Support Open File Formats

[mkmurray]

Listen, I think open formats are a great thing and benefit everyone, and there is no reason not to include open formats in Church software and websites; however, to say the following things...

The point is to use no proprietary formats. The point is to make it free, as in freedom.

Why? This is a ridiculous suggestion that proprietary formats are always a bad thing. Sometimes people choose to go with a proprietary company and its formats or software because they feel it's better or they will get better, more personal service. I'm definitely not saying that Microsoft's formats are necessarily superior or anything (they are probably not the best example of the point I'm trying to make), but I'm not going to be a Patrick Henry either and say "Give me Open, or Give me Death!" To make a blanket statement like you did above just shows you are a zealot for open source and will not tolerate anything else.

And so does this statement...

Not even Office 2003 can open Office 2007. I sent a simple email from my Outlook 2007 to Outlook 2003 and the recipient could not open the email. Microsoft changes the file format for the sole purpose of spurring people to pay for upgrades.

Another ridiculous suggestion. Do you have any clue at all how bloated and archaic the .doc format was? The .docx format is so much more clean and simple, not to mention more compact as well. It's XML based in its format, which is quite nice.

As for your issues with Outlook 2007 sending an email to 2003, it doesn't make sense. You are most likely inadvertently leaving out an important detail, because an email is an email. Emails sent from any version of Outlook are read by all other email clients just fine; if it were not so, then why would businesses around the world be using Outlook? There is no proprietary email format, not even in Outlook 2007 (like the one thing they didn't change).

Now if you are talking about the rest of the Office 2007 documents not being able to open in Office 2003 programs, you're really not correct here either. When one of the new types of documents is attempted to be open with Office 2003, a dialog box pops up that tells you all you need to do is download a small plugin to view the document, and points you to the right place. Along the same lines, Office 2007 is completely backward compatible with Office 2003 file formats.

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Look, I know how this sounds that I support Microsoft or Office and nothing else. But it's not true. I just think it's ridiculous to attack Office just because it's from Microsoft.

[russellhltn]

The point isn't to influence trends. OGG is an open format.

I'm glad you said that first sentence. Most of the time the church follows technical trends. It doesn't try to set them.

As for the second, I'm sure the church has chosen the formats it uses on a basis of who can use them with the minimal amount of fuss. Without a doubt, Windows is the most common OS "out there". Can OGG be opened by a typical Windows machine without a download? What about a Mac? Just what percentage of the population can use OGG that can't use the existing formats supported? I'm sure creating another format has a cost of some kind. A labor cost, a storage cost, a support cost. It's there somewhere.

Adding the burden of another format just to support a tiny fraction of the users doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Not unless the purpose really is to influence trends. As the church's web presence expands into areas where Linux is the primary OS (third-world nations?), that may change. But even then I'd expect just the website for that area of the world to be in a open format rather then everything.

Bottom line, formats are going to be driven by the needs of the users (not just the wants).

[jbh001]

OpenOffice does just fine.

The last time I tried to open my Sacrament Meeting Agenda, or any Word document with checkboxes or dropdown boxes, the results weren't pretty, let alone usable. Perhaps it is time to give OpenOffice another go.

Personally, I still prefer my WordPerfect.

[rmrichesjr]

I'm glad you said that first sentence. Most of the time the church follows technical trends. It doesn't try to set them.

As for the second, I'm sure the church has chosen the formats it uses on a basis of who can use them with the minimal amount of fuss. Without a doubt, Windows is the most common OS "out there". Can OGG be opened by a typical Windows machine without a download? What about a Mac? Just what percentage of the population can use OGG that can't use the existing formats supported? I'm sure creating another format has a cost of some kind. A labor cost, a storage cost, a support cost. It's there somewhere.

Adding the burden of another format just to support a tiny fraction of the users doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Not unless the purpose really is to influence trends. As the church's web presence expands into areas where Linux is the primary OS (third-world nations?), that may change. But even then I'd expect just the website for that area of the world to be in a open format rather then everything.

Bottom line, formats are going to be driven by the needs of the users (not just the wants).

(I hope my efforts to be diplomatic are sufficient...)

I appreciate the efforts the Church has made to make many pieces of content available in interoperable file formats. I hope the Church will continue in the direction of accomodating a diversity of operating systems. The purpose of file formats is to facilitate the exchange of information, be that a document, a piece of music, a picture, or whatever. To accomplish that purpose, interoperable file formats have a large advantage over proprietary formats. CSV, HTML, and XML are fairly good examples of that advantage. PDF is a pretty good example of an interoperable format that at least at one time was not open. I feel the Church is doing an increasingly better job of accomodating a diversity of computing platforms. I hope that trend will continue.

In response to the question in the middle of the second paragraph above, can content in a proprietary format be opened by those using a different system without a download or other significant effort? Sometimes, it cannot be opened at all. Because of my choice of operating system, last time I checked I can still not receive General Conference video at home in real time, while I can view an enormous amount of non-Church content without any difficulty because that content is in an interoperable format.

The problem I feel with putting out content exclusively in a file format that is proprietary to a single software platform is the effect on the would-be user of the content is indistinguishable from a hypothetical situation involving an element of coercion from the content provider to influence the user to switch to that platform.

[mesmith]

Based on comments from mkmurray and RussellHltn, I am not doing a good job of communicating because they miss my point.

At least in my stake, technology plays a major part of any leadership role. There are emails, documents, spreadsheets, etc flying around all the time. Many times people are actually composing these documents at work and using business email accounts to perform their calling.

The point I am trying to drive home is not anti-microsoft. It is anti-you-have-to-spend-money-on-expensive-software-to-do-your-calling-well-or-to-be-a-good-saint. If member Abc gets called to a leadership calling today I can direct them to 100% free software that would allow them to participate fully in their calling without spending a dime.

However, if they get all kinds of content in modern formats they come to me wanting help to upgrade their software to be able to participate. But to do that effectively they need to upgrade their OS. But to do that they need to upgrade their hardware. Then they feel a need to buy expensive broadband service to download software patches. Then they need to pay monthly subscriptions for anti-virus software. Get duped into paying extortion money to get a virus nag screen to go away. Pay for in home service technician service to clean up their machine. And once they are finally caught up a new version of software rolls out and they have to start all over again. (I have experienced everyone of these examples supporting the members of my ward.)

I am just saying if we stay in the non-proprietary camp, then no one has to feel like they have to spend any money and we can keep the same level of productivity.

This post is too long. Sorry.

[russellhltn]

The point I am trying to drive home is not anti-microsoft. It is anti-you-have-to-spend-money-on-expensive-software-to-do-your-calling-well-or-to-be-a-good-saint. If member Abc gets called to a leadership calling today I can direct them to 100% free software that would allow them to participate fully in their calling without spending a dime.

I understand your position, but I don't see how that applies to this situation.

If we're to switch to OGG, then how many members would have to install something to do their calling? Even if it's free, it's more work and risks needing tech support.

My position is to strive for "You can do your calling with what you already have". Failing that, then it's "You don't have to pay for it (and still be legal)". I believe that OGG fails the first test. Thanks to OpenOffice, you can satisfy both by using a very common proprietary format. I don't see now OGG makes things any better until it's adopted by the most common software.

Under what situation would someone have to pay to open a MS Office file that they wouldn't have to under OGG?

[aebrown]

Based on comments from mkmurray and RussellHltn, I am not doing a good job of communicating because they miss my point.

At least in my stake, technology plays a major part of any leadership role. There are emails, documents, spreadsheets, etc flying around all the time. Many times people are actually composing these documents at work and using business email accounts to perform their calling.

I think some of the confusion earlier in the thread came because no one knew what context you were talking about. This is the first post that mentions people within a stake passing documents, spreadsheets, and other files amongst each other in order to fulfill their callings.

Thanks for the clarification -- now I think we can have a more focused discussion.

I am just saying if we stay in the non-proprietary camp, then no one has to feel like they have to spend any money and we can keep the same level of productivity.

I don't come to the same conclusion as you; in fact, I think the current state of the world of software leads to the opposite conclusion.

You may not like the proprietary Microsoft document and spreadsheet formats, but regardless of what you or I may think, those are the common interchange formats in the world of business. I guarantee if I sent a .odt or .ods file to almost any of my company's customers, they would not appreciate it. But if I send a .doc(x) or .xls(x) file, they receive the communication with no questions asked.

Excel and Word don't open .ods and .odt files, but OpenOffice opens .doc and .xls files. So it seems pretty clear that the logical interchange format is the proprietary file formats. Anyone is free to use OpenOffice (it's the recommended office suite for Church administrative computers), but for maximum interoperability, the files should be in .doc and .xls format. That way users of OpenOffice as well as users at home or business who have the Microsoft applications can open the files just fine.