2009-06-19

 

Office Shots for Confirmed ODF Interchange Fidelity

The new Officeshots.org service received a fair amount of attention at the recent ODF Interoperability Plugfest.  Taking a page from the “test your site with all browsers” tools that are available, Office Shots will take an uploaded ODF document and show how it renders in different ODF-supporting products.  To deal with the problem of confirming appearance of the document back to the submitter, the rendering by each application is captured in PDF.

This is a fledgling service, currently in limited beta.  It is sponsored by the same Dutch organizations that sponsored the ODF Plugfest.

The power of the service is its user-relevant confirmation of the fidelity with which a document of interest is rendered by different ODF-supporting software/platform combinations.  It is an easy way for evaluators to verify whether their important documents are rendered successfully in interchange among ODF products.  It also allows the subjective determination of success to be left in the hands of the users who know what qualifies as acceptable fidelity in each particular case.

One of the most-difficult situations in interchange of documents is when the receiver is seeing something materially different than what the sender (1) had in mind and (2) expects has been communicated.  For the parties to communicate about a suspected difficulty, they need to use a “channel” that differs from the one that has apparently failed.  Screen shots serve that purpose.  PDF is also valuable in the case where a PDF can be extracted that accurately-enough reflects what is intended and/or what is being seen.

Office Shots provide a way to proactively check, either because a problem is suspected with a local rendition or to ensure that a document and the choice of implementation-supported features is treated consistently by a variety of other implementations/platforms.

One can imagine that, over time, we could see Office Shots support links for troubleshooting specific discrepancies, finding practices for avoiding many of them, and easy reporting of problems to development teams.

Office Shots promises to provide a terrific reality-based approach to confirming the interoperability of ODF implementations as far as presentation fidelity is concerned.  This is also a first-line check on confirming difficulties with round-trip inter-product fidelity preservation.  (Of course, if the goal is solely presentation fidelity, PDF and other final-form formats may be preferable, especially when long-term preservation is also a consideration.)

I look forward to the impetus that Office Shots will provide to user recognition of practical ODF interoperability considerations.  I also think it will provide important stimulus and confirmation for developers who want to improve the interoperable use of their ODF-supporting software.

Beside the Officeshots.org site, there are other discussions of the project and its potential:

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# posted by orcmid @ 6/19/2009 10:58:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

2009-06-15

 

ODF Interoperability at The Hague

There’s a great event at The Hague these two days: June 15-16, 2009.  It’s all about OpenDocument Format (ODF) and interoperability. 

It is sponsored by a neutral (ODF-supporting) organization. It is attended by major implementers of ODF-supporting products, including IBM, Microsoft, and Sun Microsystems.

In short, all of the right people are in the same room, some for the first time, and I am so envious that I am not among them.  There should be a great deal of creative tension.

I will be watching for materials and progress reports.  There is already Doug Mahugh’s useful pre-event post on how Microsoft tested the ODF implementation in Office 2007 SP2 to ensure that it only produced standard-conforming documents and failed in ways that did not introduce security exploits against the Office System or documents of its users.

I have been meaning to post more about my involvement with ODF and how it is fueled by my interest in the harmonious level at which we can start and expand interoperability based around standard, open formats for office-productivity applications.  I will do that separately.  For now, I just want to register my excitement for the positive stage that participation at this meeting represents.

[Update 2009-06-16-18:56Z There are little odds and ends available from the ODF Plugfest so far, and I will compile some links here for safe-keeping.  I am sure there will be additional blog posts and reports by more attendees after they have had some time for reflection]

[Update 2009-06-17-17:11Z with a few more straggling in]

[Update 2009-06-18-17:51Z as other posts show up]

[Update 2009-06-23-14:55Z with some stragglers]

[Update 2009-06-24-18:55Z and one more interesting appraisal]

[Update 2009-06-27-21:40Z and the hits keep on coming …]

[Update 2009-07-01-15:25Z wrapping up, with anything more on plugfests in future posts]

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# posted by orcmid @ 6/15/2009 12:12:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

2009-06-09

 

ODF and IPR/Licensing Concerns

Here are some apple-orange notions that have come to my attention in an oddly-convergent way.

New OASIS Technical Committee IPR Mode

OASIS has just announced the pending addition of a 4th IPR Mode to the set that technical committees can use as the way intellectual property (mainly essential claims of patents) will be made available to adopters of a TC-produced specification:

  1. RAND Mode, requiring the essential IPR of participants and contributors to be licensable under Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory terms
  2. RF on Rand Terms Mode, a Royalty-Free RAND mode that may have certain limitations
  3. RF on Limited Terms Mode, where the limitations allowed to RF on Rand Terms are not allowed
  4. Non-Assertion Mode, the new mode in which all contributors and participants make a non-assertion covenant with regard to the specifications that obligate them to do so

The ODF TC operates under the RF on Limited Terms Mode, the most-generous mode available until now.  As stated under the OASIS IPR Policy, a TC may not change its IPR Mode without closing and submitting a new charter.  I don’t expect such a shut-down and restart to happen, especially before ODF 1.2 becomes a ratified OASIS Standard.

Many will welcome this new mode.  I know that my willingness to participate in OASIS Technical Committee activities increases exponentially as we move down the list.  The RF on Limited Terms and the new Non-Assertion modes are the only ones that I have no hesitation about. 

The Non-Assertion Mode is comparable to everyone obligated by the IPR mode having automatically made an equivalent of the Microsoft Open-Specification Promise with regard to the specifications produced by the TC during their participation. 

Of course contributors, participants, and anyone else can provide non-assertion covenants with regard to any specification, as Sun Microsystems did for ODF in September, 2005.

Implementation License Models and Interoperability

The licenses under OASIS IPR modes apply to implementations of the applicable specifications, such as ODF.

I have recently been dealing with provisions of the ODF specification that do not seem to be understandable on their own, not even by consulting referenced source materials.  In that case, there is no way to ensure interoperability without consulting an implementation or two.  In complex cases (such as figuring out how to decrypt an ODF document that is encrypted using the approach sketched in the ODF specification), it is actually necessary to inspect code to determine what the missing but essential details might be.  (It would be better to find implementation descriptions that explain how the specification is being satisfied, but too often the code is the only reliable implementation description.)

When the code is available in an open-source implementation, it may be possible to reverse-engineer an implementation-independent interoperable interpretation.  That is what I would look for, assuming that I could master such code well enough to resolve questions the specification leaves open. 

Consulting code works for detective work around clarification and hole-filling of the specification.  If I want to make an implementation based on that interpretation, I must be especially careful about the license on that code.  For example, LGPL and GPL code and other reciprocal-license open-source software is not useful to me in producing software under a license that I prefer (Open BSD, Apache, etc.).   I am cautious about digging around in voluminous code anyhow, but I am particularly wary about risking that I might copy GPL code.

In this case, I am reluctant to rely too strongly on an abstracted interpretation unless the specification itself is updated and issued with an interpretation I can then safely rely on.

In effect, specifications that are sufficient for implementation-independent achievement of interoperability, along with royalty-free licenses or covenants, provide the ultimate clean-room support for achievement of unencumbered independent implementations.

That’s what I’m after.

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# posted by orcmid @ 6/09/2009 01:34:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

2009-03-29

 

Open Government Data: Simple Principles

I finally noticed the Open Government Data Principles and associated Open Government Data site and Wiki (via Doc Searls).

It strikes me how much simpler and well-framed this discussion is, contrasted with the over-stated manifesto for document freedom.

Somehow, when it is about simply-described affirmative principles, it becomes simpler to grasp and to imagine the possibilities and opportunities that are afforded.  Here are the key qualities around public government data public made open:

with reviewable compliance.

There is more to be found on the wiki, and anyone can register and add their questions and perspective to the fleshing-out of these notions.

One can splice open documents, especially the public’s documents, into this structure as well.  This puts important context around the technological issues involved in having documents in formats that everyone can use and that are freely implementable in computer software.

This has me think of a few other qualities that might matter in both domains, especially around durability/permanence.

You might have some thoughts about this too.  Visit the Open Government Working Group page for more.

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# posted by orcmid @ 3/29/2009 12:27:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

2009-03-25

 

2009-03-25: Document Freedom Day

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Yesterday, Ada Lovelace Day, I learned that today, March 25, is Document Freedom Day (via Louis Suarez-Potts).

Today’s celebration has the over-the-top theme: “global day for document liberation.”   The thesis is that

“In a world where records are increasingly kept in electronic form, Open Standards are crucial for valuable information to outlive the application in which it was initially generated. The question of Document Freedom has severe repercussions for freedom of choice, competition, markets and the sovereignty of countries and their governments.”

…

“The Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for Document Liberation with roughly 250 active teams worldwide. It is a day of grassroots effort around the world to promote and build awareness for the relevance of Free Document Formats in particular and Open Standards in general.”

A Little Less Manifesto Please

I fancy the simpler notion of promoting “document formats that can be used by everyone and safely implemented in free software.” 

I must also caution that the existence of such a format does not assure that my computer-maintained documents will be able to survive intact beyond the availability of the specific software that I use to create and present them.  There is no causality here, as much as we would like there to be.  There is, on the face of it, a greater opportunity, but not necessarily one that I can exploit on my own.

Owning My Own Documents

Having said that, here’s what document freedom means to me:

That would satisfy me that I am truly the owner of my computer-supported documents.

It takes more to satisfy me that the choice of different platforms and products is a minor concern and there are reliable substitutes.  That would require that the level of interoperable use among (versions of) document-processing products be so high that faithful interchange of our documents and even successful roundtrip collaboration in their development and refinement are assured.

Too Slippery the Slope

I think that is worth striving for.  I don’t think we are close yet.  I don’t think any of the sloganeering and posturing is doing anything to accomplish it.  There are too many mixed agendas:

The Public’s Documents in Public Formats

There needs to be some serious reality-based assessment and measurability.  That’s what it takes to be secure in the ownership of my documents.  That’s what it will take to be sure that those documents that are the instruments of our civil society are indeed the public’s documents, using the public’s formats.

The lingering question, one to ask on next year’s Document Freedom Day, and then the year after that, and …, is who are the stakeholders and what action will they take to substitute reality for blind flag-following?

[update 2009-03-26T01:06Z: I should simply go to Rick Jelliffe’s blog before I open up my mouth about anything to do with open formats.  If I could ever find the blankety-blank RSS feed I would be so much happier.   Meanwhile, here are some relevant words on the status quo and the sow’s ear:

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# posted by orcmid @ 3/25/2009 05:55:00 PM 0 Comments Links to this post

2008-12-31

 

Retiring InfoNuovo.com

[cross-posted 2008-12-29T16:49Z from Orcmid’s Lair.  Some of the oldest links that still use the infonuovo.com domain are related to ODMA.  This post is here to catch those who might end up searching for previously-found ODMA material and wonder where it has gotten too and happen to have an interest in the integration of content-management as well as document interoperability.]

I am retiring the InfoNuovo.com domain after 10 years.  The domain will be cast loose at the beginning of February, 2009.  Those places where there are still references to infonuovo.com need to be updated:

If you have an infonuovo.com bookmark and you are not sure of its replacement, simply use it and notice the URL of the destination that appears in the address bar of your browser.  That is the URL that should be bookmarked.

InfoNuovo.com was the first domain name that I ever rented.  It was originally hosted on VServers and absorbed through acquisitions a couple of times.  On March 22, 1999, I posted my first construction note on the use of InfoNuovo.com as an anchor site, a web site that houses other web sites as part of a single hosting.  This was also the first step toward evolution of what I now call the construction structure of any nfoCentrale web site.   InfoNuovo was the company name I had chosen for my independent consulting practice initiated on retirement from Xerox Corporation in December, 1998.

When I moved from Silicon Valley to the Seattle Area in August, 1999, I found that InfoNuovo was too easily confused with a name already registered in Washington State.  The business became NuovoDoc, but I continued to hold the infonuovo.com domain name for the support of the subwebs housed there.  I eventually moved most content to the new anchor, nfoCentrale.net, on Microsoft bCentral. 

There was one problem.  Although I could redirect unique domain names, such as ODMA.info, to the current anchor, the web pages still served up with the URLs of the actual location on the anchor site.  I experimented with URL cloaking, but that created as many problems as it solved.

In October 2006, following the lead of Ed Bott, I switched to A2 Hosting as a way to reduce the hosting fees and also take advantage of the A2 shared hosting Apache-server provisions for addon domains.  Addon domains serve up with URLs of their domain even though the domain is anchored on a single hosted site (in this case, nfoCentrale.com).  I consolidated all nfoCentrale.net and infonuovo.com content on nfoCentrale.com.  I also parked domains nfoCentrale.net and infonuovo.com where they are today, atop nfoCentrale.com.  Now, however, accessing any of the individual subwebs triggers redirection to the appropriate addon-domain URL.

This took care of my wanting to have the subwebs always respond as the domains that I have as their addons.  It also raised an unexpected problem around case-sensitivity of Apache filenames, a situation I am still digging my way out of.  That shows how important having the addon-domain capability is to me.  I’m not sure I’d have moved if I knew how difficult the case-sensitivity extrication would be though.

I know that there are still infonuovo.com URLs out there, even though the addon domains have been in place for over two years.  In another month, those URLs will fail.  I just don’t want to lease infonuovo.com any longer.  I do feel a little sentimental about it.  That’s not going to stop me.

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# posted by orcmid @ 12/31/2008 08:51:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post

2008-11-19

 

ISO/IEC 29500:2008 OOXML Standard Available

Thanks to the ever-vigilant Alex Brown (and his convenient proximity to European time zones), we now know that IS 29500:2008, the ISO/IEC Standard for Office Open XML File Formats (OOXML to its friends) is now available from ISO.

The 4-part standard and its “electronic inserts” are provided on a CD-ROM.  The purchase price is 342 CHF (about $285 USD or 225.5 EUR).  Not exactly a holiday stocking-stuffer, but there are other ways.

Rumor has it that ECMA will now issue IS 29500:2008 as a revision of ECMA-376, and that will be available for free download (and sometimes there is a CD-ROM compilation made available from ECMA and we could expect OOXML to be included).

Even better than waiting for ECMA, IS 29500 is now on the ITTF list of Publicly Available Standards.  As of today, the individual parts and their electronic inserts are available for download.  Scroll down to the end of the Publicly Available Standards list and you will find the 7 links to the parts and their inserts.  After accepting the license agreement for your personal use of each download, the Zip files will be on their way to your computer:

The Electronic inserts include schemas in both Relax-NG and XML Schema.  The IS 29500-1 inserts also include drawing geometries, spreadsheet styles, and word-processing art borders.  The schemas with IS 29500-1 are for strict OOXML.  The transitional schemas are with IS 29500-4.

One advantage of having these downloads, today, is having desktop search for locating material in them.  That, along with the Acrobat Search for individually-opened PDFs, makes it possible to rely on this material as off-line but on-board references.

Until I stumbled on Alex Brown’s tweet following a very satisfying OASIS ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC coordination call, I had not realized how much I have been suppressing myself in anticipation of the availability of IS 29500 in tangible, public form.  It was a little bit like waiting for US Presidential Election results (which happened much more quickly, although the long run-up was certainly comparable).

I’m not sure why it was like that, since there is plenty of work to do with ODF as part of my attempt to apply the Harmony Principles.  Yet the missing-in-action status of IS 29500 was some sort of cloud over my attention and enthusiasm.   Now, instead, I am suddenly much farther behind in this work than I was just 12 hours ago, and that was behind enough.  Stay tuned …

[update 2008-11-20: I forgot to set categories.  Done now.]

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# posted by orcmid @ 11/19/2008 10:00:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post