Comments on: Jose Explains Why Not Mono

By: Tohm De

Tohm De — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:46:21 +0000

Fighting it and implementing it at the same time? I’d say, some individuals withing Sun had a strong ideological stand against OOXML while the company as the whole was realistic enough to do what had to be done.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:25:45 +0000

They were fighting, unlike Novell.

By: Tohm De

Tohm De — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:22:31 +0000

Well, so much for Sun as ‘defender against (or at least resistance-fighter against) OOXML.

By: oiaohm

oiaohm — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 20:39:28 +0000

Want to stuff Novell up. Attacking them this way really does not do it.

Suse is a Linux Distribution it has the same weaknesses as every other one.

Distributions depend on the following to exist.
Users need of them for configuration software.
Users need of them for software.

Linux standard base is almost to the point of breaking the second point.

Configuration software KDE and Other windows managers are starting to go into the system configuration business. Novell deal with Microsoft could be the best thing for Linux if Novell Distrobutions no longer have any importance. Ie Novell will have to then sell the patented locked stuff to everyone to make money.

Everything is a double sided sword. Same with video encoding and decoding. ATI Intel VIA and Nvidia are all working on GPU accelerated forms. This reduces the people trying to sell those patents to having to talk and threaten 4 companies. In Microsoft case they are not in a really good bargaining location. Reason if they don’t fold to the GPU companies they don’t get acceleration themselves.

Double sided sword. Patents are only useful if you have a large market to threaten. Reduce Linux Market size to a limited number of parties to threaten and a lot of problems go by by.

Killing of the current world Distributions is a requirement.

By: AlexH

AlexH — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 20:36:53 +0000

Actually, being able to read those files and re-save them in my preferred format does please me, yes.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 20:33:25 +0000

I’m sure you’re ecstatic, Alex.

By: AlexH

AlexH — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 18:22:13 +0000

Another interesting blog post from August 2007:

If you read the weekly schedule for Sun’s OpenOffice.org development team [..] then you may have noticed already that it includes OOXML related tasks for months now.

Months now. So much for early 2008

By: AlexH

AlexH — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:24:55 +0000

Haha, ok. There is no OOXML support in OpenOffice.org 3.0, it’s just all a figment of our collective imagination…. ^_^

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:23:48 +0000

Er. So what exactly would be required to herald support?

Actually implementing OOXML is support. Setting up more elegant frameworks is not.

And why does OOo3.0 claim to support it?

Here's why.

By: AlexH

AlexH — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:09:47 +0000

Er. So what exactly would be required to herald support?

And why does OOo3.0 claim to support it?

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 17:00:37 +0000

Filter is not enough to herald support for OOXML, no more than grabbing a kitchen knife to chop some carrots is an act of murder.

By: AlexH

AlexH — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:48:23 +0000

Hahahaha

Read it again, Roy:

This weblog entry will give a brief overview of the new filter for Microsoft Word formats to be used in Writer. It covers the motives for implementing a new filter and the concept used.

It is a new filter. They’re not talking about “tokens”, they’re talking about how they designed a new import core to work with several tokenizers to support different Word formats simultaneously.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:38:21 +0000

The post was about tokens, not OOXML.

By: AlexH

AlexH — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:36:36 +0000

Roy, we’re talking about when development on the OOXML support started, and I linked to the blog post by the developers who described the model they were using and the announcement of the initial code drop.

You can claim that was “rebutted” but CVS logs don’t lie, sorry. You can’t revise the history in revision control

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:28:43 +0000

Microsoft tried to claim OOXML support from OOo (blame Novell) and had the claim rebutted.

By: AlexH

AlexH — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 16:26:36 +0000

I doubt you’ll find that much Rob Weir (IBM) wrote about the subject at hand (Sun and the OOo OOXML filters).

Keep changing the subject, Roy. I know you find these facts inconvenient. Sadly, they’re true and verifiable.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 15:24:02 +0000

You can look back at the writings and rebuttals from Rob Weir. You are echoing Microsoft here.

By: AlexH

AlexH — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 14:54:08 +0000

I find it hilarious that you frequently accuse me of side-stepping, and then when we talk about when Sun started OOXML development your response is, “Look! Wordperfect and UOF!”. Completely irrelevant.

What is also hilarious is that you’re trying to convince people that Sun implemented this OOXML support in less than a year.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 14:21:29 +0000

Yes, that makes at least 4.

By: AlexH

AlexH — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 13:58:24 +0000

But those two formats don’t use the same importer. OOXML, .doc and RTF do.

“The Chinese one” is UOF I presume.