Comments on the document ENTR/02/21-IDA/MIDDLEWARE-XML: Comparative assessment of Open Documents Formats Market Overview as submitted by Valoris

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1 Comments on the document ENTR/02/21-IDA/MIDDLEWARE-XML: Comparative assessment of Open Documents Formats Market Overview as submitted by Valoris In an effort to ensure document interoperability between European Administrations, Institutions and Agencies, a study was undertaken to evaluate market trends regarding existing and emerging open document formats (ODFs). The goal of this study was to gather information as a step towards determining an appropriate standard office document format to be used for exchanging documents between EU member states administrations. The results of the study were published in a report titled Comparative assessment of Open Document Formats Market Overview (hereafter referred to as the Valoris report). This paper is intended to clarify and comment on the results of the Valoris team s results.

2 General Overview The Valoris report describes the methodology used during research for this project. This methodology chosen was designed appropriately for this task, and established the parameters necessary for a complete, balanced and neutral evaluation of the dominant open office document formats. Although the majority of the results of the study are presented in an unbiased and fair manner, there are some inconsistencies and issues that should be considered before making any conclusions based on the contents of the published Valoris report. Unclear scope of document formats evaluated Modern office application suites, such as Microsoft Office or StarOffice, are actually composed of several software applications. Most of these suites include applications that address common business needs such as the creation of text documents (word processing, such as Microsoft Word), analyzing information (spreadsheets, such as Microsoft Excel) and creating presentation materials (e.g. slides or foils, such as Microsoft PowerPoint). These separate applications are capable of sharing information contained within their documents with other applications from the suite of office applications. For example, a text document might include a chart generated from the spreadsheet application. Although the applications within an office suite are usually packaged and sold as a bundle, each application usually has its own file format for storing document information. As a result, any objective evaluation of office suite document formats must ensure that the individual document formats for all relevant applications bundled in the office suites under evaluation are compared. The Valoris document does not clearly define the scope of the types of office document formats being evaluated. Although some sections of the report, as well as the title, suggest that the document formats for all office applications were evaluated, many sections of the report focus on specific applications from an office suite. For example, section 2.2 explicitly lists support for current word processor features, but there is no similar description for features of other common office suite applications such as spreadsheets or presentations. Indeed, Word 2003 s XML Reference Schema (known as WordprocessingML ) is discussed, but Excel 2003 s XML Reference Schema (known as SpreadsheetML ) is not. Since the trend for modern office application suites has been to continually blur the line between which office application within a suite provides a specific type of functionality (due to increasing inter-dependence among the various applications within a suite), an evaluation of open document formats for a modern office suite should view the overall functionality provided by the entire suite of applications, rather than one or two specific applications within that suite.

3 Inconsistencies in topic analysis Sections 3 and 4 focus extensively on evaluating the Microsoft XML Reference Schemas and the OpenOffice.org XML File Format document formats. However, there is a considerable difference in the specific topics that each of these sections discuss. For example, Section has a detailed summary of the functionality provided by most of the individual applications bundled within the Microsoft Office suite, but there is no corresponding analysis of OpenOffice.org or StarOffice applications in section 4. Section describes Word 2003 s support for parsing XML, but doesn t provide a technical analysis of the XML Reference Schema (WordProcessingML) itself. There is no analysis of Excel 2003 s XML document format (SpreadSheetML), nor is there discussion about the fact that not all the applications within Office 2003 support XML based documents. Conversely there is no mention of the fact that all applications within the OpenOffice.org and StarOffice suites support XML document formats, nor is there discussion around the fact that OpenOffice.org and StarOffice both use XML based document formats by default while Office 2003 users must manually select saving documents in XML format on a file-by-file basis. Section correctly points out that most document authors will not usually add XML structure to documents unless doing so is mandated by their organization, which means that supporting XML document formats as the default format can be of significant benefit (since users don t have to manually do so). User-defined XML schema support is described as being important to users. Section points out that Word 2003 supports user-defined XML schemas, but such support in OpenOffice.org and StarOffice is not discussed. In fact, OpenOffice.org and StarOffice support user-defined XML schemas (via XSLTs) within all their bundled applications, unlike the limited support offered by the individual Microsoft Office applications. Section contains a table that attempts to list evaluated criteria as supported by many document formats. However, the evaluation is actually measuring application feature support rather than document format support; any XML-based document format is extensible by definition, which means any XML-based document format should have equal weighting in terms of such support. Section 3.3 discusses Microsoft s involvement with the XML standards groups, but no mention is made regarding Sun s standardization efforts (or the fact that the coinventor of XML itself is a Sun employee). Although section 4 contains a detailed analysis of the adoption of the OpenOffice.org XML File Format, there is no similar analysis of vendor or user adoption of the Microsoft XML Reference Schemas. There is also a significant discussion regarding the

4 standardization of the OpenOffice.org document formats through the OASIS standards group. The report postulates that users are likely to remain reluctant to adopt the OpenOffice.org document format until it is standardized, however section 3 justifies Microsoft s refusal to submit the XML Reference Schemas to a standards body in an effort to avoid the risk of slowing down their evolution. This particular topic seems especially important in evaluating open document formats. Issues with the Microsoft XML Reference Schemas To meet the criteria established within the Valoris report, a document format must be non-binary (section 2.2.2). As a result, Microsoft s XML Reference Schemas were researched for evaluating the Microsoft Office 2003 suite. However, the report never mentioned that the XML Reference Schemas do not fully describe all document formats used by the applications within Microsoft s Office suite. For example, there is no way to save Microsoft PowerPoint documents in a non-binary/xml format, nor is there an associated XML Reference Schema available for PowerPoint. Since PowerPoint is a core application within Microsoft s Office suite, and creating presentations is a common function performed by users of office suites, this is a significant omission. Also, some of the advanced features supported by Office 2003, such as Information Rights Managements (IRM), are only supported when using the proprietary binary Office document formats. Since part of the evaluation criteria established for this evaluation project include support for emerging word processor features (section 2.2.7) these details are important to note. Section states that the established criteria for using non-binary document formats is important to ensure that documents can be accessed and used independent of any underlying platform or software. This criteria is indeed critical to the stated purpose of the overall project: to recommend an open office document format that maximizes interoperability among a wide constituency of users. However, the availability of the Microsoft XML Reference Schemas fails to fully meet this criteria: - The XML Reference Schemas are only available for the most recent release of Microsoft s Office suite: Microsoft Office Also, this version of Office only runs on a specific platform, namely Windows. - Documents saved in Microsoft s XML document format can still contain XMLencoded binary data (e.g. OLE objects, VBA macros) which are dependent upon Office 2003 and Windows (section 3.4.1) - Microsoft has made no commitments to releasing XML Reference Schemas for future versions of their Office suite (section discusses Microsoft s commitment to support the XML Reference Schemas for Office 2003 only) Another important point is that the availability of an XML schema does not necessarily guarantee document fidelity (see section 2.2.4) across office productivity suites. XML schemas describe the syntax of the data within a document, but might not describe the

5 semantics associated with the interpretation of that data. For example, an XML schema may define that a paragraph can be indented. However, unless specific behavioral semantics for indenting are defined for the application to implement, one application might indent the paragraph 3 spaces, while another application indents 8 spaces. The result is that document fidelity is lost. The semantic definition of data is not always within the scope of an XML schema. Finally, section discusses the definition of open in terms of the evaluation criteria: The minimum requirements for an open standard are that the document format is completely described in publicly accessible documents, that this description may be distributed freely and that the document format may be implemented in programs without restrictions, i.e. royalty-free, with no legal bindings. However, the following section ( ) describes Microsoft s specific licensing requirements, which does include restrictions/bindings: specifically that software implementations using the XML Reference Schemas may only read and write files complying with the schema. The last paragraph of section acknowledges the controversy surrounding the legal terms of licensing the XML Reference Schemas, and avoids making any judgment. Given the acknowledged controversy as well as the ambiguity of the licensing terms, any conclusions on whether the XML Reference Schemas fulfill the project s criteria for openness seem to lack merit. Microsoft s approach to using XML-based file formats does not appear to be a complete replacement for its traditional proprietary binary document formats or as a mechanism to enable interoperability between office productivity suites. This view is supported by the lack of full feature support when using Office XML document formats (see above regarding lack of IRM support for XML documents) and the lack of complete documentation for XML-encoded binary objects in Office XML documents. The XML Reference Schemas do allow XML-enabled applications to access the raw data within some of Microsoft Office applications documents, but not achieve complete interoperability between different office suites. Section summarizes: Although Microsoft has released the XML reference schemas for the Office 2003 version, these schemas aren t for individual or everyday use. They are intended to an experienced crowd and for specific use. Extraneous topics Section describes the functionality of some of Office 2003 s applications in great detail, but does not discuss the merits of the actual document formats themselves. This description includes summaries of the features provided by Outlook 2003 and OneNote 2003, both of which provide functionality that is outside the stated scope of

6 the project (a technical evaluation of office document formats). Further, Microsoft s XML Reference Schemas do not include support for these applications, which makes their inclusion in the report confusing. In general, section 3.2 provides several descriptions of the functionality provided by Office There is no concomitant discussion of the functionality provided by OpenOffice.org or StarOffice, nor is there any indication as to how the functionality described affects the stated goal of evaluating open document formats. Section contains a description of the features and benefits of Microsoft s InfoPath 2003 application (part of the Office 2003 suite), and section contains a table describing the security features of InfoPath Although InfoPath 2003 does handle XML-based data, its inclusion in this report is confusing since its purpose is to simplify creating forms for gathering input from users- as a front-end for specific XML-enabled services. In other words, it does not provide functionality within the traditional scope of office productivity suites. Further, the XML data that InfoPath 2003 is designed to gather is independent of Office 2003 and Microsoft s XML Reference Schemas; data can be input for any XML-enabled application, not just Office Conclusions appear to be based on skewed weighting of evaluation criteria Section 6 of the Valoris report summarizes the conclusions drawn from the evaluation effort. However, an unbalanced weighting of the evaluated metrics appear to have significantly influenced the stated conclusions. For example, the majority of the discussion centers on the market share dominance enjoyed by Microsoft Office. Although being widely adopted was part of the stated criteria by which the office document formats were measured, section explicitly states: Wide adoption does not necessarily imply market dominance or being the universally accepted document format. Further, the chart in section 6.1 listing market share statistics for Microsoft s Office suite doesn t include Office Since the XML Reference Schemas are only applicable to Office 2003, and the project did not consider evaluating the Microsoft proprietary binary document formats used by other versions of Office, caution should be used when attempting to infer conclusions based on the stated market share statistics. Also, the final conclusion does not completely consider all stated evaluation criteria. For example, legal issues (section 3.4.3) and interoperability issues (section 3.4.1) are not discussed in the conclusion, although they were highlighted earlier and have significant impact on the original evaluation criteria. Section 6.3 opines that since Microsoft has made the XML Reference Schemas available, efforts to standardize the OpenOffice.org XML File Formats will not have as significant an impact on the market and that the issue of proprietary vs. open no longer exists. Neither of these positions

7 has been proven through analysis, and in fact the report immediately contradicts itself by qualifying the conclusion: This of course presupposes that the legal issues concerning Microsoft licences of the schemas have been clarified. Until Microsoft supports full Office functionality within their XML document formatsand discloses all possible contents of Office XML documents (e.g. VBA macros, OLE objects)- the Office suite s support of XML document formats will contain proprietary aspects. Finally, since the goal of the entire project was to evaluate open document formats, additional analysis of the quality of the document formats would be beneficial in determining their actual value: if the document format(s) cannot meet all the needs of users then any other criteria is rendered irrelevant. Miscellaneous Corrections Finally, the following corrections should be noted: - Section states that document formats are incompatible between different platforms (e.g. Macintosh and Windows). This is not always the case. For example, StarOffice has supported the same document format across multiple platforms for many years- even when using the older, binary StarOffice document format. - Section states that OpenOffice.org is based on the open-sourced code from an older version of StarOffice. This is incorrect; in fact the first version of OpenOffice.org software was based on code that had been dramatically updated from prior releases of StarOffice. After fostering the OpenOffice.org open source project, Sun adopted that newer code base for its own product. The StarOffice 6 suite was based on OpenOffice.org software, and included numerous enhancements over previous versions of StarOffice, including support for the new XML-based document formats. - Section 4.2 infers that StarOffice (and Java) became part of Sun s strategy as a result of the Internet bubble burst. In fact, StarOffice (and Java) had existed for many years prior to the formation of the Internet bubble. Sun was founded as a desktop- not server- computing vendor, and Java was originally conceived and implemented as a desktop technology. The inference that Sun s impetus for investing in StarOffice was as a result of [an] awareness [ ] that the future of UNIX systems cannot be limited to the server side is not only inaccurate, but completely irrelevant to the stated evaluation criteria. - Section discusses the user momentum in terms of OpenOffice.org and StarOffice adoption. One additional point to add to the discussion is that the OpenOffice.org XML File Format provides users with choice, which

8 has significant value. If the user of an office suite that uses the OpenOffice.org XML File Format becomes dissatisfied with their vendor, they can switch vendors without fear of losing document fidelity. StarOffice users are free to use OpenOffice.org (and vice versa) when they choose to, rather than being locked into any single vendor s software release strategy. Customer choice increases competition, which increases value. Summary The Valoris report defines a fair, balanced methodology to evaluate the merits of available office document formats. Although this document responds to some issues noted in the report, the goal of this response is simply to add clarity to those results in an effort to fulfill the goals of the original effort: provide an evaluation of Open Document Formats (ODFs).