Big Data Analytics In M2M Open Source Editors Formatting Issues

Transcription

1 Big Data Analytics In M2M Open Source Editors Formatting Issues WHITE PAPER

2 Table of Contents Abstract... 3 Abbreviations... 3 Introduction... 4 Some Examples of Client Formatting Issues... 5 Reasons for the Formatting Issues in Editors... 6 Issues in MS Outlook and the steps taken by Microsoft to remedy them... 7 Proposed Solution Approach... 9 Conclusion References Author Info , HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

3 Abstract There are various products available on the open source market, but end-users are facing challenges in adopting these products due to interoperability issues between proprietary products and applications, and open source products. There are various products available in open source for exchanging s, such as Thunderbird, Gmail and others, that are currently facing huge interoperability issues with Outlook, a proprietary product of Microsoft. Due to these incompatibility issues, end-users are much inconvenienced with formatting distortion when exchanging s. This paper covers the technical aspects that explain the reasons behind such formatting distortions when s are exchanged between MS Outlook and other open source clients. This paper will also talk about a concept or idea on which a software can be developed, which will help end-users to preview / foresee such issues before sending their (s), using open source clients. Abbreviations IE - Internet Explorer MS - Microsoft PC - Personal Computer HTML - Hyper Text Markup Language CSS - Cascading Style Sheets , HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

4 Introduction plays an indispensable role in our lives these days. It is a fast and reliable way to communicate with people, and billions of them have opted for as their primary mode of communication at work, and for personal use. Various vendors provide free accounts and clients for managing s from Desktops, Web-browsers, and even from mobile phones or tablets. For example, Outlook.com from Microsoft, Gmail.com from Google, and Yahoo.com from Yahoo are some of the clients that are available and can be accessed from Web-browsers, phones or tablets, or even from PCs or Macs. In the proprietary market of clients, Microsoft s Outlook is the leading shareholder as roughly around 35 percent of all recipients uses some version of Microsoft Outlook (like Outlook 2000, 2003, Express, 2007 or 2010). Additionally, around 75 to 80 percent of organizations have adopted Microsoft Outlook as their primary mode of communication. In the open source market, there are various products available for exchanging s, such as Thunderbird, Gmail and others, but they face serious interoperability issues when dealing with Microsoft s Outlook. Considering the market share of Microsoft s Outlook (highlighted in the above paragraph), it becomes important to understand the reasons for such issues and find the appropriate resolutions , HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

5 Some Examples of Client Formatting Issues There are various features that are supported in open source editors that are not supported in MS Outlook. This has changed the overall look and feel of an s content. For instance, some of the issues while displaying s (created in HTML format) using MS Outlook and open source clients are given below for reference: SI. No. Feature Open Source Clients (Feature Supported) 1 Backgroundimage MS Outlook (Feature Not Supported) 2 Backgroundposition 3 Float/clear 4 Padding Note: The above images have been referred from the web link provided in SI #4 in Section References. For more details on the features that are supported or not supported by MS Outlook, please refer to the web link provided in SI # 1 in section References , HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

6 Reasons for the Formatting Issues in Editors Every client has a rendering engine which transforms the content of HTML-based s into something viewable that can be understood by the end-user. rendering can be visualized as a Web browser s rendering which transforms the HTML, CSS and JavaScript, etc., into something viewable and usable. There are only 4 major rendering engines widely used in clients: 1. Gecko Mozilla s Gecko rendering engine is being used in the Mozilla Thunderbird client. It is the same rendering engine used in the Mozilla Firefox web browser. It s a very modern and wellmaintained rendering engine, with good support for all the latest web standards. 2. WebKit The WebKit rendering engine is used in Apple Mail and MS Outlook for Mac It is the same rendering engine used in Google Chrome and Apple Safari web browsers. The mobile version of WebKit with very good rendering capabilities is being used in iphones, ipads, BlackBerry, and in many other Android clients. 3. Trident The Trident rendering engine is used in Microsoft s Outlook before MS Outlook 2007 versions. The same rendering engine is used primarily in IE. 4. MS Word The MS Word rendering engine is used in all versions of MS Outlook after MS Outlook It s a proprietary rendering engine developed by Microsoft for its Office Suite. Mozilla s Gecko and Apple s WebKit are good in terms of standard formats being supported. So, if we were to write an in a valid HTML format, it would likely be displayed as we intended it to in Gecko and WebKit based clients such as Mozilla Thunderbird and Apple Mail, respectively. Things become a little more complex and the formatting gets distorted when these clients exchange s with MS Outlook on the recipient side, or vice versa. The reason for this formatting distortion is that Microsoft uses its own proprietary MS Word rendering engine, which does not provide very good support for standard HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Therefore, any user of the MS Outlook client who receives an (HTML rich content) that is created in any other client, may face some issues while viewing the content of that and vice-versa , HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

7 Issues in MS Outlook and the steps taken by Microsoft to remedy them There are two major issues in Microsoft Outlook which actually depend on the version of MS Outlook being used. They are: 1. MS Outlook version MS Outlook version 2007 till date Issue in MS Outlook version MS Outlook versions prior to 2007 (i.e. from ) used the Trident rendering engine to display e- mails, but for composing or creating a new mail, it used the MS Word rendering engine. The composing of mails using the MS Word rendering engine was provided to MS users to utilize MS Word s great support for creating rich documents and to embed MS Office content such as spreadsheets, charts and other media. However, this created a problem for Outlook users. They could create great looking HTML s in MS Outlook, but when the same was sent to another Outlook user, the would be distorted. Even when the same was opened in the Sent Items folder of the sender, it would look distorted compared with the just sent, posing a major issue. Steps taken by Microsoft: 1. The first attempt by Microsoft to fix this issue was found in MS Outlook 2003; Microsoft added a couple of additional, advanced options to allow users to opt-out from using MS Word for creating s, or to opt-in to use MS Word to render HTML s. However, most users were not able to easily find these options and they also had a confusing dependency on Word 2003 being installed, even though Word 2003 was not required while writing s in the default editor. In fact, MS Word 2003 was required just to opt-out from composing s in MS Word, but the problem remained the same as it was earlier. 2. This caused much inconvenience to end-users and frustration among larger business organizations using unified installations of MS Outlook across the company. So, Microsoft faced some pressure to fix the issue. As the embeddable content from MS Office applications became increasingly complex in later Office versions, the pressure mounted to make significant changes to the Trident rendering engine. Therefore, with MS Outlook 2007 and above, Microsoft made some changes and unified the use of MS Word as its rendering engine and editor for composing s in MS Outlook. Issue in MS Outlook version 2007 till date 1. MS Outlook 2007, and the versions after that, are using Microsoft s own proprietary MS Word rendering engine, which Microsoft used in its MS Office Suite. While this fixed the issue of rendering discrepancies between the same versions of MS Outlook, it has created a much bigger issue. 2. In some scenarios, when the user sends an (from an MS Outlook client) to another recipient using clients other than MS Outlook - for example, Gmail or Mozilla Thunderbird - the format of the would become distorted , HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

8 3. These types of compatibility issues mostly occur when one of the users is on a Windows machine (using MS Outlook as an client) while the other is on Linux / Mac machine using an client like Mozilla Thunderbird, Apple Mail, or Sea Monkey, etc. 4. The MS Word rendering engine is very poor at rendering HTML that was not created in MS Word itself, which means in some situations, any (with HTML rich content) created in an client except MS Outlook, will not render properly in MS Outlook. No Steps taken by Microsoft: While Microsoft s decision of using its own proprietary rendering engine has caused a bigger problem, Microsoft, supposedly, is not planning to take any additional steps to resolve this. These issues have dissappointed the HTML designers and the design community, and it has also affected the day-today communications of millions of people. Microsoft s own MSDN documentation site lists some of the many limitations of the MS Word rendering engine. This has caused some problems for users who are communicating with their customers or other people using clients other than MS Outlook. Note: For more details regarding the limitations of the MS Word rendering engine in terms of its support for web standards like HTML, CSS, JavaScript etc., please refer to the web link provided in SI #1 of Section References , HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

9 Proposed Solution Approach To solve this problem, Microsoft should ideally make changes in its proprietary engine and support the HTML attributes and CSS properties that it currently does not support. But, Microsoft does not seem to be showing an interest to resolve this issue. As a mid-way solution, the author of this paper proposes to provide a design strategy for a plugin which can be used in other clients to check the compatibility issues of MS Outlook. This plugin can be very useful for end-users who are using clients other than MS Outlook for their business use and are corresponding with recipients who are using MS Outlook. This plugin can be embedded into other clients like Thunderbird and on running this plugin/feature, the end-user can learn of any incompatible features in the composed/written mail(s), much like how the Spell-Check feature captures spelling mistakes in a mail/document before sending it. This plugin can further be enhanced to present a MAIL PREVIEW of the in the reading pane, so that the end-user can see how his/her might appear upon reaching MS Outlook. This feature will provide the end-user an option to change/modify his/her s relevant sections, or the complete mail, if it happens to be an important business transaction or . Understandably, this will not completely resolve the issues that an end-user faces, but will provide a good mid-way solution in terms of providing the flexibility to modify content for better visibility and appearance. Concept of Implementation The concept on which this software can be developed: First, the software reads all the HTML attributes and CSS properties of a composed . Then, it checks the database /records carrying a list* of supported HTML attributes and CSS properties, and figures out unsupported HTML properties and CSS attributes. The software then highlights areas in the composed mail which use unsupported HTML attributes. *The list of all HTML attributes and CSS properties that are supported and unsupported by Microsoft is already available. (Please refer to the References section for the link.) Disclaimer: The suggested/proposed plugin is the sole and independent thoughts of the author. The technical assessment of the implementation s feasibility has been done by getting it reviewed by SMEs in this area, but no POC has been done to validate the idea. The author(s) holds no responsibility if this implementation appears non-feasible at a later point in time , HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

10 Conclusion Earlier, an created using rich HTML content could be sent, assuming that most of the recipients would be using clients that have good support for Web standards like HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and others. Other clients were also moving in the right direction when it came to providing support for current web standards. Everything appeared satisfactory, but unfortunately, Microsoft decided to use MS Word as its rendering engine from the MS Outlook version 2007 and above. Since Microsoft s Office Suite is matured enough and stable, Microsoft appears to be eluding the risk involved in fixing its rendering engine. There appears no option left, except the one in which Microsoft takes the initiative of fixing its MS Word rendering engine. As a mid-way solution, third party vendors can come up with ideas of developing custom plugins or software to help the end-user (one such solution is proposed in this paper). This plugin or software can help to predict or preview such formatting issues and try to avoid using such features of that are not supported in MS Outlook. Though this is not a comprehensive solution, it can be very handy and useful for end-users who use other free clients like Thunderbird for business communication , HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

11 References Author Info Concept and Idea Yash Agarwal Yash Agarwal is a Senior Technical Specialist with more than 12 years of continuous working experience in the Systems Software Domain. She manages client deliveries and expectations for various R&D, and Maintenance and Development projects, extensively interacting with clients across geographies. Co-author Aditya Singh Aditya is working with HCL for over 3 years as a Lead Engineer, and has more than 5 years experience in application development using C, C++ and Objective-C technologies on all platforms, such as Windows, Linux, and Macintosh. He was involved in implementing backup and restore of Microsoft applications such as SharePoint, Exchange Server, and SQL Server, using Microsoft s VSS framework in C++ for one of Japan s leading product-based companies , HCL Technologies. Reproduction Prohibited. This document is protected under Copyright by the Author, all rights reserved.

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