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| China has its own open document format |
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Wednesday, November 08 2006 @ 01:49 PM EST
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Put this in your pipe and smoke it: China has its own open document format, the Uniform Office Format (UOF), that they are working to harmonize with ODF. Andy Updegrove is just back from China with the news: It includes word processing, spreadsheet and presentation modules, and comprises GUI, format and API specifications. Like both ODF and Office OpenXML, it is another "XML in a Zip file" format. ...
From what I understand, UOF was developed with less compulsion to follow the lead of Microsoft Office and its fifteen years of accumulating features, allowing UOF to be simpler rather than slavishly faithful to (and therefore constrained by) what has come before. I'm also told that the UOF format is based on existing Web standards, such as SVG.... There is already an effort in place to "harmonize" UOF and ODF, and from what I understand that process should be less challenging than making ODF and OpenOfficeXML play nicely together....Third, what of Office OpenXML? Implementation of UOF will continue the trend away from proprietary, "lock in" products, and towards an environment with more competition, more variety, and more freedom for end-users. Presumably, the proliferation of compatible open format alternatives will place added pressure on OOXML to become increasingly open and competitive in order to be relevant. All the plotting and planning here in the US was for absolutely nothing. ODF wins.
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| Authored by: scooterJRT on Wednesday, November 08 2006 @ 02:04 PM EST |
| ... so PJ can find them. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: scooterJRT on Wednesday, November 08 2006 @ 02:06 PM EST |
| ... and please make your links clickable. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: tiger99 on Wednesday, November 08 2006 @ 02:43 PM EST |
| If they have pulled that off, they are very good indeed. Have a look at the
Chinese language(s) and you will see what I mean. No doubt they are using
Unicode, but even so.... And did we read the other day about the number of
computer users in China? I can't remember exactly where, but seem to recall over
100 million. That is getting close to the US or the EU, so it may indeed be a
very significant long term loss for M$. The centre of power in the software
indstry is shifting rapidly..... [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 08 2006 @ 02:44 PM EST |
The Chinese position has been clear and consistent all along: they like any
format which will allow them absolute control over their machines and who uses
them. Their banning of the Chinese language wikipedias, which so far as I know
they have never explained, are a good example of this. As is that the one
Chinese contributer to the kernel project stopped contributing after he went
home, despite government assurances that was one reason they wanted him home.
Short term, I can see this as an advantage for the ODF. Long term, I have to
wonder if it's just another embrace, extend, extinguish.
jplatt39 (can't log in right now.)
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 08 2006 @ 03:04 PM EST |
| Wikipedia
article. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 08 2006 @ 03:45 PM EST |
Here is a pop quiz:
How many people speak Chinese in the world vs every other language spoken
combined?
Then break down the languages and see the top one vs the next most population
spoken language, etc?
Now apply this to PJ's article and think for a while...
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, November 08 2006 @ 03:58 PM EST |
| Didn't you guys see the announcement from MS saying they are considering pulling
out of China? BBC
Link [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: freeio on Wednesday, November 08 2006 @ 06:18 PM EST |
This is where the large corporate thinkers lose their bearings. The entire
thought that there are at more than one gigapersons permanently outside their
realm is frightening, and the political differences make it unlikely that this
will ever be bridged.
To any self-respecting Chinese, they are in the center of the world, and we
westerners are out on the periphery somewhere. It makes sense. (Why exactly are
our maps drawn with north being up, for instance?) We are at the center of our
world, and they are at the center of theirs.
To have a fully capable format which works well in the various forms of written
Chinese, and which is locally developed, is a point of pride if nothing else.
The fact that it may be compatible with ODF is a way to spread their culture to
the west, and not on the corporate west's terms.
This should be interesting to watch.
Marty (still alive!)
---
Tux et bona et fortuna est.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: shiptar on Wednesday, November 08 2006 @ 06:58 PM EST |
So uh, what's worse, communists or Novell?
heh
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 09 2006 @ 02:05 AM EST |
Is ODF completely Unicode-based?
Mandarin Chinese has a standard
system, called pinyin, for writing it in the Latin alphabet. Four "accents" over
vowels are required (they distinguish tones). Two of them, the "first tone"
accent which is a horizontal line over a vowel, and the "third tone" accent
which is like an upside-down ^, cannot be inserted into a document by my copy of
OpenOffice. Maybe I don't have the very latest version of OpenOffice. And of
course ODF != OpenOffice. But it did surprise me that OpenOffice ignored the
language with the most speakers in the world. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, November 09 2006 @ 03:10 AM EST |
| Yeah but... will it have some kind of mechanism for censorship too? [ Reply to This | # ]
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