The Massachusetts Office Party 731
Quattro Vezina writes "The Inquirer reports that the state of Massachusetts has performed a modern-day Boston Tea Party, by dumping Microsoft Office in the proverbial ocean. According to the article, 'every state document must be in PDF or using Open Office formats' starting in 2007." Forbes has the story as well. More from the article: "The switch to open formats such as these was needed to ensure that the state could guarantee that citizens could open and read electronic documents in the future, according to Massachusetts - something that was not possible using closed formats. The proposal, which is open for comment until the end of next week before it takes effect, would represent a big boost for open source software such as Open Office, which is created by volunteer programmers and made available free of charge."
As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:2, Insightful)
And anyway, why wasn't I invited to this party?
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:3, Insightful)
it seeems to me ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:it seeems to me ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's an example, not MS-based, but a true story and one that illustrates (I think) the GP's point.
One closed format is the QuickBooks one. Last year, as I went to start preparing my taxes, I opened up my business' QuickBooks file so I could generate reports for my accountant. Now, so there's no misunderstanding, I *puchased* this software about two years previous and was using it on my Mac G4 computer all that time. When I upgraded my OS several months prior, I backed up everything to another drive, performed the OS upgrade, and copied everything back. So when I went to open QuickBooks it acted like it had just been installed and asked for my serial number. No problem, I found it and entered it.
Then QuickBooks goes to match that against some nebulous database elsewhere on the net, and returns an error message: this serial number cannot be authenticated. Oh really? It was just fine when I entered it the first time. I tried again and again, always to get the same response. So I called Intuit to get a working serial number .. know what they told me? They don't support my version of QuickBooks anymore. If I wanted a new serial number that worked, I would have to buy the new version. The upgrade would cost me $200+shipping.
That's extortion. Maybe unintentional extortion, but extortion. If I wanted access to MY data using MY software on MY computer, I was going to have to pay them AGAIN. This was not an arragement I agreed to when I bought the software. Having no choice, I did, but it taught me an important lesson about software "ownership" and the rights and expectations of those who do business with companies like Intuit, like Microsoft, and others who, in the name of "security" and "copy-protection" are stripping away basic rights of legitimate users to use their legally purchased software and hardware.
If I had had an alternative to accessing my QuickBooks software file, especially an open source one, you bet your ass I would have used it.
pdf files (Score:4, Interesting)
When I first encountered a PDF file on the web I wondered why it was not a plain text file which anyone could read regardless of OS. It was three times larger than any other file format and I had to go hunting for a program to install and view the file. I've hated Adobe PDF format ever since.
Sure you may need a program to read pdf files but pdf files look the same in Acrobat Reader on all platforms and the fact is is to read any document on a computer you have to have softwear to open it in. What I don't like is that all too often Acrobat Reader crashs or freezes on my computer.
FalconRe:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:2)
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:2)
Yes they probably didn't do it to LOWER taxes, but this will allow savings that can lead to tax dollars being spent on the local economy rather than go to Microsoft. Or atleast be put to better use in some way. Like filling up the gas tanks for state vehicles...
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:3, Informative)
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:3, Insightful)
The government is not a corporation. The government takes your money by force and spends it. Any time they're spending less money, you should be happy, because it's your money they're saving.
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:4, Insightful)
A knee jerk libertarian is a still a jerk.
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:5, Funny)
Reg: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:4, Funny)
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:3, Insightful)
Have you ever worked in / around the Federal Government? My experience in the USAF was that at the end of every fiscal year, every project went on a ill-advised spending spree to ensure that they spent every penny of their budget (flat screen LCDs, the newest computers, expensive peripherals) all of which was totally unneccessary. Every federal project does this at the end of the fiscal year so that they don't come in under budget, otherwise they'd have their budget cut because the don't need the money.
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:4, Interesting)
Education for those who couldn't otherwise afford it need NOT be provided by the government. All that they should provide is the money so that the education does become affordable. In other words, the system of financial aid that allows students to go to a high quality private college needs to be brought down to lower grade levels. Vouchers are a good start. As for those who don't qualify for financial aid, they already DO pay for their public schools in the forms of taxes. Just because you don't give the money directly to the school district supervisors doesn't mean that this isn't exactly where that money goes. The difference would be that then you WOULD know where it goes, and you'd still be paying the same amount.
Public transportation need not be provided by the government. Most major cities go into contract with private transportation companies who run city bus routes. Why is the government involved at all? They're doing nothing but skimming off the bottom line of the company as a "fee" for being given the opportunity to run their business. The airline industry isn't run by the Federal government, and has functioned well for decades (and arguably better than under a government beurocracy). Taxis are operated by private companies, why aren't you complaining that they should be taken over by the government? There is a proven track record, both on a local, national, and global scale, of private companies successfully running transportation businesses.
Water supplies are a utility. Natural gas is usually provided by private companies, as is electricity. Why is water so special that only the big, powerful government is to be trusted?
Defense and the police are needed to protect the population, and every Libertarian would tell you that this should be the ONLY service that a government should be providing. Therefore, mentioning this point is in no way an argument against Libertarianism.
I'm not a Libertarian, and I'm not an anarchist, and I don't agree with many of their principles, but common sense dictates that there's no reason why the government closes off entire lucrative markets when private companies, concerned with efficiency and customer satisfaction rather than the status quo, would deal with things more efficiently. Especially when the government is already IN COMPETITION with private industries, as is the case with public transportation, the postal system, education, and a whole host of other industries.
Governments DO supply communities with many beneficial things, including every item on your list. However, there is absolutely NO reason for why they should be doing this when there already are alternatives.
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:3, Funny)
You forgot Shin-Ra.
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:5, Insightful)
Open formats are the clear answer.
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:5, Interesting)
Fast forward a few months, ProEngineer decides the giveaway didn't make them much money, so they kill the program. They were nice though, and gave all the current users a 5-year liscense key to use their current copy.
Fast forward a year. My laptop crashes, and I have to wipe and re-install. My ProDesktop key is gone. I now have several megs of very detailed and very useless drawings.
This is the reason that governments should be using open formats. Thank you, Massachusetts.
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:3, Interesting)
I finally found someone online who still had a copy of the software laying around, and who was kind enough to copy it to a midi file for me, for which I remain eternally grateful.
That's the day I converted to open formats all the time, personally, and the primary reason I
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:3, Interesting)
FINALLY! Someone with a clue.
I started the drawings on a lark, just to learn how to do 3D CAD. The program was "free", and I had a lot of time on my hands. After a while, they sort of took on a life of their own. It was only later that I said, "Heh, this is a nice piece of work that I'd like to keep indefinitely."
At that point, ProEngineer changes their mind and changes the rules...which was their right under the EULA. I still have
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:5, Insightful)
How can this be surprising? To 98% of the people in the world, the computer is, and shall remain, a black box. They don't care how it works inside. They don't care about LZW compression, or XML, or TCP/IP, or C++, or the difference between OR and XOR. They don't think of their files as being in a "format" unless poor user interfaces dictate that they must. To them, the file is a photograph they took, or a screenplay they've written, or a song they downloaded, and the internals of its definition are irrelevant.
And to take a small jab at the open source community, this is where we have problems reaching the desktop market. We design interfaces for ourselves, and we care about the internals. We want to know that PNG supports alpha transparency, or that our Windows XP installation is on /dev/hda1 while our Linux swap partition is on /dev/hdb2. We care whether the songs we listen to use VBR to save a few extra kilobytes on a 300 GB hard drive.
But when you provide these things as options to a user who doesn't know or care what they mean, you're asking them to commit to a choice when they don't want to. They'll feel helpless, and stupid, and if/when they complain, we too often reply "well it's not our fault you can't use it. RTFM."
Okay, I kinda veered off topic there... regarding open formats: in the end, there's relatively little difference between an open and a closed format on a twenty-year timeline, from the perspective of the 98% group. Either way, they're not going to be the ones designing the conversion tool. If it's an open format, they have to hope that enough geeky guys with free time find it an interesting or relevant enough problem to solve. If it's a closed format, they have to hope that the company's still in business and updating its tools, or that it released something before it went belly-up, or that it opened its file formats, or that its developers are good samaritans. And here's the kicker: the 98% group does not know which of these alternatives is more likely to be the case. They probably don't realize the problem exists. It's not because they're stupid or willfully ignorant, because once again they only see the computer as a tool. You might as well call them stupid or willfully ignorant for not knowing what machine screws are used to hold their washing machine together.
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:3, Interesting)
Really, though, we shouldn't have to break the law (patent law?) to read important government information from years bygone.
As a home user, however, I honestly don't give a shit. Word 2003, OO.o, WordPerfect - hell, a text file
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, I could not open a lot of those files (some others where 1337 h4ck1ng and cr4ck1ng courses, anarchist cookbook etc etc... from my "computer hippie days")... of course, I am sure that will suddenly happen with the
And, if you use a human readable format like LATEX (which I am using lately to write scientific papers) then it will be easier at least to get the
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, my agency has 60 users. For MS Office assuming a government discount that makes the end price $200 we'd be shelling out $12,000.
And lets not forget the obscene pricing of MS software for servers. A 50 user MS-SQL for instance would run you approximately $8K to $10K and that excludes the OS.
LAMP - server cost $5K. Cost of software $0, Cost of configuration time: $1K or so. So for the $20,000 above you could buy three new servers and have them congigured to do what you want them to.
And a desktop can be had for
So yes, it is a bottom line exercise and a clear signal to Microsoft that:
a) We won't pay bloated prices for sofware that we only use a small subset of features on, but isn't crippled from occasionally using the gee-whiz features.
and
b)Constant upgrade cycles in which we shell out full retail for something that is an upgrade.
They had better wake up and smell the coffee. As government goes, so goes business that interacts with government. Microsoft could be staring at a huge defection of customers in the near term.
Re:As a Massachusetts Resident (Score:3, Interesting)
I love it, but... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I love it, but... (Score:3, Informative)
Well, of course. They're presumably already hard at work.
But in the long run, this is a rather good idea for the state. Remember that state agencies send out a lot of things that are legal notices, and there are consequences to ignoring them.
Consider a scenario:
1. Citizen C gets notice N from state agency A. It's in a format that doesn't display properly on C's computer, or displays in a garbled form that is easily misunderstood.
2. C doe
Re:Come on now ... (Score:5, Informative)
Not true at all, at least not in Masachusetts.
There are a number of agencies that send out things like tax and license notices via email, if you've registered to receive them that way. If you don't pay, you will eventually get that registered-mail notice. But if you do pay, that email becomes your only notice. It's a real convenience for us computer-literate types, and saves the government a lot of money. It's been years since I've received a hand-delivered government notice. Some things still arrive via first-class mail, but very often the email/web approach has handled it already.
They can get away with it legally, because such "pre-notice" messages aren't the legal notices; they're just a convenience for the taxpayer.
But we've had problems with government web sites that are only tested, and only render sensibly, with IE. Some downloadable docs are only in MS-Word format. Again, this is legal, because you aren't forced to use them; you can always use the hard copy. You can take a day off work, drive downtown to the agency, and pick up the docs you need. Or you can buy a Windows machine and download the Word doc, saving yourself a day off work and lining Bill Gates' pockets by another (to him) small amount.
There are those who think that it's not quite right for the government to be in bed with a major manufacturer like this. It's not a new story, of course; that's why the Boston Tea Party is brought up. Look up the history of that event. It's not an exact parallel, but it's close enough for media reports.
I'll take that bet! (Score:4, Interesting)
Sure. I'll take that bet, IF I can bet on Microsoft being there to get this reversed. I'd even bet on Microsoft being successful, by giving the State a huge discount on their Office products, along with intense bribes (excuse me, lobbying) to the local politicians.
You know, the Standard Operating Procedure these days.
Followed by a huge Press Release saying that the State is dropping OSS in favor of Microsoft. Which in turn will alert even more states that they can get MS software for a huge discount just by issuing a Press Release.
Now, if the State was REALLY smart, they'd include a clause that any Word documents which couldn't be read via the current Word technology 5-10 years in the future would require Microsoft to pay a fine of, say, $100 per document. To cover the States' cost in converting it so that it could be read again.
Not reverse, "Embraced & Extended" (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft will simply allow people to open OO.org formats but then silently save the documents as their own proprietary XML. In this respect, users won't know that they are screwing themselves over (as they never do), and everyone will still require Microsoft Office.
In the grand tradition... (Score:5, Funny)
Format Specifications (Reference) (Score:4, Funny)
and
Open Office XML [openoffice.org]
Strangely, both say you need Adobe reader to read them
So, which will MS Office support? (Score:5, Insightful)
[1] Yes, I know it can with third party products, some of which are Free.
Re:So, which will MS Office support? (Score:5, Interesting)
Both? PDF is making steady inroads as an interchange format and from what I understand of Avalon it should make generating PDF on Vista pretty much as easy as on OS X. It would make sense to support it.
As for OpenOffice.org - they're using the OASIS format and Microsoft is a sponsor [oasis-open.org] of that so you'd think they'd get around to it eventually. I think Microsoft is realising that locking up Office document formats isn't going to work for much longer (see their various efforts to create more "open" XML based formats for MS Office) and are trying to work out what to do instead.
Jedidiah.
Re:So, which will MS Office support? (Score:3, Insightful)
I think much more likely is that eventuallythey might support .odt (etc.) as an import / export format but still default to their own format. They could easily pull a few tricks to make sure that .odt is inferior to their own while they were at it, such as not shipping it in
Re:So, which will MS Office support? (Score:3, Interesting)
Those sorts of tricks have worked fine for Microsoft in the past because the de-facto standard was Microsoft's Office formats. However, now the target has shifted. If you want to communicate with Massachusetts government employees then you will have to assume that they are using OO.org. If documents created in MS Office don't look at least as good when exported to the Oasis formats as they would if they were created in OO.org then people that have to deal with the Massachusetts government are likely to s
Neither (Score:5, Insightful)
As we've seen far too many times in the past, government bodies tend to use moves like this as a way to force a better deal out of the existing vendor.
This isn't about using Open Source to build a better solution. It's about leveraging Open Source to get a better deal on the existing solution
Re:So, which will MS Office support? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't have it. (Score:4, Informative)
The Adobe PDF printer you're seeing was added by a third party application, probably some flavor of Adobe Acrobat Standard or Professional. I don't know what other Adobe products also add a PDF printer driver. Photoshop might, and I'm pretty sure Illustrator does as well.
No, it's not part of Windows XP, and the only way to (legally) get it is to buy the necessary software from Adobe.
Some demo versions of Adobe software may have a bug that results in the PDF Printer remaining behind after an uninstall, or after the demo expires. That could be another way you got the option.
But no, the rank and file Windows XP users do not have a PDF Printer available by default in either the Home or Professional editions.
Re:So, which will MS Office support? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:So, which will MS Office support? (Score:4, Insightful)
What do you think their XML format is all about?
The data is still an obfuscated binary, it's just crammed into pseudo XML to bloat the file a bit more.
They get to check off "XML" support, and yet it's completely useless unless you're using Microsoft development tools for anything outside of Office itself.
Guaranteed Availability in the Future? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future? (Score:5, Informative)
Open Office formats are zipped XML. All you need to get at the data in them is an unzip program and a text reader. It's a good way to "guarantee" that anyone can view them in the future.
Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future? (Score:5, Informative)
If the formats documentation is not available, you are pretty much at mercy of whoever invented it, and their willingness and ability to provide viewers and conversion tools.
Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future? (Score:3, Interesting)
One of the design considerations for XML (which is the format that Open Office uses) is that documents which are in this format should be human-readable, specifically to avoid the problem of future data loss.
Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future? (Score:2, Informative)
Also, using something like open office lowers the barrier to entry for those wishing to read the documents. If a user can use cheap hardware with free software then a larger proportion of the population can access the data.
Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future? (Score:2)
I hardly see how Open Office and PDF formats "guarantee" citizens will be able to view electronic documents in the future any more so than MS Office formats.
Open Office is open and non-proprietary, and PDF is an open, published spec with many non-proprietary implementations. MS Office isn't open, and any implementations have been largely reverse-engineered.
...but, I suspect you're right. This is a nice step to take, but it won't make much difference in the real world - MS Office is a de facto standar
Re:Guaranteed Availability in the Future? (Score:4, Informative)
While it's true that standards change over time, the fact that there would be an open standard means that a document could be successfully reconstituted (all standards include version information). Requiring an open document storage option means that even 5 years after a standard has gone the way of the dodo, a developer such as myself could still recreate the document if needed.
This is not true of
Why doesn't microsoft offer the option... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Why doesn't microsoft offer the option... (Score:3, Interesting)
The "Massachusetts government" is not one entity, but a lot of pretty normal users. Why should these be capable of thinking to save "right", when millions of exactly as normal users can't?
MS could add an option to set the preferred format, so that admins could take care of the problem beforehand, but that's the point where simply switching software becomes effective anyway, from an administration (not necessarily a
Re:Why doesn't microsoft offer the option... (Score:5, Interesting)
Think about it, if you knew you could download OO.o for free and anyone with Office could open/edit/save the files you'd made in it, would you spend hundreds of dollars for Office? Hell, what could possibly motivate you to buy it at that point?
I would say that if MS opens the door to OO.o formats, they may as well just shoot themselves in the head and be done with it, because they're toast.
Groklaw coverage (Score:5, Informative)
This was also covered on groklaw [groklaw.net], yesterday.
I know how they feel (Score:5, Insightful)
Only when 2.0 comes out will I have easy access to all those WP documents.
I use OpenOffice for a lot of reasons, one of which is that I think I have a good chance of being able to open my documents for a long time.
That said, I think that this is all a PR thing to get MS to lower their price. I don't believe that a government bureaucracy will make this step for real. Next thing you'll tell me that they've decided to run Linux.
There needs to be a new name for this sort of thing where groups say "I'm switching!" in order to get the real price from MS. Let's call it the Boy Who Cried Linux or BWCL for short.
AéîLsJ? (Score:5, Funny)
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Funny, but.... (Score:5, Informative)
However, less-astute readers should remember that the OO.o formats are well-documented & any other program can easily write an implementation to spec.
They are also XML files, which can be understandable in plaintext. This means many people don't even have to bother looking at the spec to extract useful information.
So why the gobblygook? Look at that "PK" at the beginning of the string. That indicates that it is zipped. Rename the
Readability/Openness of XML (Score:3, Informative)
I was referring, explicitly, to the OO.o format. I agree that MS and others have shown both that you can obfuscate XML with binary/encrypted/encoded enclosures & that patents can make even what can be decyphered unusable (and non-open).
Unzip an OO.o file & look in content.xml.
OO.o stores
Re:AéîLsJ? (Score:5, Funny)
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Good point, well made.
But consider %oidjowKE%OokssoSeok @o~oOKEN#(SIojNS.
Re:AéîLsJ? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:AéîLsJ? (Score:3, Interesting)
What're you all doing to "unzip" this?
Several Benefits (Score:3, Interesting)
The libre is more important than the gratis (Score:3, Insightful)
This is nice for our bottom line, since all of the money our government pisses away is OUR money. However, I'd be willing to pay EVEN MORE than Microsoft charges to have open formats. And although I am supportive of both commercial and open source software initiatives, and have contributed to the open source community as a programmer, I honestly don't give a crap what our government thinks about it. This is a move in the right direction. I suspect it's motivated by money, however, and not a benevolent government desiring to increase the freedom of information.
Long In The Making (Score:3, Informative)
This event has been long in the making. Massachusetts established an "Open Source Public Trough [zopezen.org]" over a year ago, and many of its more prominent regional web sites had been using and/or advocating open source since before then (see this recommendation [saugus.net] or Guide to Free Software [saugus.net] for just a couple of examples from my home town) and of course Massachusetts was the only state not to cave in regarding the court case against Microsoft.
For locals, this isn't surprising. What's more surprising is that it took so long.
good idea not just because it goes "open" (Score:5, Interesting)
In the posts here I see a lot of back-and-forth with some holding fast to the notion staying with MS Office is the prudent thing to do for various reasons including:
(bullets borrowed from Donny Smith(567043))
From personal experience I think the most important factor is getting out of MS' talons and whimsical changes to their own formats. I've posted about this before.
I've actually been in business meetings which couldn't not get started on time because attendees had to sort out getting copies of the agenda or memos which they'd actually received beforehand but were in formats incompatible with their version of MS Office! This, ostensibly at one company using tools to help conduct business. Were this a one-time anecdote would be one thing, but I encountered this scenario many times. (There are grooves in my eye-sockets from so many eyerolls waiting for business to proceed.)
OpenOffice may not offer the perfect solution, but any move away from unpredictable and untouchable formats brings hope to eventually working with technology that improves our productivity. (I shudder to mention the car analogy, but it's so fun: can you imagine a car industry with such an approach (or maybe it's the highway infrastructure)? Every year or so you find out some cars can't be driven on the highways because of some change it their design, blah, blah, blah.)
"Closed" formats are a pain. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now each of her Works Documents have to be opened in the free "Word Viewer" copied and pasted into OpenOffice because she does not have the original software.
In response to PDF's being "closed", they may be owned by adobe, but at LEAST there is more than one way to view them, and they can be viewed and printed from any computer on a number of different applications. Also Adobe does offer Acrobat reader in some form or another for most systems.
Put it this way: a pdf or a wps of unknown version made in works?
PDF open? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PDF open? (Score:3, Informative)
Same way that Java is "open". The specs have been published so that anyone and their family pet can create and/or render PDF. e.g. GhostScript.
The PDF Spec... (Score:3, Informative)
...is open, it was postscript that was license encumbered (IIRC). There exists a multitude of programs that can read and write PDF's.
OpenOffice.org can export to PDF. Evince, gpdf etc. can read them. There are also third-party libraries that output PDF documents (some written in pure PHP, such as FPDF [fpdf.org], which wouldn't be as probable without specs.
What about Innovation? (Score:3, Insightful)
Wax cylinders were a 'format' for music, but we don't want the government locking out the use of CDs or DVDs just because the people with wax cylinder readers can't use them.
Backwards compatibility is important, but you certainly want to preserve the option to take technology that may innovate, even in the document format space, and provide better services to your constituents.
Here's a good example: early iterations of WordPerfect certainly didn't allow the complex tables and embedded images we have in current formats - heck, early HTML was barely functional for presenting text and pictures. What if we were only allowed to presever content in original WP formats, or HTML 1.0?
Governments should pick winners and losers by the quality of the technology, not ideology.
Build backwards compatibility into your contracts agreements with your vendors, and use the format that gives you the best technology.
Re:PDF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:PDF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Once a large PDF is loaded, it is still SLOW to scroll pages. And when I hit a page with some pictures, I need to wait a few seconds for them to load.
PDF files are more difficult for me to modify.
All around, PDF is a poor choice for me.
Anyone with IE on Windows can view
Re:PDF? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PDF? (Score:3, Interesting)
Once a large PDF is loaded, it is still SLOW to scroll pages. And when I hit a page with some pictures, I need to wait a few seconds for them to load.
If your pdf viewer is slow, I would guess that you are still using Acrobat reader version 5.x or 6.x. Acrobat reader
Re:PDF? (Score:3, Interesting)
On my mac [apple.com], I am totally dependent on pdfs to help me deal with the research literature wot I have got. I use Adobe Acrobat to do detailed annotations of documents, take notes and link to my bibliographic database [sourceforge.net]. Sometimes this gets slow as molasses due to poor software engineering by either parties hand.
On the other hand, when I want to have a quick squizz at a pdf to see if there's anything relevant there, I use the super fast and efficient Preview application. If Preview had better annotatin faci
Re:PDF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that's the definition of vendor lock-in now, isn't it? Even MS fanboys can usually see that this is a bad thing. MS can abandon its old formats... and they will, eventually.
I think xPDF is available for Windows for free. It opens in about one second on Linux.
xpdf on win32 (Score:3, Informative)
Re:PDF? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php [foxitsoftware.com]
http://www.planetpdf.com/ [planetpdf.com]
I've only used Adobe's reader.
I have used a free pdf maker, and it worked fine.
Re:PDF? (Score:3, Informative)
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/acrobat
http://linux.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/Xpdf-4153
Re:PDF? (Score:3, Insightful)
Even the tools that can edit PDF are not usually very powerful. They're just for touchup type work. Most of your formatting and layout still needs to be done in a real editor and those output PDF OK, they don't read PDF.
Re:PDF? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PDFs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:PDFs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Did I miss your point? I don't know how else you could mean what you said.
Re:PDFs? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:PDFs? (Score:3, Interesting)
MS Word, which they were using, is often painfully slow too.
As other readers noted, 7 isn't that bad & 5 & pre-5 version on windows weren't that bad (acroread on Linux was garbage until 7). If you don't like the application, you do have choices. No reason to complain about the format
I still use xpdf [foolabs.com] (open source) on my desktop.
You can also carry Foxit [foxitsoftware.com] (
Re:Ironic (Score:5, Informative)
The pretext of the BTP was to protest the imposition of import taxes, it had nothing to do with opening up the market to American tea traders.
Re:"Your fly is open" formats. (Score:5, Informative)
I wish the media would understand that there is a difference between Free Software and Volunteer-Developed Software. There is overlap between the two groups, but they are by no means identical.
[1] Of course, this didn't really happen, because we all know Sun are evil and out to destroy all open source software.
Re:Acrobat Reader? Ugh... (Score:3, Informative)
In particular:
- On Linux, ggv will open PDF documents quickly and very happily, and they didn't need to reverse engineer anything or infringe patents to do it. It's free.
- On Windows, there are viewers that aren't Acrobat.
- OpenOffice on all plaforms can output PDF. No $400 license needed to generate the PDF.
- Scripting tools: GhostScript can be used for the batch generation or batch printing of PDF files. GhostScript is free. Our customers regu
Re:Acrobat Reader? Ugh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Whilst I applaud this move ... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not the last government nonsense (Score:3)
And a lot of people will probably produce PDFs in just this way.
"Free" meaning gratis & available only on windows & only from the same company that makes the writer. Open formats are important for data (re)use.
Fairly well, but only through reverse engineering. It doesn't read/write the same way MS Office, as the format & t
Re:Taxachusetts (Score:3, Informative)
What's even funnier is people parroting right wing propoganda. Observe the top ten states for taxing their residents as documented by CNN/Money:
And where does Massachusetts rank? Way down the list. Tied with the liberal sewer pits of Georgia and S
Re:Taxachusetts (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.pacificresearch.org/pub/sab/entrep/2004
http://heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=15303 [heartland.org]
Notice how the liberal states have economic environments that are the most likely to screw poor people out of higer wages and opportunity. So it seems to me the sales tax rankings were selectively chos
Re:Taxachusetts (Score:3, Insightful)
If you look at the site it says "State/Local taxes as % of per capita income", which to me implies that they took all the taxes into account.
As for your links, they do nothing to prove your points. Both your links reference the "economic freedom" rankings created by Pacific Research. Unfortunately I could find no information to describe exactly how they calculated these rankings. In addition rankings are a poor measure to go by because they obscure th
Re:Taxachusetts (Score:3, Funny)
In your post you listed Illinois as 9.8, Georgia 9.8, Mass. 9.8 and SC at 9.7
So technically, by your own numbers Mass. is tied with Illinois and Georgia, yet you failed to insult Illinois. They are a state too, and deserve to be spit on by all other states too.
In the future, please always remember to insult Illinois.
Re:Taxachusetts (Score:3, Interesting)
Adding one third of national taxes to this score does infact make Massachussetts one of the worst tax places. But this is not due to their state policies, but due to Washington politics.
Here is a good page on all o
Re:Is this really about open standards? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Is this really about open standards? (Score:3)
http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/pdf/in
Re:Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine (Score:3, Insightful)
Which version? How do you embed formulas? How do you embed graphics? What archive format will you use to pack the whole mess up for distribution?
2) Use XML as a standard
Opendocument is a standardized XML representation, so I guess Mass. agrees with you completely.
3) Use RTF as a standard.
Does RTF support everything that Mass. may wish to embed in a document?
4) If all else fails, buy the $20 add-on program so you can save your Office documents as a PDF file.
Sounds
Re:Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine (Score:3, Insightful)
You don't get it. There is no version of Office or the free reader available for my system. It's much, much easier for you to download Open Office (for free), or get a free copy from the government (which they'd be legally allowed to give out) than for me to buy a new computer just to
Re:Office 2003 Supports XML Just Fine (Score:3, Insightful)
I suspect you misunderstand what XML is. XML, in and of itself, is just a metasyntax. It doesn't really compare to HTML or RTF.
You could almost just as easily say "Use binary data as a standard, which like HTML is already supported fully but Office 2003 (Word, Excel, and the others can read/write binary data just fine)."
Which would be true, as far as it goes