

Microsoft office 365 v/s Open Source Fedena - abdullahisham
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/moving-from-under-microsofts-cloud/article4662385.ece

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drakaal
Docx is an open standard built on Open XML. It is not Propietary. There is no
licesnse to build an editor that supports it, and it is well documented.

The author contends that this is Proprietary. If they got this very obvious
thing wrong and it is one of their biggest points for why you shouldn't use
Office 365 I think it is safe to say they didn't go in to this with an
impartial view.

~~~
Someone
There are dark corners of Open XML. In particular, one has compatibility
settings with names such as "autoSpaceLikeWord95", "footnoteLayoutLikeWW8",
"lineWrapLikeWord6", "shapeLayoutLikeWW8", "truncateFontHeightsLikeWP6",
"useWord2002TableStyleRules", "useWord97LineBreakRules"

Reading the spec, I get the impression that they made a serious attempt to
document what these mean. However, some might still find it troublesome that,
in practice, the only way to figure out what to do in the presence of such
settings is to look at how those applications displayed text or, in many
cases, how some Office version emulating WordPerfect or an older version of
Word handled them.

Also, some will feel these should not have been part of the spec, or that the
spec should be more explicit in stating that new documents should not write
them (but then, what is a new document? Say, I do File-New, then paste in a
few pages from a document having those settings, then save? Alternatively, I
open a document, delete all content, then do File-Save As?)

~~~
derefr
> some might still find it troublesome that, in practice, the only way to
> figure out what to do in the presence of such settings is to look at how
> those applications displayed text

Well, presumably, if you want to give your word processor the ability to
"autoSpaceLikeWord95"--for a _business use-case_ , not just as a feature to
tick off on a checklist--then you already know what it _means_ to
"autoSpaceLikeWord95", because your clients are pointing to documents your
program has created and saying that right here, there, and here too, the
Word95-like autospacing is missing.

Basically, these compat flags are _suggestions_ to activate the compat
functionality it turns out you needed to build anyway; if you're adding compat
for some old version of some app _because the hook is there_ , without any of
your own clients needing to preserve the old behavior in their documents,
you're Doing It Wrong. It would be like Firefox parsing <!--if IE7--> tags
just because there's a standard for how IE should handle them.

~~~
anonymfus
Looks like autoSpaceLikeWord95 is defined in ISO/IEC 29500-4:2012 "Information
technology -- Document description and processing languages -- Office Open XML
File Formats -- Part 4: Transitional Migration Features" as compatibility
feature for unicode handling bug and ever has full name "Incorrectly Adjust
Text Spacing for Specific Unicode Ranges".

------
execat
Why is AICTE thinking that a company like Microsoft will give out server space
for millions of students for free? Are they not aware of Microsoft's track
record of feeding people with drugs until they become dependent on it? They
did that with Windows, and now are trying to do that with online documents.

Is it not good enough that the same students who are handed out these "drugs"
are the ones who have no clue about bash scripting or how to edit a .bashrc or
how to create a new Rails project? (They don't know what Rails is either. They
do know what ASP is though. ASP!) Or that all the "engineers" from AICTE
colleges are worth doing is being a part of the army the US outsources small
projects to?

~~~
nivla
>Are they not aware of Microsoft's track record of feeding people with drugs
until they become dependent on it?

You mean the same model that other companies on the Internet apply, namely
Google, Amazon and even Apple? The Razor and Blade sales technique that has
been touted for decades?

>They don't know what Rails is either. They do know what ASP is though. ASP!

I would assume most know what PHP is than what ASP is (ASP has no connection
to the office suite, is not part of the curriculum). However, PHP is again
frowned up by the elites despite being open.

Similarly, most know what Google is but a few know what DuckDuckGo or Bing is.
Does this make Google evil? Heck NO!

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gorain
Here is the link to the first article which was published one week back.
Engineering student locked into Microsoft Office -
[http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/issues/engineerin...](http://www.thehindu.com/features/education/issues/engineering-
students-locked-into-microsoft-office/article4640546.ece)

~~~
illuminate
Ridiculous, all this states is that the "cloud email and storage offering" for
the uni will be provided by Microsoft, nobody's being forced to be "locked in"
to only use those products.

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ing33k
why is office being compared to an opensource school/college ERP ?

~~~
gorain
The comparison is not on the features. It is on the purchase or engagement
model.

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chris_wot
What is "Open Source Fedena"?

~~~
gorain
<http://www.projectfedena.org/>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2862755>

