A National Archive Moves to ODF

Andy Updegrove writes "The National Archives of Australia (NAA) has announced that it will move its digital archives program to OpenOffice 2.0, an open source implementation of ODF. Unlike Massachusetts or the City of Bristol (which announced it would convert to save on total cost of ownership), the NAA will deal almost exclusively with documents created elsewhere in multiple formats. As a result, it provides a "worst possible case" for testing the practicality of using ODF in a still largely non-ODF world. If successful, the NAA example would therefore demonstrate that the use of ODF is reasonable and feasible in more normal situations, where the percentage of documentation that is created and used internally is much larger."

Beginning of the Revolution!

I'm wondering if this will be the start of the use of Open Source in more business applications. Most companies use M$ Office, since it is mainstream, even with it's large cost. Maybe the Government's example will be the beginning of the revolution.

First

Is this the first time a national government has switched to odf?

Re:First

I think the dutch national archive also switched to odf.

Worst Possible Case?

As a result, it provides a "worst possible case" for testing the practicality of using ODF in a still largely non-ODF world.

Wouldn't this sort of test be a more or less good test case for switching to ODF and dealing with non-ODF outside documents? Maybe I just misunderstood the comment.

Re:Worst Possible Case?

What I think they meant to convey is that this will be a worse case scenario they can use for testing the practicality of using ODF in a non-ODF world.

But I don't actually think so...

Whereas I think this will be great for ODF, as the NAA will have to produce heaps conversion software to convert many formats to ODF but because they are an archiving operation, they won't ever have to convert back. Instead, I imagine that the common document format for outgoing files from of the archive will most likely be PDF...

This scenario won't test the ability for ODF in collaborative work among entities, something that I would see as the worst case scenario needed to test the practicality of using this format.

Having said all of that - to hell with everyone else - I have been using non Microsoft formats (first Star Office formats and now ODF) for five years now and rarely come across a problem. Then again, I am a simple user so I wouldn't expect too much grief. From my experience advising other people I can see that the true hurdle is not the file format, rather the application. Word and Excel are automated from so much business and scientific software that people just expect the results of their query or analysis to be dumped directly into their spreadsheet or word processor. So until Quicken or MYOB support something other that MS software, or until alternative software is produced that does, business will largely use MS.

On the other hand I strongly recommend to people to use OOo at home and with the ever increaseing compatability that OOo has with MS formats, this is not a bad option.

Bristol, UK?

Bristol, UK? If so, I missed that.

Novell has great success with this

Years ago when Novell switched over to Linux operating systems, one of their largest fears was the trouble integrating their documents in a Microsoft stardard based world. It turns out that Open Office was more than adequate concerning reading/writing various document standards.

OOo shows how bad Java can be

OOo is slow because it's still largely impelemented using a Java VM-based architecture with bytecode and all that entails. I really think these guys should reconsider. MS is moving toward an XML-based file format which shouls be open enough for anyone. And MS Office is a client app written completely in optimized Windows assembler code. That should help with performance hemi-dramatically.

Re:OOo shows how bad Java can be

"OOo is slow because it's still largely impelemented using a Java VM-based architecture with bytecode and all that entails."
No it isn't. I just ran OpenOffice writer V2.0 and checked my task list. No java was running at all!
OOo uses java for some functions but it in not "largely impelemented using a Java VM-based" anything
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenOffice.org#Java_c ontroversy [wikipedia.org] is a list OpenOffices use of Java.
OpenOffice is mostly a C++ or C program.
I have not run a profiler on OOo so I can not tell you 100% what makes OO slower than Office but I would guess that part of it is the XML format that OO uses.
Just from my own experence I have found that you can write a fast XML parser and you can write a "safe" XML parser. But a fast safe XMP parser is very hard.

Small experience

Back in the Uni, I was in charge of merging some 20+ articles from various authors into a single document. The target was to give the publisher a uniform document which he would then transform into a book.

All documents were made with a flavour of Word or another, from word for MacOS 6.0 to the latest (at the time) word XP for windows. As you'd have already guessed, the only word processor able to make sense of all the documents at once was Openoffice.org. Of course, I faced issues (bulleting appearing "funny", for instance), but as I was applying a style I created, that was not a problem as long as the text was there.

No single version of word in my possession was able to open all the documents, some documents even crashing word XP with thunder and lighting.

MS Office Macro's and such

Well Since I just do not know this AT ALL. I work at places where at times (I am a commercial artist) where I have to use MS Office. Most of the time these places have all kinds of macros set up to do given tasks. MANY MANY MANY Macros because of the freelance pool they use they just want the macro's to take care of all heavy lifting so that people don't have to try and figure out how to input data for a week before you get it right. Anyway the question is. How can these be implemented into Open Office.? Also templates templates templates. Its great the MS comes with them and I just use them NeoOffice on my Mac. But if you don't own MS office where do you get all those templates? Some one needs to set up a source forge project of something like it that is just a repository for templates for OOo. OK why is the little o included in the name? Its just Open Office. OOo is a website that Has OO. I don't get it.

Questions here

I wrote the original version of the National Archives software that does the conversion. The current version of the software is available here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xena [sourceforge.net]

If anybody wants to ask any questions here I'll try and answer.

OOo2.0 is just one facet

Our use of the OpenDocument format will be quite important, but it's only one facet of what we do. The Xena software has been developed with a plugin architecture that lets us use various external helpers to 'normalise' or convert to open formats any data objects in our care. For each data object, we use Xena to create a base64 encoded copy so that we can embed some metadata with it, and separately for a conversion to an open format. Much of the data ends up as XML, while images for example are png or jpg. We're currently investigating open audio formats. Xena is also used to 'present' data objects that it normalises.

Until now, Xena has made use of OOo 1.1.x for the normalising of office documents into flat XML. Other development priorities have kept the move to OOo2 in the background. I must stress that we have not yet released Xena with OOo2 support, there is more testing to be done and we feel that the release must be accompanied by good user and developer documentation.

The 'current' binary of Xena available at sourceforge is waaaaay out of date and will shortly be replaced by a much sleeker and more intuitive version. For the curious, anonymous cvs is pretty up to date. If you have a java 1.5 sdk and apache ant, check out a pile of modules and go nuts. Anyone who wishes to become involved in the development effort is more than welcome.

For anyone else, keep an eye on the http//xena.sourceforge.net/ [slashdot.org] for the upcoming binary release.

Even PDF is not well-suited for archiving

As much as I like the principle of using standards-based formats, I am not 100% sure that ODF is well suited to the archiving business. Even PDF itself is not well suited, therefore the existence of the PDF/A standard. PDF/A defines a subset of PDF, leaving out features that present a risk for the long-term capability of reading the document; for instance, audio or video content, non-embedded fonts, javascript, etc... I would not be surprised if a format as rich as ODF also included such features.

But at least they get rid of MS Office....

Doesn't exist?

Which of these applications [wikipedia.org], exactly, don't exist?

Re:OpenOffice.org 2.0?

Note: Said software doesn't exist.

Get with the times. That hasn't been true for a while. The current list includes: Abiword 2.4, eZ publish, IBM Workplace Documents 2.6+, KWord 1.4+, NeoOffice 1.2 Writer, OpenOffice.org Writer, Scribus 1.2.2+ , StarOffice 8 Writer, TEA text editor , TextMaker 2005, Visioo Writer 0.6, and Writely for the word processor portion of the format, with similar lists for the other components. There are a lot more that have announced support on the way.

Re:OpenOffice.org 2.0?

which apps on the list 1. run on Microsoft Windows operating systems (so that they don't require re-buying hardware)

Those which run under Linux probably wouldn't require new hardware either. That being said, here are the windows apps (which are most of them):
ODT

• Abiword
• EZ publish
• IBM Workplace
• Scribus
• TextMaker

Writely is web-native, so you could use that too.Kword might work in cygwin (I really don't know--I know you can run some KDE apps).
ODS

• Gnumeric
• IBM Workplace

Same note on KSpread.
ODP
Same note on KPresenter as on KWord
ODG

• Scribus

2. are promoted in print or on television across North America or across Europe?

What does this have to do with anything? I have seen relatively few MS Office, OO.o, or Corel WordPerfect ads either. People giving away software usually don't spend money to ensure you'll take it from them.

Re:OpenOffice.org 2.0?

Wikipedia begs to differ [wikipedia.org].

Some highlights according to wikipedia:

.odt: AbiWord, KWord, Writely
.ods: KSpread, Gnumeric (incomplete)
.odp: KPresenter

Plus StarOffice (maybe that's cheating), and IBM Workplace Documents (never used it)

Re:OpenOffice.org 2.0?

KOffice?

Not that that makes it a myriad, but there are also a few lesser-known programs that do, and I would guess that many others will implement support for it soon. AbiWord didn't last time I checked, but they did support SXW (StarOffice/OpenOffice.org Writer 1.x format), so it wouldn't surprise me to see them implement ODT. Actually ... oops ... I lied, looks like it does now: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_applications_ supporting_OpenDocument [wikipedia.org]

Anyway, the OpenDocument Alliance also has a lot of companies behind it, among them IBM and, of course, Google. So it seems to be a pretty strong format to me, even if that one company from Redmond (what's their name again?) isn't particularly interested right now...

more than that

If I were trying to archive something, I'd store it in many formats.

First, open it in the original app. Use "Save As" to export the file in every possible way. (txt, rtf, ps, pdf, html...)

Second, open the original in OpenOffice 2. Do as above, for every format that OpenOffice can create.

Third, open the original in KWrite...

When done, save the data on many different types of media. Be sure to use long-term-stable storage formats like GNU tar with GNU zip. Be sure to choose media from different manufacturers. Store the data at several different sites, preferably on opposite sides of the Earth.

As the years go by, spot check the data for errors. Keep statistics. If you find that a particular type of media is failing, make new copies.

Using MS Office formats would be much worse

If your documents are stored in MS Office formats, and you upgrade Office a few times over the years, who knows how many of your documents can no longer be opened, or displayed correctly?

With the open, fully-documented ODF formats, any problems down the road can be analyzed, and corrected, but with the secret, proprietary MS Office formats, when a problem occurs, you're stuck!

Thus, if you store your documents in MS Office formats, it means that you have to re-examine your entire archive, every time you update your MS Office software, or add a patch release.