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2008-02-07

ODF-OOXML: nfoWorks for
Harmony?

Technorati
Tags: ODF, OOXML, nfoWorks, Harmony, ODF-OOXML Harmonization, OOXML/ODF Translator Project, open systems,
open
standards, document formats, interoperability

see also:

Interoperability
by Design, Orcmid's Lair, 2008-02-26
my reaction to
the 2008-02-21 Microsoft announcement of interoperability
principles

nfoWorks:
The Harmony Get-Ready, Professor von Clueless,
2008-02-27
specific discussion of the Document Interoperability
Initiative and moving along with nfoWorks and the Harmony
Principles

nfoWorks:
What Are those Harmony Principles, Again?  Professor von
Clueless, 2008-04-11

About
nfoWorks and nfoWorks Diary for
regularly-updated information

1. In Search of Harmony

I want an office productivity suite that supports open-standard
document formats exclusively.  And for any class of document (let's
say word-processing, spreadsheet, and presentation to be specific), it
only supports open-standard formats in that class in accordance with what
I am calling the Harmony Principles:

Standards Compliant: All of the open-standard
formats in a class are supported without prejudice: accept
documents in the supplied format.  Produce documents in the same or
different standard format as circumstances require.  If a
particular community agrees to use a particular format, accept and
return that format.  If a particular format is required for
archiving, preservation, or submission to some authority, submit that
format.

Always Harmonious: No features of a
standard format are supported that are not perfectly and recognizably
represented in all of the formats of the class: Everything
created in one standard format is accurately expressible in any
other.  Unsupported features encountered in input documents are
suppressed in a graceful way; an understandable account is
provided.

Specifically Interoperable: Because standards
evolve and so do individual format-supporting software implementations,
programs and their users can establish profiles that limit the
harmonious features relied on in particular documents.
Harmony-supporting computer programs will conform their available
features to the requirements of such profiles.

Given portable, open-source reference implementations of the
essentials, there is opportunity for development of a Harmony for Windows,
Harmony for the Mac, Harmony for Linux, Harmony for Google, Harmony for
whatever.  Other products and implementations of the formats that
deliver non-harmonious features could provide optional election of Harmony
Principles, particularly whenever an interoperability profile is
encountered.

A Harmony suite could easily live alongside configurations of people's
favorite broader-function office suite, just like Microsoft Works and
similar mini-suites can be found by default on many computers that have
additional productivity software.  Whether the components could be
operated usefully together is an opportunity for innovation beyond the
basic parameters of the Harmony Principles.

2. You Have Questions?  I Have Questions!

Q: Won't the interoperability intersection be so
small that no one would limit themselves to it?

A: Perhaps.  I have no idea.  Let's find
out.

Q: Won't the performance of Harmony be worse than
the optimization that is possible by dealing well with a single
open-standard document format?

A:
In principle, probably.  In practice I expect a Harmony reference
implementation to be noticeably less capable.  Optimization comes
after figuring out how to do it at all and takes a substantial
investment that only serious competitors might
undertake.

Q: How Is "accurately expressible"
determined?

A: I don't know.
I'm thinking one measure would be achievement of the same presentation
in some neutral medium, say some canonical PDF rendition that it is easy
to compare against.  Another is roundtrip fidelity between
different formats and back, in terms of what people see and what they
can manipulate.  These strike me as variants on acceptance tests
that are already needed for demonstrating conformance to a single
open-standard format.  It will take experimentation to find
adequate measures.

Q: You seem to put a lot of stock in profiles for
constraining dependence on features.  Is this just more standards
work?

A: I don't know.  I
don't think any of the current open-standard formats provide for
constraint on the document architecture for some externally-defined,
utilitarian purpose.  I don't think there is enough understanding
about how this can be expressed across different (or the same) formats
to consider whether there should be any standard for it.  Let's
find out how to do it at all first.

Q: What makes you think that major
office-productivity software producers would support the Harmony
Principles?

A: I have no idea.  I
think it depends on first determining what is feasible under easy
conditions, then see what is valuable to users of major more-complex and
more-sophisticated software products.

Q: Is there anything you're sure of concerning the
practical achievability of Harmony?

A: I'm sure I don't know.  Oh, yes, and I am
sure that it is bigger and more difficult than I can get my head around,
especially operating alone in my private echo chamber.

3. Well Then, Let's Start Getting Started Shall We?

Something I am more confident of as a starting point is a suite of
exploratory tools and exercises that I call
nfoWorks.    That development can
proceed along the following lines:

Deliver Concrete Artifacts.  Don't produce
anything without working software and repeatable demonstrations and
tests.  Do this early and often, no matter how crude.

Operate Entirely in Public.  Use SourceForge,
Wikis, etc.  Provide open-source software.

Start Very, Very Small.  Find the minimal
cases that work for demonstrating and exercising open-standard document
formats and isolating the interoperability intersections.  Build
out incrementally and iteratively.  Always have something that
works.

Make Tools and Instruments.  Build filters and
conformance tests as a way to accept the proper formats, verify outputs,
and check inter-translation of identified harmonious features.

Develop Measurable Harmony Principles.  Learn
by doing and identify what it is that must be preserved across
implementations/formats and how to tell that it is.

Devise Portable Approaches.  Don't get stuck
on a single platform.  Design in portability for broad
reuse.

GUI Applications and User Experience Come Last, if
Ever.  So we are not talking about something, at this
point, where end-user operability dominates.  Really.  We need
to understand this problem at the nuts-and-bolts format-manipulation
level.  After there is a clear path, step up to the very real
difficulties of fitting into the ways that people actually operate
without getting in their way [2].

4. Hmm, Now What?

I think I need to get my arms around the "start very, very small part"
without losing site of the overall objective.  That may take some
relaxed "get ready to get started" work.

I probably don't need to know anything about changes to DIS 29500
(OOXML) as the result of the up-coming Ballot Resolution Meeting, but I
think I will use that time and some of the aftermath to start providing
details that are more substantial than this high-level thinking-it-over:
Something others can get there teeth into.  This is not the kind of
open-source project I can even think of doing single-handedly, so I need
to think about how others can be engaged too.

What do you think?

I've been mulling over some sort of ODF-OOXML common
document-processing approach for some time.  I'm using my preparation
for ODC2008 attendance as a stimulant to putting something on the
table.

[1] Dennis E. Hamilton: Why
Not .rtfx?  Professor von Clueless in the Blunder Dome
(web log), 2007-03-26.

This came out of my tracking of the Massachusetts Information
Technology Division list of qualified document formats under versions of
their Enterprise Technical Reference Model.  I have more to say
about opportunities to use Open Packaging Conventions as a powerful
carrier for interchange of document-based artifacts.  This kind of
project can also spin off as early application of
nfoWorks fixtures, or vice
versa.

[2] Dennis E. Hamilton: OOXML-ODF:
The Harmonization Hope Chest.  Orcmid's Lair (web
log), 2008-02-06 (2008-02-07 updates).

My ponderings over this post also improved my thinking about
nfoWorks (including choice of
name).

[update 2008-02-08T11:02 -0800: I cleaned up some of
the narrative and put the needed "?" in the title.  None of the
tweaking is dramatic, but expresses my intention more carefully, I
hope.]

posted by orcmid at 2/07/2008
11:36:00 PM, rating

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