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The Commonwealth policy is a procurement policy. It may have
broad goals but it comes down to choosing a word processing
format. The problem is not having a good scoped definition
for requirements met by word processing formats. If one
tries that, the discussion gets complex quickly. If one
moves the goal from being pick one of the available to
create a common core we have a different set of issues.
If one believes there is a common core what is the best action?
a) Pick the format that represents that common core best
(eg, it is claimed that Open Office is cleaner XML)
b) Pick the format that is most ubiquitously installed today
(MS Office is most widely installed. That is not true of
MS OfficeXML but neither is it true of Open Office).
c) Pick the format used by the most people at the best cost
Given b, neither candidate meets this requirement. XHTML
may meet this requirement today and all of the tools needed
are available. Cost is an issue.
If it is a policy designed to open the market to competition,
it is a much easier decision. On the other hand, now it
becomes a local debate about local goals that policy furthers.
The Commonwealth will/is debating whether IT shops can
create policy that is properly legislative authority. That
is a much stickier problem. Can't be solved here. Should
be understood though. I like what the IT shops have done
because my personal values are such that I think well-informed
experts should stand up and tell the citizenry when their
best interests are jeopardized. That takes balls. That is
what shared values are all about. I applaud that. I also
know it is risky, political, ruins careers, and outs the
chimp behavior among the Pan species. That is why values
are so valued: they come with risks and costs too but if
one doesn't stand for something, one not only has no values,
one is of no value. See Marley's Ghost.
If we are now debating the best format for word processing
without regard to cost or procurement policy goals, we are
in your debate and I agree:
1. I have to decide what I am doing with the markup and
if I want clear labeling or presentational markup.
2. I have to pick the presentational markup and
decide which is most easily targeted given a clearly
labeled structure.
Notice, *I*. I completely agree with you there, but
I am not the admin down the hall who prepares hundreds
of documents a month and even if she or he could code
for XML, they don't have the time to learn it or do it.
So far, no problem. We have all of the tools to do
any of that and more coming every day. This is about
picking the right ones for the right jobs for a cycle.
len
From: Uche Ogbuji [mailto:uche.ogbuji@fourthought.com]
On Fri, 2005-12-02 at 10:55 -0500, Robert Koberg wrote:
> Say you are in charge of your states IT budget, how do you present
> your structure above to your citizens/vendors/buearocrats? Do you present
> your structure above as an MSOffice or OOWrite document?
Len Bullard had a similar reply, but as I read the thread, the
discussion had broadened from the needs of one state to Office Format
best practice in general. If you still meant the discussion in narrow
context, I don't think that was clear, and thus my reaction. I
certainly don't deign to tell MA how to write technology policy. I
haven't analyzed their problem domain.
I was on the OO XML OASIS WG for a few moths at the beginning, and the
final product is not radically different from what we started with. I
have not really seen much of the new Office XML.
> Given that you can't do what you want in OOWrite and only painfully and
> with a bad UI in MSWord, why are you celebrating those formats?
Can't do what I want? I don't follow.
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