5 ms·

Microsoft office 365 v/s Open Source Fedena

18 points by abdullahisham 13y ago

gorain 13y ago
Here is the link to the first article which was published one week back. Engineering student locked into Microsoft Office - http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/issues/engineering-students-locked-into-microsoft-office/article4640546.ece http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/issues/engineerin...
- illuminate 13y ago
  Ridiculous, all this states is that the "cloud email and storage offering" for the uni will be provided by Microsoft, nobody's being forced to be "locked in" to only use those products.
drakaal 13y ago
Docx is an open standard built on Open XML. It is not Propietary. There is no licesnse to build an editor that supports it, and it is well documented. The author contends that this is Proprietary. If they got this very obvious thing wrong and it is one of their biggest points for why you shouldn't use Office 365 I think it is safe to say they didn't go in to this with an impartial view.
- gorain 13y ago
  Is DOCX really an open standard? - http://brattahlid.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/is-docx-really-an-open-standard/ http://brattahlid.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/is-docx-really-an...
  - fakeer 13y ago
    For those who follow tl;dr religiously, the answer is: Yes it is.
    - networked 13y ago
      >For those who follow tl;dr religiously, the answer is: Yes it is. You should have noted that that is not actually a tl;dr of the blog post linked to by the GP. In fact, that post comes to the opposite conclusion: "[A] problem arose when Microsoft decided not to fully implement the Strict version of the standard in Office 2010. As published by Microsoft [...] and stated by Wikipedia [...]: >Microsoft Office 2010 provides read support for ECMA-376, read/write support for ISO/IEC 29500 Transitional, and read support for ISO/IEC 29500 Strict. What this means is that when you save a document in MS Office 2010 or prior in any of the ‘X’ formats, you are not saving them in the advertised OpenXML format. [...]"
    - ralfn 13y ago
      Too bad no application in the world implements it. Oh, and "implement as MS product X" isnt actually a specification. We often complain when source code is the only real spec. But unless you are an MS employee, "implement as MS product X" comes down to reverse engineering. We dont even get the source code. Also, if you remember back in the day .. How they even got this status .. MS was considered to be bribing institutions and blackmailing partners. The downside of self regulation, is that messing with related institutions isnt actually illegal.
- Someone 13y ago
  There are dark corners of Open XML. In particular, one has compatibility settings with names such as "autoSpaceLikeWord95", "footnoteLayoutLikeWW8", "lineWrapLikeWord6", "shapeLayoutLikeWW8", "truncateFontHeightsLikeWP6", "useWord2002TableStyleRules", "useWord97LineBreakRules" Reading the spec, I get the impression that they made a serious attempt to document what these mean. However, some might still find it troublesome that, in practice, the only way to figure out what to do in the presence of such settings is to look at how those applications displayed text or, in many cases, how some Office version emulating WordPerfect or an older version of Word handled them. Also, some will feel these should not have been part of the spec, or that the spec should be more explicit in stating that new documents should not write them (but then, what is a new document? Say, I do File-New, then paste in a few pages from a document having those settings, then save? Alternatively, I open a document, delete all content, then do File-Save As?)
  - derefr 13y ago
    > some might still find it troublesome that, in practice, the only way to figure out what to do in the presence of such settings is to look at how those applications displayed text Well, presumably, if you want to give your word processor the ability to "autoSpaceLikeWord95"--for a business use-case, not just as a feature to tick off on a checklist--then you already know what it means to "autoSpaceLikeWord95", because your clients are pointing to documents your program has created and saying that right here, there, and here too, the Word95-like autospacing is missing. Basically, these compat flags are suggestions to activate the compat functionality it turns out you needed to build anyway; if you're adding compat for some old version of some app because the hook is there, without any of your own clients needing to preserve the old behavior in their documents, you're Doing It Wrong. It would be like Firefox parsing  tags just because there's a standard for how IE should handle them.
    - anonymfus 13y ago
      Looks like autoSpaceLikeWord95 is defined in ISO/IEC 29500-4:2012 "Information technology -- Document description and processing languages -- Office Open XML File Formats -- Part 4: Transitional Migration Features" as compatibility feature for unicode handling bug and ever has full name "Incorrectly Adjust Text Spacing for Specific Unicode Ranges".
execat 13y ago
Why is AICTE thinking that a company like Microsoft will give out server space for millions of students for free? Are they not aware of Microsoft's track record of feeding people with drugs until they become dependent on it? They did that with Windows, and now are trying to do that with online documents. Is it not good enough that the same students who are handed out these "drugs" are the ones who have no clue about bash scripting or how to edit a .bashrc or how to create a new Rails project? (They don't know what Rails is either. They do know what ASP is though. ASP!) Or that all the "engineers" from AICTE colleges are worth doing is being a part of the army the US outsources small projects to?
- nivla 13y ago
  >Are they not aware of Microsoft's track record of feeding people with drugs until they become dependent on it? You mean the same model that other companies on the Internet apply, namely Google, Amazon and even Apple? The Razor and Blade sales technique that has been touted for decades? >They don't know what Rails is either. They do know what ASP is though. ASP! I would assume most know what PHP is than what ASP is (ASP has no connection to the office suite, is not part of the curriculum). However, PHP is again frowned up by the elites despite being open. Similarly, most know what Google is but a few know what DuckDuckGo or Bing is. Does this make Google evil? Heck NO!
ing33k 13y ago
why is office being compared to an opensource school/college ERP ?
- gorain 13y ago
  The comparison is not on the features. It is on the purchase or engagement model.
chris_wot 13y ago
What is "Open Source Fedena"?
- gorain 13y ago
  http://www.projectfedena.org/ http://www.projectfedena.org/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2862755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2862755

18 points by abdullahisham 13y ago

Here is the link to the first article which was published one week back. Engineering student locked into Microsoft Office - http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/issues/engineering-students-locked-into-microsoft-office/article4640546.ece http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/issues/engineerin...

illuminate 13y ago
Ridiculous, all this states is that the "cloud email and storage offering" for the uni will be provided by Microsoft, nobody's being forced to be "locked in" to only use those products.

drakaal 13y ago

Docx is an open standard built on Open XML. It is not Propietary. There is no licesnse to build an editor that supports it, and it is well documented. The author contends that this is Proprietary. If they got this very obvious thing wrong and it is one of their biggest points for why you shouldn't use Office 365 I think it is safe to say they didn't go in to this with an impartial view.

gorain 13y ago
Is DOCX really an open standard? - http://brattahlid.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/is-docx-really-an-open-standard/ http://brattahlid.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/is-docx-really-an...
- fakeer 13y ago
  For those who follow tl;dr religiously, the answer is: Yes it is.
  - networked 13y ago
    >For those who follow tl;dr religiously, the answer is: Yes it is. You should have noted that that is not actually a tl;dr of the blog post linked to by the GP. In fact, that post comes to the opposite conclusion: "[A] problem arose when Microsoft decided not to fully implement the Strict version of the standard in Office 2010. As published by Microsoft [...] and stated by Wikipedia [...]: >Microsoft Office 2010 provides read support for ECMA-376, read/write support for ISO/IEC 29500 Transitional, and read support for ISO/IEC 29500 Strict. What this means is that when you save a document in MS Office 2010 or prior in any of the ‘X’ formats, you are not saving them in the advertised OpenXML format. [...]"
  - ralfn 13y ago
    Too bad no application in the world implements it. Oh, and "implement as MS product X" isnt actually a specification. We often complain when source code is the only real spec. But unless you are an MS employee, "implement as MS product X" comes down to reverse engineering. We dont even get the source code. Also, if you remember back in the day .. How they even got this status .. MS was considered to be bribing institutions and blackmailing partners. The downside of self regulation, is that messing with related institutions isnt actually illegal.
Someone 13y ago
There are dark corners of Open XML. In particular, one has compatibility settings with names such as "autoSpaceLikeWord95", "footnoteLayoutLikeWW8", "lineWrapLikeWord6", "shapeLayoutLikeWW8", "truncateFontHeightsLikeWP6", "useWord2002TableStyleRules", "useWord97LineBreakRules" Reading the spec, I get the impression that they made a serious attempt to document what these mean. However, some might still find it troublesome that, in practice, the only way to figure out what to do in the presence of such settings is to look at how those applications displayed text or, in many cases, how some Office version emulating WordPerfect or an older version of Word handled them. Also, some will feel these should not have been part of the spec, or that the spec should be more explicit in stating that new documents should not write them (but then, what is a new document? Say, I do File-New, then paste in a few pages from a document having those settings, then save? Alternatively, I open a document, delete all content, then do File-Save As?)
- derefr 13y ago
  > some might still find it troublesome that, in practice, the only way to figure out what to do in the presence of such settings is to look at how those applications displayed text Well, presumably, if you want to give your word processor the ability to "autoSpaceLikeWord95"--for a business use-case, not just as a feature to tick off on a checklist--then you already know what it means to "autoSpaceLikeWord95", because your clients are pointing to documents your program has created and saying that right here, there, and here too, the Word95-like autospacing is missing. Basically, these compat flags are suggestions to activate the compat functionality it turns out you needed to build anyway; if you're adding compat for some old version of some app because the hook is there, without any of your own clients needing to preserve the old behavior in their documents, you're Doing It Wrong. It would be like Firefox parsing  tags just because there's a standard for how IE should handle them.
  - anonymfus 13y ago
    Looks like autoSpaceLikeWord95 is defined in ISO/IEC 29500-4:2012 "Information technology -- Document description and processing languages -- Office Open XML File Formats -- Part 4: Transitional Migration Features" as compatibility feature for unicode handling bug and ever has full name "Incorrectly Adjust Text Spacing for Specific Unicode Ranges".

execat 13y ago

Why is AICTE thinking that a company like Microsoft will give out server space for millions of students for free? Are they not aware of Microsoft's track record of feeding people with drugs until they become dependent on it? They did that with Windows, and now are trying to do that with online documents. Is it not good enough that the same students who are handed out these "drugs" are the ones who have no clue about bash scripting or how to edit a .bashrc or how to create a new Rails project? (They don't know what Rails is either. They do know what ASP is though. ASP!) Or that all the "engineers" from AICTE colleges are worth doing is being a part of the army the US outsources small projects to?

nivla 13y ago
>Are they not aware of Microsoft's track record of feeding people with drugs until they become dependent on it? You mean the same model that other companies on the Internet apply, namely Google, Amazon and even Apple? The Razor and Blade sales technique that has been touted for decades? >They don't know what Rails is either. They do know what ASP is though. ASP! I would assume most know what PHP is than what ASP is (ASP has no connection to the office suite, is not part of the curriculum). However, PHP is again frowned up by the elites despite being open. Similarly, most know what Google is but a few know what DuckDuckGo or Bing is. Does this make Google evil? Heck NO!

ing33k 13y ago

why is office being compared to an opensource school/college ERP ?

gorain 13y ago
The comparison is not on the features. It is on the purchase or engagement model.

chris_wot 13y ago

What is "Open Source Fedena"?

gorain 13y ago
http://www.projectfedena.org/ http://www.projectfedena.org/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2862755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2862755