Dougma (dŭg·mə) n.

Or maybe it’s LSD, it was created here after all.

Want to make a major decision with little oversight and little notice? Just do it just before or on a holiday. Every time I take some time off with my family I get back to find out that some major change or event in the ongoing Mass ODF saga (or marriage, or the Big Dig, or Cape Wind) has occurred. Seriously, if it is something people actually care about, but is influenced by special interests with deep pockets, the decision is made when the majority of the state population is eating turkey, unwrapping presents, dressing their kids in costumes, watching people run across Boston, or in this case trying to celebrate the birth of a democracy; (no irony there). At least it is not a smear campaign again, it is just the Massachusetts Government rolling over. The good news is, we, the citizens of Mass have a chance to respond.

UPDATE: Seems I am not the only person having problems, so is the British National Archive. The solution seems to be the ones who created the problem, Microsoft and OOXML. Hope they actually read the 6000 page specification and know how to implement useWord97LineBreakRules.

UPDATE 2: Sun releases it’s OOXML/ODF converter for MS Office. And no it will not handle Visio OLE embedded objects, as that is impossible for a non MS developer. Only Microsoft can do that, and they wont. Also here is an unintended answer to the question ‘Isn’t choice always good for the customer?’ I have seen on every blog about ODF and OOXML. And in answer to Marry Jo, because it is impossible for me to implement the OOXML standard completely. Only Microsoft can do that, and thus is not actually a standard by any rational sense.

Microsoft has asked to have the Mass IDT document standard changed to include their OOXML format for the third (official) time. This time they got their wish. The language is almost identical to the language written by Microsoft lawyers which was rejected previously. Pamela Jones has a fantastic write up on the language changes and some of the ramifications. Andy Updegrove has two articles so far, and is always a good resource for what is going on at the state house with regard to ODF.

A review draft of ETRM v. 4.0 is available for review and comment from July 2nd through July 20th, 2007. Comments should be submitted to standards@state.ma.us. This major release of the ETRM updates content published in version 3.6, introduces the new Management Domain, enhances the ETRM’s format for accessibility and usability as well as provides additions and updates to existing language and technical specifications. For a detailed outline of major revisions made in this version please consult the Major Revisions for ETRM v.4.0 document.

Please take the time to review the facts and form a personal opinion. There is a good overview page at the groklaw site. Please take part and have your voice heard. I don’t care if you are for or against the change, as long as you are heard. If you have a pension, contract with the state, have invoices with the state, deal with the executive branch, or just want to read information on what is happening in our government, you care about this.

So whats the big deal? Why not two standards? Personally I would not have a problem with OOXML if it were actually open, unencumbered, and implementable without signing an NDA which makes you unhireable by companies which write competing products. I hope Adobe makes a few minor changes so that PDF can be added. Actually, with the new language, I think it can right now. Not sure if Microsoft intended that! I have a question to anyone reading this. Have you ever tried to open an old office document, say from the 95 era? How about one with an embedded OLE object (a spread sheet in a word document, etc). Did it work? It would not have worked if the document was OOXML either.

I recently tried to open one such document which was part of some materials sent to the lawyer who worked on a patent I contributed to. There were a number of diagrams written in Visio which were not used but are of interest to the current owner of the patent; a.k.a. my employer. The first problem I had was that I did not have Visio installed on my computer (it is not part of ANY Office Suite). Even after I had the new version installed, it would not work as the old OLE system embedded the DLL entrypoints to the old version of Visio which no longer exist in the new version. You can’t install Windows 95 on a new computer due to driver issues. You can’t install the old Visio on a new computer because of OS requirements. You need an old computer, which we do not have. A data recovery house charging $400 an hour with a $3K minimum (very cheap actually) were not sure they could recover the document. I wrote this document just 8 years ago and while I have it, it is gone.

OOXML does not change the way OLE elements are embedded. Even if this document were saved in the then nonexistent OOXML format, I would have the same problem. Not only that, but no one could write software to read that data, as while OOXML is documented (6000 pages of it), the embedded data is not. Granted it would be nice and tell me that it is a blob of binary data in the Visio format, and optionally may even tell me which version of Visio. Even if you have Visio there is no information on how to get Visio to read that data. Taking the blob and putting it into another file and telling Visio to read it wont work. Now imagine that the embedded document is a chart detailing the allocation of public funds or the organization chart for non-elected employees.