"The Document Interoperability Initiative is shameless propaganda along the lines of Monday's Internet Explorer 8 standards announcement."

Joe, what part of IE 8 now passing the Acid 2 test, defaulting to standards mode, support for HTML 5, etc., is propaganda? Also, what is this big document interop problem we're all supposedly facing? I communicate with lots of people and we have no problem whatsoever using the file formats that dominate - Office, PDF, etc. Also, how exactly would you suggest getting a bunch of competitors who are desperately trying to use their own "standards" to displace MS Office into a room with MS to decide on common ground? Isn't that really pretty naive?

MS can PR all they want, but they can't pull the wool over seasoned IT professionals.

Paul; just what parts of those file formats are you using to communicating with lots of people? Are you using XML? Your post is an example of precisely the kind of propaganda follow up. "What propaganda? We're just feeding the little children and saving the bunnies."

It's pretty sickening just how blatant this "we're so interoperable" claim simply laughs in the face of people who understand the issues and see the clear failure in Microsoft's technology layers to own up to their manipulation of the markets and industry.

Joe, Microsoft is able to do this because people who should have been studying the true nature of the various technologies and calling out where Microsoft was blowing smoke and slinging bull$#!@ were too tickled pink to be in the same room with Bill Gates and they gushed their integrity into pate'.

Nice to see you bucking up, but, you need to call out what Microsoft does even when it means they won't return your calls. They're plenty transparent and that kind of thing won't go back in the box. Ballmer's out in the open in his nakedness and he's going to have to make even more outlandish statements and actions.

Desperate people do desperate things.

When their competitors stop playing the PR game, so will MSFT. IOW, they'll never stop.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen. The reason Microsoft does all its "development" work in marketing blurbs is because "everybody else does it".

Let's see some examples uhura. Or is this another Microsoft tactic called "Just saying it will make it so."?

Microsoft Office file format is what is called a de facto standard. Much of the work being done right now (ODF) misses the special formatting and other options that Office supports. I do think that the XML standardization for file formats is a sham on both sides. Microsoft publishing how the file formats work is a big step in interop, since no one has to reverse engineer or guess at what the formats mean.

As a consumer, I'm still wondering how a standardized format benefits me. I like the idea of a standardized output format for reading. But for editing and creation, I don't think that a standard format really helps me. Then again, I'm an Office suite power user, using close to 90% of the functionality in Word/Outlook/Excel/Powerpoint in a given year's of usage.

Scott - the issue is not what you do with your documents but what machines do with your documents.

XML allows machines to process the data within your documents (make them available to other users as a cloud of unstructured data if they need) without having to depend on human intervention.

"Then again, I'm an Office suite power user, using close to 90% of the functionality in Word/Outlook/Excel/Powerpoint in a given year's of usage."

Which means you are doing all the work and the file does nothing but record your input and your computer is little more than a glorified typewriter/typesetting machine.

The idea of the current IBM XML effort in Office documents is to essentially replace people like you. How does a standard format matter to you now?

"As a consumer, I'm still wondering how a standardized format benefits me. I like the idea of a standardized output format for reading. But for editing and creation, I don't think that a standard format really helps me."

Are you saying that you don't edit and create anything worth reading in the future?

Imagine if the US Constitution, the Gettysburg Address, the Declaration of Independence, the Bible, the Torah, the Qur�an, and so on, were all written using a format that favored cool and cutesy formatting but that couldn't be read 10 or 20 years later.

Ancient civilizations created works that can still be read many thousands of years after they were written. Computers have enabled us to create and distribute with ease, but proprietary formats are a death blow to the preservation of knowledge for the future. What makes money now shuts off the future.

As long as many people write like you and creates pretty documents that don't mean much in a year or so, many people won't see the value in standard formats. I guess we're lucky that most of what they write is drivel.

> The idea of the current IBM XML effort in Office documents
>is to essentially replace people like you. How does a
>standard format matter to you now?

Errr... no it's not. The ODF effort is a lowest common dominator format, for exchange between apps. It's lossy.

In Microsoft's native format, like any application's native format, the information is much more rich and reflects the feature set, not a simplified set.

The amount of formatting features and logic is very advanced. For Word, the file stores format control code for the Word formatter, and also all the data for the various plug-ins that you instantiate in a document when you insert an object like a graph or an equation. Then, there is Excel, where the data is even more dynamic.

ODF is like taking a photoshop file and merging the layers into a jpeg file. it may look the same, but you've lost the history of the document, so it's harder to re-edit.

ulric... since when do machines need to re-edit a document? Automation prefers a lowest common denominator approach in data. That way, there is little misunderstanding as to the actual value of the information and the process by which that value is advanced to the next use.

The world could use Microsoft's documents as a giant unstructured data repository if Microsoft would learn to play fair. But, they haven't and I doubt they can.

"The amount of formatting features and logic is very advanced." That's nice. Pointless, but nice. So "advanced" the 6000 page OOXML specification is unworkable.

Nice try Softee. It shows how little you understand about autmation.

Here's a perfect example of the need to hide the richness of features if you're going to want to expand the user base. Microsoft has not shown they understand this concept.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/bizfocus/archives/2008/03/09/2003404785
Why Flash price fall is painful for Microsoft's future

By Glyn Moody
THE GUARDIAN, LONDON
Sunday, Mar 09, 2008

Until now, the received wisdom has been that GNU/Linux will never take off with general users because it's too complicated. One of the signal achievements of the Asus Eee PC is that it has come up with a front end that hides the richness of the underlying GNU/Linux. It divides programs up into a few basic categories and then provides large, self-explanatory icons for the main programs within each group. The result is that anyone can use the system without training or even handholding.

This combination of functionality, ease of use and low price could prove problematic for Microsoft. Until now, there has been no obvious advantage for the average user in choosing GNU/Linux over Windows on the desktop and plenty of disadvantages.

This makes the relative cost of systems running Microsoft's products greater. The argument that its software is "worth more" because it has more features is unlikely to cut much ice as users discover that functionality of the kind offered by Firefox is fine for most everyday uses.

(more at URL)
-------

OOXML replicates the "rich feature" mindset Microsoft has used to sell software to rich humans for the last three decades.

Unfortunately for the future of the Microsoft products, rich humans aren't the ones who will be spreading the use of those products. The larger proportion of potential users are looking for smaller, cheaper, easier. They aren't developers and don't want to be. They simply want to get a simple job done... simply.

Joe wrote: The Document Interoperability Initiative is shameless propaganda along the lines of Monday's Internet Explorer 8 standards announcement. Real initiative (pun intended) would be a group that included Adobe, Apple, Corel, Google, OpenOffice, Sun and other developers of software that produce documents and/or have their own desktop file formats.

Tell it like it is, Joe!

Other forms of “openness” and “interoperability” on the part of Microsoft have been found to be far less substantial than the hype contained in the company’s announcements. You have, for example, Microsoft’s promised release of voluminous documents on the APIs of its major applications, apparently to comply with the directives of the EU Commission. But Micro$oft's proise not to sue only applies to non-commercial software made using its API. If you make money, you have to pay Micro$oft.

As Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols said, that's a trap!

Remember what Laocoon said to the Trojans:
"Do not trust the horse, Trojans! Whatever it is, I fear the Greeks even bringing gifts”.

The FOSS community would do just as well to be wary of the “gifts” from Redmond.

Wal-Mart: Microsoft should kill Vista Home Basic

http://blogs.computerworld.com/wal_mart_microsoft_should_kill_vista_home_basic

Quotes from the link;

" Wal-Mart was particularly unhappy, both with the Vista Capable scheme, and more than that, with the fact that Microsoft was releasing Vista Home Basic, which is such a stripped-down version of the operating system that even some Microsoft officials don't consider it Vista.

On February, 2006, Microsoft exec Robin Leonard wrote this to other Microsoft officials about what Wal-Mart had to say:

Wal-Mart was very vocal regarding the Windows Vista Capable messaging. They are extremely disappointed in the fact that standards were lowered and feel like customer confusion will ensure...They also went so far as to say that they wished Windows Vista Home Basic was not even in the sku line up. The would totally support the higher ASP, but feel that competitors will be offering Windows Vista Home Basic machines and as such they need to support that for their opening price point."