Comments on: .epub woes ahead because of OpenDocument Foundation problem with OCF? http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/10/31/epub-woes-ahead-because-of-open-doc-foundation-problem/ News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics Wed, 20 Aug 2008 08:43:25 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Peter Sorotokin http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/10/31/epub-woes-ahead-because-of-open-doc-foundation-problem/#comment-602025 Peter Sorotokin Wed, 31 Oct 2007 20:13:00 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=7439#comment-602025 pond, Certainly I do not see how CDF "solved" Microsoft Office conversion problems. From my experience, ODF is much more aligned with the Office than CDF. And high-quality conversion will probably stay commercial for quite some time - work like that is very unexciting for someone to spend their spare time, so at least someone has to be paid good money for doing that. pond,

Certainly I do not see how CDF “solved” Microsoft Office conversion problems. From my experience, ODF is much more aligned with the Office than CDF. And high-quality conversion will probably stay commercial for quite some time - work like that is very unexciting for someone to spend their spare time, so at least someone has to be paid good money for doing that.

]]> By: Joseph Gray http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/10/31/epub-woes-ahead-because-of-open-doc-foundation-problem/#comment-601983 Joseph Gray Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:52:15 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=7439#comment-601983 I saw the posting on Slashdot about this and found the following comment very interesting. I don't know how accurate this is, but if so, then this announcement is a non issue. http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=344999&cid=21177871 I saw the posting on Slashdot about this and found the following comment very interesting. I don’t know how accurate this is, but if so, then this announcement is a non issue.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=344999&cid=21177871

]]> By: pond http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/10/31/epub-woes-ahead-because-of-open-doc-foundation-problem/#comment-601936 pond Wed, 31 Oct 2007 17:55:34 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=7439#comment-601936 It is a bit troubling to me. Not so much that the od-foundation is changing their focus, but rather the reasons why they are doing so. Their main concern is interoperability: taking an open-document and doing some things on it with OpenOffice.org, then saving it and opening the same document in KOffice and doing other things on it and saving it, and having the document look and feel just the same. They are also concerned with the incomplete paths in between open-documents and the various flavors of MicroSoft Word. CDF has apparently solved that problem, whereas Sun Microsystems, the owner of StarOffice, seems (according to od-foundation) more interested in seeing that their commercial implementation handles such conversions. That said, the great thing about XML is that it should be easy enough, in future, to translate from one to another at least in terms of structure and content (though presentation might differ) and so epub could get along very well with both open-documents and cdf. Important also to note that cdf is just a proposal at this stage, and that W3C takes generally just a couple years short of forever to finalize any of their standards. So open-document is here today and has tools to create and edit in it, but cdf is just in the planning stage. Something to keep an eye on in about 10 years. It is a bit troubling to me. Not so much that the od-foundation is changing their focus, but rather the reasons why they are doing so. Their main concern is interoperability: taking an open-document and doing some things on it with OpenOffice.org, then saving it and opening the same document in KOffice and doing other things on it and saving it, and having the document look and feel just the same.

They are also concerned with the incomplete paths in between open-documents and the various flavors of MicroSoft Word. CDF has apparently solved that problem, whereas Sun Microsystems, the owner of StarOffice, seems (according to od-foundation) more interested in seeing that their commercial implementation handles such conversions.

That said, the great thing about XML is that it should be easy enough, in future, to translate from one to another at least in terms of structure and content (though presentation might differ) and so epub could get along very well with both open-documents and cdf.

Important also to note that cdf is just a proposal at this stage, and that W3C takes generally just a couple years short of forever to finalize any of their standards. So open-document is here today and has tools to create and edit in it, but cdf is just in the planning stage. Something to keep an eye on in about 10 years.

]]> By: Peter Sorotokin http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/10/31/epub-woes-ahead-because-of-open-doc-foundation-problem/#comment-601808 Peter Sorotokin Wed, 31 Oct 2007 15:07:44 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=7439#comment-601808 I don't think that there is any need for IDPF response at all. Where epub and ODF differ, epub is more aligned with W3C anyway. And if Cerebus is right and OpenDocument Foundation is that shallow, this is not even a blip on the radar. I don’t think that there is any need for IDPF response at all. Where epub and ODF differ, epub is more aligned with W3C anyway. And if Cerebus is right and OpenDocument Foundation is that shallow, this is not even a blip on the radar.

]]> By: Cerebus http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/10/31/epub-woes-ahead-because-of-open-doc-foundation-problem/#comment-601639 Cerebus Wed, 31 Oct 2007 11:40:58 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=7439#comment-601639 The "OpenDocument Foundation" is three guys with a registered name playing on a bunch of gullible technology stenogr^H^H^Wreporters. They have *nothing whatsoever* to do with the OpenDocument Format *or* the ISO process standardizing it. Given the near-simultaneous statements from MS re: their piece-of-crap OOXML format, I smell a payoff. There's a thread a Slashdot that has more. The “OpenDocument Foundation” is three guys with a registered name playing on a bunch of gullible technology stenogr^H^H^Wreporters. They have *nothing whatsoever* to do with the OpenDocument Format *or* the ISO process standardizing it. Given the near-simultaneous statements from MS re: their piece-of-crap OOXML format, I smell a payoff.

There’s a thread a Slashdot that has more.

]]> By: David Rothman http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/10/31/epub-woes-ahead-because-of-open-doc-foundation-problem/#comment-601579 David Rothman Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:22:18 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=7439#comment-601579 Peter, many thanks. As someone following the process from an Adobe perspective, how long do you think it'll take for the IDPF, Adobe and other implementers to respond? Will this delay Hachette? David Peter, many thanks. As someone following the process from an Adobe perspective, how long do you think it’ll take for the IDPF, Adobe and other implementers to respond? Will this delay Hachette? David

]]> By: Peter Sorotokin http://www.teleread.org/blog/2007/10/31/epub-woes-ahead-because-of-open-doc-foundation-problem/#comment-601364 Peter Sorotokin Wed, 31 Oct 2007 05:51:34 +0000 http://www.teleread.org/blog/?p=7439#comment-601364 It's probably good news for epub which is already very much aligned with CDF! It's likely that future replacement for ODF is going to be closely resembling epub. Epub already mandates support for compound documents (XHTML+SVG+CSS) as content flows in both CDR and CDI flavors. The most important thing in this area is that OPS 2.0 brought the first-class-citizen treatment of multi-namespace documents. This means that additional XML dialects are now easy to integrate. MathML would be a most natural future addition. The other two building blocks for CDF (SMIL and XForms) also can be cleanly integrated as well if support for interactivity and forms is desired in ebooks. In contrast, ODF came up with not-quite-W3C compatible formats for its content streams (text, graphics, etc.), which, looking back, was probably not a good idea (even though, IMHO, their formats and especially styling system were better than W3C's, especially for use by the tools). It’s probably good news for epub which is already very much aligned with CDF! It’s likely that future replacement for ODF is going to be closely resembling epub. Epub already mandates support for compound documents (XHTML+SVG+CSS) as content flows in both CDR and CDI flavors. The most important thing in this area is that OPS 2.0 brought the first-class-citizen treatment of multi-namespace documents. This means that additional XML dialects are now easy to integrate. MathML would be a most natural future addition. The other two building blocks for CDF (SMIL and XForms) also can be cleanly integrated as well if support for interactivity and forms is desired in ebooks. In contrast, ODF came up with not-quite-W3C compatible formats for its content streams (text, graphics, etc.), which, looking back, was probably not a good idea (even though, IMHO, their formats and especially styling system were better than W3C’s, especially for use by the tools).

]]>