It is a positive pleasure to report when Microsoft lives up to its
publicity. Yesterday, we received a press release that began "Microsoft is continuing its commitment to supporting open technologies for sharing and archiving content," and went on to prove it. The company is adding comprehensive support for saving documents in PDF format in Office 12 even though it has its own XPS document presentation format.People want PDF, it's been offered as an ISO standard and it fulfils many needs for platform-independent data handling. Being an open standard, PDF is free for Microsoft to implement without limitation — a modest investment that rewards us all.
All of the same arguments apply to OpenDocument, with one difference — OpenDocument is very new and not yet in widespread use. It is far more capable than PDF and has been designed from the beginning to share and archive content in many more ways; still Microsoft can plausibly claim that it's just not seeing demand.
The company has in the past made somewhat waggish use of this style of explanation. When asked about the similarities between Vista and OS X, Steve Ballmer said "I don't hear that from enterprise customers. They don't look at the Mac."
Yet even assuming that the reason for Microsoft's coolness over OpenDocument adoption is a genuine belief that it's just not popular, we know what the trigger point is for new feature adoption. With 120,000 queries a month about "PDF" through its Office Online Web service and perhaps a hundred or so mentions in the support forums, Microsoft has been stirred to action.
It now falls to the OpenDocument supporters to show that there is a demand for Office support. To some extent that is a matter of education and demonstration, showing real life uses where the standard is the best answer, and of encouraging widespread take up from other software makers.
Most importantly, though, Microsoft must be told directly. Ask your vendor, your consultants, your MVPs. Ask in the Office Online forums — there's a 'suggest a feature' option — and during sales pitches, demonstrations and trade shows. With Microsoft 'committed to open technologies', user demand will be the only reason it needs to take action — and that's openly documented.
Talkback
Excuse me, but mentioning customer needs within Microsoft specific gatherings doesn't quite make up for the fact that Microsoft fails to really understand general customer demand.
Things like OpenDocument, work well with others, etc have been mentioned repeatedly for over a decade now. It's Microsoft's loss if they somehow missed that.
Also, I'm sorry to say, given history lessons, a Microsoft press release might promise a lot but doesn't need to be what actually gets delivered, free of strings and pittfalls. Including "compromises (tm)" made after a SP release because of "customer demand (tm)". Yes, MS Java is but one example. So excuse me for taking the wait and see approach and keeping my options open. Somehow NOT betting on a single horse seems like a safer bet to me.
Why the hell should Microsoft do anything that aids its rivals, its not some geek charity.
The world is not crying out for new document formats (its not crying out for a new word processor either). It will come down to what companies can sell. (yes I know sell is a dirty word to some people)
Personally, I hope Microsoft continues to thumb its nose at the OpenDocument standard. That will push more and more people to OpenOffice, which DOES support Microsoft's formats (DOC, XLS, PPT). I've been using OpenOffice for 6 months and those I work and share files with haven't a clue I'm not using MS. I paid nothing for OO. I think this is the undoing of MS.
Bravo to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for having the foresight to choose an open system that will, in the long term, significantly reduce their IT costs. When enough entities follow suit, then maybe MS will cut their prices AND raise their quality to a level commensurate with an open market. Right now they're commensurate with a monopoly.
Dear Jon,
The world is crying for new document formats. We want open document formats because we want to own the documents we created. And yes, there really is demand. This is not simply hyperbole.
By the way, the command line is a fine thing. And so is good UI. By the way, Macs are making a spectacular showing in the UI race. Macs also have command line. The interface race comes down to Vista and Mac OS X Leopard. We will find out at the end of 2006.
Lite Sauce,
jonnie savell
Yeah every day down the pub I here 'the world would be such a better place if we had a word processor format other than Word' :)
Jon: You must visit some truly dreadful pubs!
Oh God. In one take, microsoft sweeps out of the market every other pdf tool, and also, replaces the so famous adobe acrobat with their own tools. Instead of "Get Adobe Reader" buttons everywhere on the Internet, we will see "Get Microsoft Document Viewer".
Worse, they will do that while everyone is happy.
Jon,
How do you make the connection that if Microsoft listened to its customers it would aid its competitors?
Are you saying that Microsoft does hear its customers but chooses not to listen to them because that might aid its competitors?