Forum:Office software options

To me, the provision of office software is much worse now than it was before IBM bought Lotus. I lost track of how the field developed but marketing destroyed technical proficiency because the public succumb to the former and do not recognise the latter.

Those looking for choice are frustrated and this wiki, if it seems worthwhile, would be a way for people to express their wishes and offer comments on the ways in which available software performs satisfactorily and those in which it falls short. The wiki may, in other words, perform two functions :


 * 1) inform users about the relative merits of software choices
 * 2) inform developers of how their software compares and what users are seeking

There is a list of office suites here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_office_suites

There is a comparison of "open document" software here : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument_software_comparison

Some other software is available as standalone applications. Some references :

desktop publishing : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_desktop_publishing_software

html editors : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTML_editors

information graphics software : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_information_graphics_software

project management software : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_project_management_software

spreadsheets : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spreadsheets

word processors : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_word_processors

Standards and collaboration
There are many different file formats in use for storing documents. Some attempts have been made to standardize document formatting, but until recent years those attempts have given less than optimal result. A governing body of some sort may be needed to achieve a usable standard. Keme 11:31, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Page linked is proposed for deletion
The page linked by Keme is proposed for deletion so I have copied the material:

This pertains to digital storage methods for common document types occuring in an office environment. For this purpose, many software vendors have devised their own method, or format, for their applications, without any regards for compatibility with other existing/upcoming applications. To remedy this, some formats were chosen as "interchange formats", with basic support for software functionality.

RTF - Rich text format - for text documents

DIF - Data interchange format - for spreadsheets

SYLK - Symbolic link - for spreadsheets

Those formats do not allow for storing all function/layout data available in current applications, so the result of data exchange is rudimentary and sometimes unreliable.

In recent years there have been increasing demands to have open standards formats to provide for reliable and accessible document storage, retrieval and inspection. Recent initiatives to create such formats are based on XML. The major two come from established standardization organizations.

OASIS
ODF - Open Document Format. The ODF format is purely based on XML, so all information is stored as text, and can be viewed in any application capable of displaying plain text. The format is not adapted to any particular software. version 1.0 approved by ISO in november 2006

ECMA
OOXML - Office Open XML: The OOXML format is mostly based on XML, but requires support for binary objects from previous formats for Microsoft Office applications. The format is adapted to MS Office, the Office suite with presumably the largest market share as of this writing. The initial draft was rejected by ISO, and is formally in the "Enquiry stage" pending a final ballot on a revised version, the ballot due february 2008.

terrian 13:10, 14 October 2007 (UTC)