[ILUG] Star Office

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CP Hennessy said:
>
> Is it vaporware or just a stalling tactic ? ( or am I too cynical ? )

I haven't been following this with great detail. However, some points to
note are:
 1. It is reported that one of the features of the XML format is the
    capacity to store information in the XML file in binary. This is
    little different from storing the complete document in a binary
    format. However, dropping the total cynicism, it's worth wondering
    how much and what elements of any document Microsoft intends to
    encode as XML and how much in an XML-wrapped BLOB.
 2. Microsoft is actively pursuing patent applications on the XML
    format (or probably on the process of writing or reading the
    format). Now the physical difficulty of reverse engineering an
    undocumented binary file format is being replaced with the legal
    and financial difficulty of implementing a documented format. Even
    if the option to use the binary data elements in the XML is never
    taken up, Microsoft can prevent any project from using the format
    due to patent constraints. In fact, if it wanted to, it could even
    use the patent to threaten the Open Document Format. At the very
    least, it could say to any project, Free Software or not, that it
    may not implement its XML format, thereby completely killing
    competing products which need to be able to interoperate with
    MS products.
 3. There are currently many times more projects and products that
    are using, or intend to use, the Open Document Format natively
    than there are projects or products that intend to use Microsoft's
    XML format natively. The Open Document Format has recently received
    ISO acceptance as a standard (I think).
 4. As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, the issue of users having
    trouble with OpenOffice is one of perception and culture. My
    father-in-law ditched what he referred to as "Microsoft Open Office"
    after a few months, because he couldn't get used to it, and bought
    a copy of MS Office. It's hard to change the perception that the
    only vendor of office applications is Microsoft?

2c.

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