Wow, I'm impressed, and appreciate their feedback. One thing I need to explain better is OpenOffice's bibliography features using its database component. It seems Bruce D'Arcus is relying solely on Writer alone, which would be inadequate because it's not intended for such purpose. (Base is there, why not use it?) And as for Rick, if FrameMaker is a word processor, then almost
anything could be considered one! By that reasoning, text editors should be included in a "word processor" review merely because they can generate a document filled with words. You might also include OneNote, since a single note can hold text the size of an average novel.
For anyone who's ever done a mega-review, you can't compare everything to everything. It's a matter of where you draw the line.
Jeliffe seems to make a good criticism about "the reviewer apparently believes that application features are disconnected from save formats."
However, it is the format. If you're locked-in by
any particular proprietary format, then you're data is inextricably linked to that specific word processor. Microsoft Word is by no means the only word processor in that review to have its own proprietary format as its word processor's native format, but there's no getting around the fact that MS-OOXML is a single-vendor format which to date has only been implemented in one proprietary product: Microsoft Office 2007. MS-OOXML is not interoperable, being dependent on the Microsoft platform while not functioning fully with non-Microsoft software. Why should I have to buy your word processor to read your document? On the other hand, if you're a Word 2007 user, you're forced to convert your MS-OOXML document into another format for others to access and read, assuming not all have Office 2007 on their systems.
I've made the comparison before, but imagine if, as a Windows user, you're forced to use Internet Explorer to surf the web, knowing that Internet Explorer only works with one proprietary operating system, and has its own way of rendering web pages. While that may have been fine in 1998, it's not today. Formats such as HTML, PHP, and CSS are independent of Microsoft, and no Microsoft product should dictate how I access — or with what browser I use to read — those formats.
Microsoft Word could easily run away with a features contest every time it if they used ODF, or even allowed ODF to be the native file format in Word 2007. But they went out and wrote that 6,000+ page monster called MS-OOXML, which is now being rejected by National Bodies around the globe (including the US last week) in its first round of comments before ISO. Also,
none of the online word processors plan to support MS-OOXML as a file format in their future, which is a clarion call if there ever was one. Microsoft then claims that Word 2007 does so many great things that ODF couldn't possibly save all the incredible features that it provides. Yet it is Microsoft who pays for and sponsors (MCAN) an ODF translator for Office 2007. If MS-OOXML cannot be converted, then the several MS-OOXML-to-ODF translators now being written are all a hoax! And it follows that if MS-OOXML cannot be translated, then how could it become an international standard for office data?
You get the gist. For more, see Groklaw's
Proprietizing Standards.
