an open standard according to Microsoft
- Microsoft works to kill open document standards in Florida?
- OOXML contradictions are online
- Astroturf grassroots for OOXML?
- My testimony to the Texas House and Senate regarding the open document format legislation
- Fast track into a brick wall
- Why OOXML will ultimately fail
- Former MA CIO Louis Gutierrez on ODF, Microsoft
- Peaceful existence of one open document standard, ODF
- Must read: “When is a standard not a standard?”
- Avoid the single supplier document taxes
- …, 18, 19, … 20!
- 1, 2, 3, …, 19
- #5. Contradicting Microsoft Office Open XML – The definitive statements (has links to #1 – #4)
- Microsoft, ODF, Open XML, and Wikipedia
- We have proprietary extensions to Microsoft Office Open XML already
- Hiser on the Microsoft Office Open XML license
- IBM votes NO on Open XML in ECMA
- Interoperability vs. intraoperability: your open choice
- ODF standard is FINAL and PUBLISHED as ISO/IEC 26300:2006
- Is Open XML a one way specification for most people?
- The calendar according to Excel, or why Open XML is standardizing mistakes
- Interoperability and substitutability
Sam Hiser has a blog entry about what you can do if you want to voice your opinions on why Texas should take a strong stand on true open document standards. Hurry, though, because there are hearings on Monday.
Last Friday, directly ahead of Monday’s ISO deadline for contradictions on Microsoft’s OOXML, a number of rather positive articles appeared celebrating “completion” of the open source plugin to support ODF in Microsoft Office suites. Now that people have actually looked at what it does and the performance with which it does what it does, things aren’t quite so glowing. See, for example, Sam Hiser’s take in “Translator is FUBAR!”. Comments to Mr Hiser, please.
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“The Information Society Project symposium at Yale Law School yesterday in New Haven was stimulating and gives cause for optimism that law and software standards processes will eventually catch up with the Internet.”
Over in his blog, Sam Hiser has kicked off a discussion around what the Microsoft Office Open XML does and does not allow you to do. It’s a valid question, because consider a line of reasoning that goes something like this:
- Microsoft Office Open XML is such a huge spec (between 6000 and 7000 pages long) because it implements all the data representation functionality in Microsoft Office 2007 and lots of old stuff as well. Microsoft and its supporters insist that this is an absolute requirement.
- In practice, to fully implement this, you will need to clone almost all of Microsoft Office.
- The license is not broad enough to let you clone Microsoft Office.
- There will be one and only one complete implementation of Microsoft Office Open XML, and that will be from Microsoft.
- Lock-in lives on in a new disguise: a lock-in wolf in standards clothing.
Anyway, please have the discussion over in Sam’s blog since he started this. I’ve turned off comments on this entry to force you to say what you want to say over there, if you do have anything to say and you were inclined to say them.
John G�tze has a blog entry about savings Denmark could realize if they switch to ODF and OpenOffice instead of going with an updated Microsoft Office and Open XML. Sam Hiser has a followup blog entry.
When you read John’s entry note that there are several sets of numbers quoted, such for one part of the government vs. the entire public sector. Comments and questions are probably best addressed to John.
Sam Hiser has published a piece called “What is ODF?” over at ONLamp.com.
The ODF Alliance just released a press release “ODF Alliance Congratulates Malaysia on Preliminary Designation of OpenDocument Format as Malaysian Standard.”
Here’s an excerpt:
WASHINGTON, July 27 /PRNewswire/ — The OpenDocument Format Alliance (ODF Alliance), a broad cross-section of organizations, academia and industry dedicated to improving access to electronic government documents, today applauded Malaysia’s preliminary decision to make ODF an official Malaysian standard.
This past week, Malaysia’s standards body voted to propose ODF as a country standard, following the recognition in May by the International Organization For Standardization (ISO) of ODF as an international standard. After a public comment period that ends in October, Malaysia’s Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation is expected to formally endorse ODF by year’s end, recommending the format for use by the public sector.
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The Alliance has grown to nearly 280 members in more than 40 countries, including the Bristol City Council in the United Kingdom, among others, demonstrating continued momentum for the file format globally. Deputy Council Leader Steve Comer said, “With 20,000 employees we’re the largest employer in the City and provide services for every Bristol home and business. It’s important to take a lead, as the way we do business affects the way everyone else in Bristol does theirs.”
In related news reflecting ODF’s strong and growing momentum worldwide, the Alliance also acknowledged Microsoft’s recent announcement regarding ODF. It encouraged the company to further embrace the format and to provide native support for ODF in its products.
Here’s the latest ODF Newsletter that I’ve taken the liberty of embedding in full. If you want to subscribe yourself, here is the link.
Microsoft Announces Development of OpenXML/ODF Translator Tool
According to Microsoft, the tool, which will essentially be installable plug-ins, will provide two additional menu items – “OpenODF” and “SaveODF” – and will be developed by Clever Age (France) and tested by Aztecsoft (India) and Dialogika (Germany). Microsoft will not be contributing code or providing architectural guidance. Microsoft spokespersons stated that the final version of the translator for Word is expected to be available from SourceForge for download by the end of 2006 (prototype linked below), and sometime in 2007 for Excel and PowerPoint. For commentary and analysis on this development, please see the links below.
OFE, Alliance Co-Host Events In Brussels and London
The ODF Alliance was pleased to partner with OpenForum Europe (OFE) in hosting several events in Europe. The first, held at Scotland House in Brussels on July 4, gave several EU member states a chance to report on progress. Belgium was officially represented by an official from FEDICT, the ICT policy unit at the heart of the Belgian government. Speakers from Denmark and France also discussed what their main concerns were and Simon Phipps of Sun gave his perspective. Florian Reuter of the the OpenDocument Foundation demonstrated a converter.
The second event, which took place at the historical venue of the Guildhall in London on July 6, was more focused on the UK, and made all the more interesting by Microsoft’s announcement on that day of the project to develop an ODF translator. Bob Sutor, IBM’s VP for Standards and Open Source, was one of the two keynote speakers, the other being Gavin Beckett from Bristol City Council (UK), which recently joined the Alliance.
Bristol City Council – http://www.egovmonitor.com/node/6656
Massachusetts Holding Tight To January 2007 Target
In an interview with CNET News.com, Massachusetts’ CIO Louis Gutierrez said the Commonwealth is sticking to plans to adopt ODF by January 2007. He also said that the mid-year review is expected to be released in late July or early August. A cost analysis of the project is also expected shortly.
CNet – http://news.com.com/Mass.+holding+tight+to+OpenDocument/2100-7344_3-6090196.html
New Members (240)
The Alliance is pleased to welcome the following new members: Bull (France), Alka France, Google Inc (USA), Bristol City Council (UK), ChinaSoft Resource Corporation, YACME Srl (Italy), Association Lune Rouge (France), Bangladesh Linux Users Alliance, Genii Software Ltd. (USA), Institute for Information Industry (Taiwan), itemis GmbH & Co. KG (Germany), Parinux (France), SeeOpen (Italy), and Sp-Process SPA (Italy).
ODF in the News
ODF Alliance Applauds Global Initiatives to Use Software Based on Open Standards
Thursday June 29, 10:21 am ET
http://www.odfalliance.org/press/AllianceRelease29June06%20final.pdf
Belgium adopts OpenDocument
Matthew Broersma, Techworld29 June 2006
http://www.techworld.com/news/index.cfm?newsID=6335&printerfriendly=1
Belgian gov’t moves toward OpenDocument format
Eric Lai, Computerworld27/06/2006
http://www.cio.com.au/index.php/id;922274800;fp;4;fpid;21
Open source community wooed by Microsoft
Miya Knights ZDNet UK June 29, 2006, 12:55 BST
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/windows/0,39020396,39277922,00.htm
Microsoft Falls Back Again: Announces ODF Plugin Project
Thursday, July 06 2006 @ 09:22 AM EDT
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20060706092209358&mode=print
Microsoft Surrenders to Document Interoperability
By Sophia Mayengbam
http://www.sda-asia.com/sda/features/psecom,id,424,srn,2,nodeid,4,_language,Singapore.html
Microsoft to offer open source document format
Financial Times: Published: July 6 2006 11:59 | Last updated: July 6 2006 11:59
By Jonathan Loades-Carter
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/dbbb9ef2-0cd9-11db-84fd-0000779e2340.html
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Marino Marcich
ODF Alliance
1090 Vermont Avenue, NW 6th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
Email: mmarcich@odfalliance.orgwww.odfalliance.org
Last month I posted a couple of entries about alternatives to commercial presentation graphics programs that we are very familiar with using (“Where’s the killer open source presentation software?” and “More on presentation software – look at Opera Show“). The comments didn’t make it over from my IBM developerWorks blog, but there was a bit of a discussion and Sam Hiser mentioned Dave Raggett’s Slidy. Jon Udell over in InfoWorld has picked up this same idea today in his “Web-based alternatives to PowerPoint.”
I think this has a lot of promise, assuming you have a modern browser like Firefox or Opera available (*). Personally I’m tired of wrangling with what Internet Explorer 6 doesn’t do, especially in terms of CSS. As long as I have a presentation that I can hand to someone else and it just works in their browser, I’ll be happy. I think it is a small price to pay for greater portability. What would be really cool is to have a really superb authoring environment right in the browser as well. I would think that a little AJAX might go a long way here. Jon leans toward this at the end where he says
Bring it on! Presentation software has been stuck in neutral forever. Web applications, however, are firing on all cylinders. Some say Word and Excel are about to be Web 2.0 roadkill. Not me. The browser can’t yet substitute for those applications. But for PowerPoint? Any day now.
There has been less attention paid to sophisticated presentation support in browsers than word processing, but I think the order of difficulty from easiest to hardest is presentation, word processing, and spreadsheet. Swap the first two for what I think we’re seeing happen because of the attention being paid.
Personally, I would have to resist the temptation to do something in PHP because that would require a web server as well. It is simple enough to install PHP with Apache on a laptop, but it does add to the overhead. It’s also not going to be something the average person has.
(*) I am not a Mac user, so I don’t usually mention Safari. I can’t test for myself what it does or does not do.
ODF and ISO
Other
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A continuation of the dialog
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It did it today automatically. Painless.
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See suggestions at the end for service providers.
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The standards view from Oracle.
Whether or not the ISO eventually approves any other standard in this area, ODF getting ISO approval will give it a big boost. Governments can start putting it into RFQs and the network effect (i.e., more and more people using it and sharing documents in its form, a multiplying effect) will start accelerating. This network effect is what makes it so difficult to unseat something that is in broad use, even if it is propietary. However, it does happen, though it may take a while. That’s ok, we’ve got time. A long time.
See Sam Hiser’s blog for more of this.
David Berlind has picked up on the blog entry I wrote a few days ago about how you share documents, and wouldn’t you be better off if you didn’t send around word processing documents. He asks if the right question wouldn’t be closer to examining closely whether you are using more modern information sharing techniques like blogs, emails, and wikis instead of sending around attachments or providing documents for download from a website.
David, absolutely right.
I’ve been talking about this issue during the last couple of weeks as I’ve travelled around Asia. I’ve been asking people exactly how they use documents and how they should start using them. For example, I state that I use a spreadsheet perhaps one or two times a year, a word processor maybe once a week, and presentation software many times a day. I don’t use a work processor that much because I send a lot of email and blog a fair bit. When you are an enterprise or organization considering a migration to ODF, say, or just examining your information workflow in order to improve it, you have to know about usage patterns before you design a strategy.
You will find that you will have an easier time moving to a new format if you use fewer things that use the older format.
[David: thanks for the pointer to the piece. Should you point to future ones, please use the new blog site. Thanks.]
Update: See Dan Sholler’s blog entry “Bob, Dave and the curse of email”.
Update #2: See Sam Hiser’s blog entry “Our Document & Device Contexts”.
Late last night I put up an entry asking where was the killer open source presentation software. Sam Hiser responded with a comment as did a couple of other people and Sam has a longer piece on his blog. Sam discussed Dave Raggett’s Slidy and also mentioned presentation support in Opera. More on the latter in a moment. In my book, Dave Raggett is already a founding father of the web and I always learned a lot from him when I was directly involved with standards work.
The idea of using direct markup instead of a WYSIWYG application with hidden, binary formatting is not new. I saw folks at the W3C doing it in the 1990s though it always looked a bit stark. In that same decade, I worked on a piece of software called techexplorer which did interactive display of mathematical documents using either a subset of LaTeX or MathML. While not nearly of PowerPoint-like quality, it did a credible job of allowing you to write markup to display scientific presentations. It was fun to play with, but it didn’t take over the world. The notion of having markup that can be massaged by third-software, open or closed, is really, really important and is one of the things that makes the idea of having the format be XML-based so exciting. I addressed this a while ago with a few other issues in a blog entry.
Back to Opera. This is not open source, but the presentation support is just downright cool. If you want to play with it, download Opera and then go to the Opera Show Tutorial. Follow the instructions to use F11 to go into presentation mode (not just full-screen more, it is more than that) and you’ll be impressed. I’m going to do some CSS hacking on my sutor.com website to see if I can improve things a bit for presentation display.
See Sam’s thoughtful blog entry: “MIGRATION: OpenDocument is in My Future”.
Aside: I remember a lot of things from that day in Boston, though I certainly do not remember what I wearing. Other than ODF and its future in the Bay State, I was thinking about my 25th college reunion which was starting that night across the river in Cambridge. So I, too, suppose I was thinking about things past and things yet to come.
See Simon Phipps’ “Cod Psychology.” Sam Hiser gets a bit more excited in his blog.
Luckily, more and more people are making it clear that they understand the tactics being employed and, if anything, it’s helping the ODF cause. Kind of reminds me of the good old days. That worked so well too.
Here’s some of the press that’s starting to come out about the new ODF Alliance:
There is also an article in the Wall Street Journal, “A Microsoft Document Fight Brews”, but you need a subscription to view it.
Important Note: This group is open to everyone who wants to embrace ODF and agree to help accelerate its adoption within the public sector around the world. It seems we always have to keep saying this, but this is not anti-anyone, but is pro-ODF and true, non-vendor-dictated open standards.
Here are some of the blog entries that are starting to appear:
Sam Hiser has just had an opinion piece published in the Financial Times called “Progress towards openness is being watched carefully”. Very sane.
I’ve said before (probably ad nauseum) that OpenDocument Format (ODF) must be really important for a lot of reasons for it to get all this attention. Here are three examples, just from today.
- Sam Hiser makes the connection between the latest Windows Metadata Format vulnerability and the Microsoft Office Formats submitted to ECMA. Aside from the serious security issues, does anyone really think they will have to implement WMF on a non-Windows platform just to “conform”? Minimally, conformance to the ECMA spec will need to mean “and you don’t have to implement anything that is Microsoft Windows specific in order to guarantee interoperability.” Otherwise, since the Microsoft Office Formats use WMF which requires GDI (the Windows Graphics Device Interface), does this clause in the Microsoft Covenant Not to Sue
Microsoft irrevocably covenants that it will not seek to enforce any of its patent claims necessary to conform to the technical specifications for the Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas posted at http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/understanding/xmloffice/default.aspx (the “Specifications”) against those conforming parts of software products.
mean that you can implement GDI in order to implement the office formats and not worry about patent infringement? Hmmm, I don’t know, but it’s an interesting question. It’s this sort of thing that makes people feel so strongly about document formats being operating system independent.
- There’s personnel news out of Massachusetts about a new interim CIO and more confirmation that they are staying the course on ODF. See CNet’s Martin Lamonica’s article “Mass. replaces CIO in OpenDocument fray” and eWeek’s Lisa Vaas’ “Temporary CIO Steps into Mass. OpenDoc War “.
- Andy Updegrove does a good job rounding up recent activity including Groklaw’s response to a columnist. He also points to Martin Lamonica’s article confirming that Massachusetts is on track with ODF. This is one of the things I asked for several days ago (“Massachusetts is staying with Open Document Format (show me the new headlines …)”) and I’m glad this is being picked up.
As you have probably seen, ECMA voted to start TC45. IBM voted NO. Here’s some of what the community is saying:
Via Sam Hiser, here’s an interesting blog entry by Nat Torkington about Writely, a web-based word processor that supports ODF. I’ll let you read it, and it talks about a lot of things, but note that Writely is written in C#. Oddly ironic.
Tim Bray riffs on an original post by Sam Hiser, and talks about how strange it is that Office desktop software has stagnated innovation-wise while automobiles, built on top of many standards and with many different vendors to choose from, still keep producing great new ideas. My insertion: before you believe any of the FUD about “standards limiting flexibility and innovation,” think about it and throw such ridiculous statements back at the proposers. Don’t let them get away with it.
There have been a few press pickups and blog entries on the “OpenDocument Commitment to Action” that I posted on October 11. Here are some links:
You also might want to take a look at Andy Updegrove’s entry “Microsoft Says ‘Maybe Someday’ on OpenDocument”.
Blog comments are interesting in that they often appear days or even weeks after the original posting. I get notice of the comments but they do not go out in the RSS stream (whoops, do I mean to say web feeds [grin]?) and others may therefore miss them. So, to that end let me point to a comment made by Sam Hiser to my blog entry “Openness and the extension of open document formats”. In particular, his reference to the Beaufort Scale is quite interesting.
In particular, the scale refers to the force of the wind instead of the speed of the wind. Thus a force 12 hurricane was a wind that no eighteenth century canvas scale could withstand instead of “a wind with speeds of 70 or more miles-per-hour.” In my earlier discussions of openness indices and report cards I largely focused on categories that pertained to things like “openness as it relates to implementation” or “openness as it relates to acquisition of the specification.” I still think these are useful measurements when we are focused on the specifications and the organizations that develop them. What if we also turned this around and looked at the “force” these would have on those activities that involve use of the standards?
Thus if an online version of a standards specification was freely available, the force might be “every member of the development team would have complete and immediate access to the details of the standard.” If we had a standard that had no impediments to open source implementations and such a good implementation existed under a good open source licence (you define “good” for yourself), then we might get a “force statement” like “the necessary software code to provide interoperability is easily and freely available” or “there are no impediments to having an interoperable implementation.”
This is not a complete departure from what we have been doing since many of us have been able to explain the business benefits of standards instead of just the technical details for some time. The interesting bit is to see how the openness criteria translate directly to those benefits. Looking at this last example again, if my spec gets a 2 and yours gets a 10 (on a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being the best) for “there are no impediments to having an interoperable implementation,” I’m guessing that more people will use yours instead of mine.
Thanks for the comment and link, Sam.
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