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OOXML or ODF: Which One Will Survive?

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PCQ Bureau
New Update

Even as the Blu-ray vs HD-DVD battle is heading to its logical conclusion (of

co-existence or the lack of it), another format war has reached its crescendo —

the war of office suite formats. Microsoft recently approached the International

Standards Organization (ISO) for a fast-track decision on the adoption of its

format, which is used by Office 2007, as a certified global format. ISO, which

has already ratified the Open Document Format (ODF) as a standard, announced on

September 5th that Microsoft's format, the Open Office XML (OOXML) failed to get

a 'resounding yes' from its panel consisting of technology companies and all the

UN member nations.

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Wait and watch



The final ratification of OOXML as a standard by the ISO will now have to

wait till February next year, when the ISO will hold a ballot resolution meeting

and Microsoft will be asked to address and counter the concerns, apprehensions

and brickbats put forward by various participating countries. In other words,

Microsoft has about six months to beef up the OOXML format to suit international

standards and gather more support.

Microsoft has already started its endeavor to mend the biggest flaw of OOXML—

interoperability. It has undertaken to beef up its partnership with vendors to

tackle interoperability issues in design, technology and standardization. It has

also announced a continuing collaboration with AOL and Yahoo! for instant

messaging, and Novell for virtualization applications, besides the creation of

what it calls the Interoperability Vendor Alliance. But its biggest achievement

in this regard is said to be the successful deployment of what it calls the Open

XML Translator, essentially a combination of tools that allow translation

between ODF based applications and OOXML formats, the source code for which is

available under what is called a BSD license. Having got its roots from Berkeley

Software Distribution, BSD represents a family of free-for-use software licenses

worldwide.

Direct Hit!
Applies To:

Office applications' users



USP:
Comparing the market stakes for the two global office

suite formats



Primary Link: www.iso.org Google
Keywords: ODF, OOXML
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Divided supporters



While HP, Intel, EMC, Sony Electronics, Apple and Lexmark International have

come out strongly in support of Microsoft, Oracle and IBM continue to support

ODF. Germany and the US voted in favor of Microsoft, while Britain and France

voiced a clear 'no' but were open to supporting Microsoft in future if 'vital

modifications' are incorporated in the OOXML structure. India preferred to

follow this argument, though initially it went all out against Microsoft. As

expected, the technical institutions, IITs and IIMs are completely in support of

ODF, and believe that the OOXML is not 'open' enough to be certified as a global

standard, as it doesn't represent a common ground across products. They argue

that ODF has originated through a process of evolution and right since its

inception, it has been completely 'vendor neutral'.

Growth of ODF



ODF is the brainchild of Sun Microsystem's OpenOffice, formerly known as

Star Office, started off in 1999 by Star Division, as an attempt to build a

non-proprietary XML-based interoperable office suite. A year later, Sun

Microsystems acquired Star Division and for the next two years, all it did was

to invite source codes through an open-to-all licensing mechanism. An XML

community project was also embarked upon, and the two finally united in December

2002, at an OASIS (Organization for Advancement of Structured Information

Standards) conference, where the arrival of ODF was formally upheld.

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Vendor support



But it was only in May 2006, after regular overhauling, public consultations

and two enhanced draft versions of the format were released, that the ODF

achieved ISO certification. The next obvious step was to consolidate this fete

by attracting other software creators into adopting the ODF. One of the first to

oblige was Adobe, which upgraded its PDF format to sync up with ODF. In July

2006, Google joined the ODF bandwagon by allowing compatibility of its online

Office suite, Google Apps (which includes individual applications like Google

Docs and Google Spreadsheets) with ODF. Besides Google and Adobe, the ODF

loyalists' club includes founder members IBM, Oracle, Red Hat and Novell.

The simple idea of designing a skeleton for software developers to build

their applications on, specifically office and word processing applications, and

requiring them to only tweak the backend system to suit their needs did the

trick for ODF. To simplify things further, the ODF architecture has sub-divided

the systems into convenient and flexible components — Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG),

Mathematical Formulas (MathML), Embedded links (XLink), Synchronized Multimedia

Integration Language (SMIL) and Forms definitions (XForms), each of which is

built on Open Source platform. While SVG is an XML specification that allows

scripting for static and animated graphics, MathML integrates mathematical

formulae into WWW documents, and XLink allows the inclusion of hyperlinks within

XML documents. Xforms, originally designed for XHTML, incorporates the Web Forms

functions into the application while SMIL is the language for describing

multimedia presentations within an XML based framework.

Beefing up OOXML



OOXML on the other hand is a beefed up version of Microsoft's XML based

format that was introduced as part of Office 2003 suite. Back then, data was not

compressed and was stored in a single XML file, with binary data, like images,

being represented as BASE64 strings. This is a positional notation process that

uses the alphabets A-Z and numerals 0-9 for first 64 digits of the code, while

the last two digits are various combinations of numbers and digits with specific

tags.

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But during the development of Office 12 (more popularly known as Office

2007), Microsoft resorted to following an ODF model by storing data in a number

of small packet files, each of which are embedded within a .zip file. Having got

this format certified by the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA),

Microsoft approached ISO for certification.

Head to head



At the very basic level of document readability, both ODF and OOXML work in

the same way, and no visible difference can be observed in terms of 'openness'.

But the shortcoming clearly lies in two departments — backward compatibility and

generalization across platforms. In that respect, ODF and OOXML were created for

two distinctly different purposes. While Microsoft intended the OOXML to be in

sync with the feature set of Office 2007, and make it backward compatible with

earlier editions of the suite, ODF began as a general document markup format,

created for and by Linux enthusiasts. As Open Source grew out of Linux boom, so

did ODF. Hence, it can be compared to what HTML did to Web pages. As of now, ODF

has come to be known as a format that is conducive to creating new office suite

applications that wish to be called 'Open Source suites;' which in turn

translates as a format that encourages competition and development of new

products, each similar to the other. Contrary to this, OOXML ensures that nobody

can clone the Microsoft model of Office, while paying more emphasis on detail

and smooth operation.

User interest



By the time the ISO panel meets in February, Microsoft should make the OOXML

'open' enough for use by any third party developer, who in all probability, will

belong to the open source community. The developer should be able to use,

modify, interoperate and sync up existing and newer applications on the OOXML

platform. This will ensure two things — a certain similarity of the OOXML to ODF

in terms of flexibility and interoperability and two, a major chunk of

Microsoft's proprietary Office backbone thrown open for external developers to

modify and create new applications. From the users' perspective, this would mean

an automatic sync up between multiple office suite applications, irrespective of

which vendor they have purchased it from. When two or more office suites begin

'talking' to each other, it will create room for better usability,

synchronization and the ability to invoke specific applications from other

suites, if needed. For instance, a document or spreadsheet you have created

using one vendor's application, can be opened and modified in another's —

because they would have been created around the same universal format. For a

developer, this means a massive broadening of arenas for collaborations,

XML-based programs that blend across different products and applications, and a

common skeleton that can be done up the way your unique application demands. If

all goes well, this fete will be achieved by the end of February, after ISO's

final meeting to settle the ODF versus OOXML battle.

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