4 ms·

Here's a radical idea: One government worker sending a document to another government worker should not involve a proprietary, for-profit data format. With a

Here's a radical idea: One government worker sending a document to another government worker should not involve a proprietary, for-profit data format. With a hardcopy paper document this would obviously be unacceptable, but since digitization and software eating the world, we pay our fees to Microsoft and go about our merry way. I'm middle-aged and tired, I'm not going to fight this fight anymore. Maybe some day legislators will grow fangs and start giving a shit about strategic interoperability. Probably not.

dr-detroit 3y ago
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scarface_74 3y ago
To a first approximation, every word processor can open Word documents including open source ones.
- lapetitejort 3y ago
  Is that a result of an open standard, or from constantly reverse engineering whatever change Microsoft makes?
  - ckcheng 3y ago
    I think open standard? Download is here? https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/standards/ecma-376/ https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/st... MS made it open because... > More than a year after being asked by the European Union to standardize their Office 2003 XML formats, Microsoft submitted 2,000 pages of documentation for a new file format to the Ecma International consortium for it to be made into an open standard. [1] The competing OpenDocument Format was standardized first though [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
smt88 3y ago
Of all the things to be upset about here, this should be low on the list. Microsoft Office documents haven't been proprietary for a long time. The formats are publicly-documented and Microsoft maintains open-source libraries that read/write them. They're all XML-based and unobfuscated (beyond their convoluted design). There are also many FOSS applications, including LibreOffice, that are perfectly fine as replacements for Microsoft Office. Proprietary formats are a problem, but not with Microsoft Office anymore. We should all be a lot more annoyed by PDFs, honestly.
- the_snooze 3y ago
  >There are also many FOSS applications, including LibreOffice, that are perfectly fine as replacements for Microsoft Office. From my own experience dealing with MS Office-based government organizations, this is absolutely false. Sure, LibreOffice can read and write DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX files that are nominally interoperable with MS Office. But more often than not, MS Office mangles the formatting of LibreOffice-generated files. For example, text sizes, fonts, and element alignments in PPTX files get thrown off noticeably. As another reply mentions, there's this nominal open-source standard. But the de facto standard is the MS Office implementation. I have to use MS Office instead of LibreOffice to eliminate the risk of document mangling when I send files over to the government people in charnge of my funding.
  - delfinom 3y ago
    Print PowerPoint to PDF. And hope that both of you are using Adobe lol Or make your presentations as a website and hope their browser follows the same standards, they don't have bad extensions or security policies setup that may break it too. Can't really win in human friendly days interchange, because all this crap gets layered on due to humans having their own things going on.
mostlysimilar 3y ago
> Maybe some day legislators will grow fangs and start giving a shit about strategic interoperability. Not so long as their paychecks require them to not have fangs.
- boring-alterego 3y ago
  It is questionable with some of the lawmakers getting older and older whether they are hiding fangs though.
paxys 3y ago
The legislators do have fangs, but they are pointed towards you.
swatcoder 3y ago
Every digital document needs to be encoded somehow, and that encoding is going to be a function of supoorted features. If you're saying that we've reached a point of maturity in everyday digital paperwork documents that we can formally standardize some and move away from vendor innovation, you may be right, but the transition is a matter of timing and discussion because of the tradeoffs involved when that happens, not a rhetorical principle.
layer8 3y ago
> should not involve a proprietary data format. For that very reason, Microsoft turned the Office formats into open standards: https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/standards/ecma-376/ https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/st... https://www.iso.org/standard/71691.html https://www.iso.org/standard/71691.html Well, at least nominally. The real standard is still Microsoft’s implementation.
maxnoe 3y ago
That's exactly the reason why Microsoft documents have an open standard, they were essentially forced to do that. That that standard has several thousand pages and internal inconsistencies, ... well https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Op...
butlike 3y ago
If only there was a separate arm of the government dedicated to sending and receiving communiqué. You could also use it to send _citizen's_ communiqué as well!

dr-detroit 3y ago

[dead]

scarface_74 3y ago

To a first approximation, every word processor can open Word documents including open source ones.

lapetitejort 3y ago
Is that a result of an open standard, or from constantly reverse engineering whatever change Microsoft makes?
- ckcheng 3y ago
  I think open standard? Download is here? https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/standards/ecma-376/ https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/st... MS made it open because... > More than a year after being asked by the European Union to standardize their Office 2003 XML formats, Microsoft submitted 2,000 pages of documentation for a new file format to the Ecma International consortium for it to be made into an open standard. [1] The competing OpenDocument Format was standardized first though [2]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument

smt88 3y ago

Of all the things to be upset about here, this should be low on the list. Microsoft Office documents haven't been proprietary for a long time. The formats are publicly-documented and Microsoft maintains open-source libraries that read/write them. They're all XML-based and unobfuscated (beyond their convoluted design). There are also many FOSS applications, including LibreOffice, that are perfectly fine as replacements for Microsoft Office. Proprietary formats are a problem, but not with Microsoft Office anymore. We should all be a lot more annoyed by PDFs, honestly.

the_snooze 3y ago
>There are also many FOSS applications, including LibreOffice, that are perfectly fine as replacements for Microsoft Office. From my own experience dealing with MS Office-based government organizations, this is absolutely false. Sure, LibreOffice can read and write DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX files that are nominally interoperable with MS Office. But more often than not, MS Office mangles the formatting of LibreOffice-generated files. For example, text sizes, fonts, and element alignments in PPTX files get thrown off noticeably. As another reply mentions, there's this nominal open-source standard. But the de facto standard is the MS Office implementation. I have to use MS Office instead of LibreOffice to eliminate the risk of document mangling when I send files over to the government people in charnge of my funding.
- delfinom 3y ago
  Print PowerPoint to PDF. And hope that both of you are using Adobe lol Or make your presentations as a website and hope their browser follows the same standards, they don't have bad extensions or security policies setup that may break it too. Can't really win in human friendly days interchange, because all this crap gets layered on due to humans having their own things going on.

mostlysimilar 3y ago

> Maybe some day legislators will grow fangs and start giving a shit about strategic interoperability. Not so long as their paychecks require them to not have fangs.

boring-alterego 3y ago
It is questionable with some of the lawmakers getting older and older whether they are hiding fangs though.

paxys 3y ago

The legislators do have fangs, but they are pointed towards you.

swatcoder 3y ago

Every digital document needs to be encoded somehow, and that encoding is going to be a function of supoorted features. If you're saying that we've reached a point of maturity in everyday digital paperwork documents that we can formally standardize some and move away from vendor innovation, you may be right, but the transition is a matter of timing and discussion because of the tradeoffs involved when that happens, not a rhetorical principle.

layer8 3y ago

> should not involve a proprietary data format. For that very reason, Microsoft turned the Office formats into open standards: https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/standards/ecma-376/ https://ecma-international.org/publications-and-standards/st... https://www.iso.org/standard/71691.html https://www.iso.org/standard/71691.html Well, at least nominally. The real standard is still Microsoft’s implementation.

maxnoe 3y ago

That's exactly the reason why Microsoft documents have an open standard, they were essentially forced to do that. That that standard has several thousand pages and internal inconsistencies, ... well https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Op...

butlike 3y ago

If only there was a separate arm of the government dedicated to sending and receiving communiqué. You could also use it to send _citizen's_ communiqué as well!