Posted on 10/05/2005 7:42:38 AM PDT by N3WBI3
Opinion: It's not coincidence that after Massachusetts made it clear that it would support open formats, Microsoft is now going to include PDF in the next version of Office.
What is Microsoft up to, anyway, with its sudden plan to finally support PDF?
It wasn't announced by Bill Gates loudly to the world at the Professional Developer Conference a few weeks ago. It also wasn't proclaimed to the Microsoft faithful at its recent Most Valuable Professional Global Summit.
No, instead, Microsoft quietly squeaked out the news on a Saturday afternoon in Microsoft Office Program Manager Brian Jones' Weblog.
Could it be that it's because Microsoft is backing its way into ever so reluctantly supporting an open format after Massachusetts decided that it would only use office suites that supported open formats like PDF and OpenDocument?
It certainly looks that way to me.
For all of its talk about being an innovator, Microsoft is really just a follower.
PointerClick here to read more about Microsoft's decision to build PDF support into Office 12.
Sometimes, of course, the company is a very, very reluctant follower. It took Microsoft's leadership forever to live down the fact that they had initially dismissed the Internet. Now, I see Microsoft slowly and painfully embracing open standards.
Mind you, this move is just a beginning. I recently pointed out that it would be trivial for Microsoft to add OpenDocument support to Office.
I don't see that happening anytime soon now though.
With PDF support alone, Microsoft can still try for Massachusetts government contracts without having to add OpenDocument.
Well, until StarOffice, OpenOffice.org and WordPerfect's support for OpenDocument force Microsoft's hand anyway.
After all, PDF is much more of an end-result format than one that most people actually want to edit in. As OpenDocument and the applications that enable it gain more support, Microsoft will find itself forced into supporting it too.
Now, some might say that this is just Microsoft giving the people what they want. Many users have been asking for a PDF option from Microsoft since Adobe Acrobat 4 appeared in 1999.
eWEEK Special Report: Office Politics
But, if that's all there was to it, then why was Microsoft banging the drum for its own PDF substitute, Metro, only a few months ago?
Still others might say that is part and parcel of Microsoft's recent efforts to compete against Adobe in other ways: Sparkle vs. Flash, Acrylic vs. Photoshop and so on.
To which, I say, "Why now? Why announce it in such a subdued way?"
No, all those other things play a role, but at the end of the day, Microsoft felt that it must make at least a concession to open standards by adopting PDF.
After all, it's not like Massachusetts is the only entity that is seriously considering making supporting open standards a requirement for its software purchases. Massachusetts was just the first to make it official.
Microsoft would love it if it could make everyone stick to its proprietary formats. That forces customers to keep buying its products. But it can't. And, much as Microsoft may hate it, its executives know it. So it is that as quietly as the company could, Microsoft is, once more, making concessions to open standards.
eWEEK.com Senior Editor Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols has been using and writing about operating systems since the late '80s and thinks he may just have learned something about them along the way. He can be reached at sjvn@ziffdavis.com.
In other words, his complaint about documents not being able to be read in 20 years is blunted, either way, because no vendor or project may be around to read them. There are no guarantees. But .DOC format is ubiquitous and can be converted quite nicely to PDF already with print output drivers.
Not quite. ODF is a specification. It's not owned by any one person. In 20 years, the spec will still exist, and projects can be created to read them. If MS goes under (miniscule chance), then the formats go with it.
If they didn't care about open formats free of legal encumbrances.
And ... there are no guarantees that the OpenOffice project won't get mothballed in the space of 20 years.
When will you realize that we're talking about an ISO standard format, and not a product?
No, it's called Adobe Acrobat Pro (if you doubt it, check out Adobe's website),
The company is called Adobe, the product is called Acrobat Professional, which is shown on the page you linked to. You are messing with someone who's been using the various Acrobat products since version 2.
First, that's a bit of an oversimplification. Here's a listing of the kinds of things that Acrobat does. Second, I don't know what fishbowl you live in,
And it's not enough for content creation. Which fishbowl? When I used it to get stuff approved, to distribute completed documents, to touch-up currend PDFs, to collate documents from various sources into one PDF (actually, collating several PDFs produced from those applications), to send complex documents to printers for reproduction by the hundreds of thousands, to sign and verify documents?
So, either way, Massachusetts and other customers are going to need additional tools to prepare content. If you think otherwise, you're selling snake oil.
And they want those tools to follow open standards. That's where OpenDoc comes in. Photoshop and Illustrator can save to PDF, and OpenOffice can include them in the final document for output to the final PDF. If you're on a Mac, everything can produce PDF.
So should they also not use the Internet? And that includes all the other countries? By that logic they should all get off the Internet ASAP as it's owned by one party.
what would you think about MS' future intentions?
Wow you got some left over tin foil for me, because I think they're controlling me.
They're lighter than MS Office.
Try loading them and check your stopwatch. It will take damn near a minute to boot on an average machine.
MS Office usually has a preloader that runs at startup.
Because they're "integrated", they have a ton of memory baggage.
What year are you in? OpenOffice/StarOffice of old was very integrated and therefore a hog. They stopped doing that.
That's what they said when I tried it last time. OSS advocates to themselves a big disservice by saying their stuff is ready for prime time when it isn't.
I've heard that about linux as a desktop for the past 10 years. Everytime I try it still sucks ass (for a desktop). It may catch up one day, but Apple and Microsoft have a much better experience than Linux will be able to offer for the foreseeable future.
First of all--it wasn't me that pointed it out. It was this ZDNet article. Second, that's not much of a response.
When we all know the reality is it should be "Taxachusetts hates Microsoft and tries to remove them by requiring ODF, while still allowing PDF because they like Adobe"
Regardless of bloat, the only thing that users see is startup time. On a well designed PC, costing less than $900 to assemble, including XP Pro, the OS can boot from power off in 15 seconds, and Word can open in less than one second. Users don't care what's going on under the hood.
the Commonwealth said that "the Microsoft "Patent License" for use of Office schemas has not been accepted as satisfactory by all parties, even if it eventually proves to satisfy the requirements of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Yeah, there's no ABM in that statement. They only set the bar at the 100% agreement level, so that as long as one ABM guy still doesn't like it...it won't work. That's like saying the state won't go to OSS until ALL people are satisfied with it...and they know their head of IT has serious concerns with OSS.
Since you refuse to accept logical debate, and continue to stick your fingers in your ears, we're done.
Another reason is that the gov't of Mass heard this:
"Someday, for all countries that are entering the WTO [World Trade Organisation], somebody will come and look for money owing to the rights for that intellectual property," Ballmer reportedly said.
Why not post what that was pertaining to.
"In the past, the issue of patent infringement has been used by Microsoft as a criticism against open source. Speaking in Microsoft's Asian Government Leaders Forum in Singapore in November 2004, Ballmer reiterated a controversial claim that Linux violates more than 228 patents."
And yes if Linux steals IP the companies using it should be sued. Of course that only works in countries that protect property rights. Some countries like Sweeden (I think that's it), they actually say if you buy something in good faith it's yours no matter if it's stolen. No wonder Linux is so popular there.
You've given me.....hmmm....Nothing at all except tripe. Since you refuse to accept logical debate, and continue to stick your fingers in your ears, we're done.
How big is the MS install vs. OpenOffice? How much space does each take on disk? Or are you talking about memory usage? Yes, it is more, and I wish it were less, but it's not enough to make a real difference in most systems these days (and we'll have to see what happens when the debug code is removed). However, I'm used to applications that normally take 100MB+ of memory each (like Visual Studio), so a few tens of megabytes doesn't phase me.
Your performance benchmarks were also for a beta. BTW, I forgot OO has a startup tray, but I never use it. So here's what I get on an couple-year-old, average-powered laptop with RC1, newly logged-on, OO and MS quick starts disabled:
| Launch time (sec) |
MS Office
|
OpenOffice
|
|
| Writer |
2
|
3
|
|
| Spreadsheet |
3
|
3
|
|
| Presenter |
3
|
3
|
Oh lookee there, what happened to your "It will take damn near a minute to boot on an average machine."? Mine is less than average, as Dell doesn't even sell this model this slow anymore -- and it's a laptop.
Why such an old laptop? Why doesn't your business (or employer) buy you a new one?
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