Sun Finalizes Open Document Format Translator
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Sun has released the final version of its Open Document Format (ODF) plug-in for Microsoft Office, designed to allow the ODF standard to better compete with Microsoft&#39;s dominant Office formats.
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New PostScript RIP gives designers more options in output formats.
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Maker of the WordPerfect word processor and productivity suite will support Microsoft's Office Open XML, OpenDocument format.
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(InfoWorld) - Sun is announcing Monday the release of the GlassFish version 2 open-source application server, which features enterprise-level capabilities for running large-scale applications. The company also will offer a beta release of the upcoming open-source NetBeans 6.0 IDE, which accommodates scripting languages. While the first version of GlassFish was intended for developers, the follow-up release due Monday is intended to place GlassFish in the vein of an enterprise-level application server. Highlighted capabilities include clustering, data replication, and centralized administration of server clusters. Improved interoperability between Web services hosted on Java and Microsoft also is featured as part of a Web services stack dubbed "Project Metro." "This is an outgrowth of our relationship with Microsoft," said Ken Drachnik, Sun open-source community marketing manager. The "Open ESB" capability in version 2 enables integration of Web services and existing enterprise resources. Java Business Integration support provides a standardized approach to delivering SOA via Web services, Sun said. Performance also has been dramatically improved with version 2, according to Sun. GlassFish version 2 is based on Java Platform, Enterprise Edition 5. Sun will base its own commercially supported application server, Sun Java System Application Server 9.1, on GlassFish version 2. It will feature an approximately 75 percent price reduction to $4,500 for an annual subscription for four sockets. Sun rivals in the application server space, including JBoss and BEA Systems, have participated in the GlassFish development community because they can leverage technologies available in it, such as the application server's JAXB (Java Architecture for XML Binding) technology, Sun officials said. GlassFish version 2's performance was lauded by analyst Joe Niski of the Burton Group. "I think the performance improvements are pretty good," said Niski, who also mentioned the clustering capabilities as worthwhile. "The basic J2EE application servers are getting more and more commoditized. There are so many free ones out there. This provides really commercial-level performance and scalability to basically a free offering," said Niski. GlassFish has served as reference implementation of Java. It also has been integrated with the NetBeans IDE, allowing developers to deploy SOA applications using business process execution language workflows. With NetBeans 6.0, the IDE moves beyond its Java origins to accommodate scripting languages, JavaScript and Ruby in particular. "The Ruby support is very important because it allows us to really talk to an entirely new segment of developers," said Gregg Sporar, NetBeans evangelist at Sun. "We have room inside the tent for more than just Java developers," Sporar said. The Matisse GUI builder in NetBeans 6.0 supports the Swing framework for building desktop applications and Beans Binding for modifying user interface controls to accommodate back-end data source changes. Also, the code editor in 6.0 has been rewritten and optimized. The profiler, for checking performance problems like memory leaks, now enables developers to stop execution of an application so they can examine what is happening within the program. Version 6.0 integrates with the Subversion version control system. General availability for NetBeans 6.0 is planned for the end of this year. The IDE first was offered in an early-access format at the JavaOne conference in May. Future distributions of NetBeans, starting with the production release of version 6.0, will be offered under either the Common Development and Distribution License or the GNU GPL (General Public License) version 2. Extending NetBeans to GPL is expected to make the platform more attractive to Linux developers.
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Repeating an announcement it made last month when following Novell and Xandros in signing a patent agreement with Microsoft, Linux vendor Linspire said Monday it was working with the Redmond company in building translators for converting documents between Open XML and ODF.
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ODF? It's for poseurs Large organisations that are considering a move away from Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) in favour of rival standard (Open Document Format) ODF should think again, concludes a new report.â¦
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(InfoWorld) - You might think the steady defeat of bills in several U.S. states to mandate the use of free interoperable file formats might dampen the spirits of IBM, one of the prime supporters ofÂ ODF (OpenDocument Format). Far from it, said IBM's Bob Sutor, who sees the recent news as par for the course in the evolution of any open standard. Last week, California became the latest U.S. state to stall or shelve proposed legislation to require its agencies to adopt open file formats like ODF instead of Microsoft's proprietary Office formats. Similar bills in Connecticut, Florida, Texas, and Oregon have met with the same fate, while Minnesota only passed legislation after it was changed from a mandate to use an open format to a call for the state's IT department to investigate the issue. Massachusetts, the first and so far only, U.S. state with a policy on using open formats, shifted that position somewhat last year to order the adoption of plug-ins to enable Office users to create and save files in ODF. In an interview earlier this week, Sutor, vice president of standards and open source at IBM, talked about ODF and Microsoft's rival Office Open XML document standard. IDGNS: What's your take on the defeat of legislation in several U.S. statesÂ that would've mandated the use of open document formats? Is it a setback for the adoption of ODF? Sutor: We've seen this before around open standards. Take the Web itself. It went mainstream in about 1994 to 1995. If you trace it back, the Web was starting in the late 1980s. It takes most technology standards between 5 to 10 years to become established. They start in committees, come into their own, and then commercial interests come in. Web services kicked off in 2000, and we saw SOAÂ in 2004 to 2005. Now, no one doubts that SOA is big business. In the same way, if you look back at ODF, you can go back to 2003 or 2005. It's still very, very early. We wouldn't have thought it possible in 2005 that in 2007 there would even be any legislative considering of ODF. It's great that people are even talking about this in the first place. It's extremely early. Legislative committee talks take time. One year, a member proposes something, they meet that year on it, and the next meeting isn't until the next year. In some states like Texas they only meet every other year. I certainly expect the legislation to come back with a vengeance in the next sessions. Also, government IT policy makers aren't waiting for legislation, they're making active decisions. Changes are under way. Minnesota's bill will give a strong lead to other states. IDGNS: Where do you think ODF is at in terms of your prediction of five to 10 years for a standard to establish itself? Sutor: We're at about year three or four. IDGNS: It seems as though IBM and Microsoft are pitted against each other with ODF versus Microsoft's OpenXML. Sutor: The only one talking about a feud between Microsoft and IBM is Microsoft. On the ODF side, it's not just us, but we're a such a big company, we're going to say something. There's nothing whatsoever about ODF that particularly enables IBM. OpenOffice [an open-source office rival to Microsoft's Office] benefits; that's not our baby, we don't control it. We've put ourselves in a position where [with ODF] there are all the potential benefits of open source. It's interchangeability along with interoperability so if someone doesn't want to use someone's software, they can choose to use something else. I absolutely don't see this as a feud for Microsoft and IBM. We provide chips for the Xbox, we have a large, if not the biggest, services business around .Net. There's no feud. ODF is in the Oasis [standards body]. Microsoft is on the board of directors of Oasis and has steadfastly refused to participate in ODF. We're happy for them to join and would welcome them with open arms. IDGNS: Some potential users would like to see one single standard, a combination of ODF and OpenXML. Could that ever be a possibility? Sutor: It's more a difference in technology. Microsoft XML technology is simply not good XML. Look at the English language. It's a bunch of letters, words, and grammar, and you can use the rules to form sentences. That's similar to XML. You can sit down to write a novel, and so can I. I might write the worst novel, and you write the best. Just using XML doesn't guarantee quality in the same way that using English doesn't guarantee great novels. Microsoft's XML doesn't take into account modern design and steadfastly ignores other XML standards. I have a sneaking suspicion that OpenXML isn't the last format we'll hear from Microsoft. It's totally a personal thing, but I wouldn't be surprised to see a new XML from Microsoft in a few years and one with an architecture a lot like ODF. I could then see a natural convergence which could bring the two together.
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The Open-Xchange Server software is released for download.
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InfoWorld - SANTA CLARA, CALIF. -- Simplifying Java programming is on the minds of Java development executives at Sun, but making the language available via an open source format remains off the table, according to executives at a Sun &#8220;Chalk Talk&#8221; session here on Wednesday.
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Sun plans to release most of the OS code to an open-source community development process. The company also promises a Red Hat Linux execution environment (the Janus project) by 1Q05.
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Developer.com has a new tutorial posted today dealing with a specific use of one of the more popular PHP frameworks currently, the Zend Framework, and using it to create multi-lingual websites from Jason Gilmore.   Despite my best attempts I'm unable to speak this array of languages, but as a Web developer I wanted to create the most efficient means for hosting a multi-lingual support site, and then work with native speakers to translate the English material. Because the support site runs the Zend Framework, naturally I wondered whether some sort of translation component was available, and sure enough a quick perusal of the Zend Framework website turned up Zend_Translate. In this brief tutorial I'll document how I'm using the Zend Framework to make my website available to the world.   Jason breaks up the article into two main sections - an introduction to using the Zend_Translate component and examples of it in action (including the creation of CSV files to trade out the translations.
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Microsoft Corp. is enlisting Linux distributor TurboLinux Inc. to help tailor work being done to translate documents between Open XML and ODF file formats for Japanese and Chinese users.
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(InfoWorld) - Sun Microsystems will shine more light on accommodations for AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) in the Java realm at the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo in Santa Clara, Calif. next week. Featured on Sun's agenda are the latest details on Project jMaki and Project Phobos, which are two open source efforts. The company also will provide an update on the future of Sun's JavaServer Faces (JSF) component model for Web application development, said Sun's Greg Murray, AJAX architect with the company and the project lead for jMaki. Sun's AJAX efforts focus on making JavaScript more available to Java developers, Murray said. "The problem is, people are afraid of JavaScript," he said. "If we want to keep Java relevant, we have to support this newer programming model [scripting]," Murray said. Web 2.0 and AJAX are very important to Sun, Murray said. The next version of Java, Java Standard Edition 6, will support JavaScript and is expected some time in 2007. Sun's accommodations with JavaScript will make AJAX simpler, said analyst Rikki Kirzner, CEO of Centennial Global Research. "You should be able to make AJAX simpler than it is," she said. AJAX currently lacks accommodations with Java, according to Kirzner.Â  "AJAX is a way to add richness to 3GL code, to any code, and Java doesn't readily embrace it," Kirzner said. The jMaki project enables Java developers to use JavaScript in Java applications as either a JSP (Java Server Pages) tag library or a JSF component. "It's a way of wrapping some of the existing JavaScript frameworks out there and exposing them to Java developers," Murray said. Developers can access Dojo and other frameworks.Â  A Dojo widget could be included in a page, for example. "Basically, jMaki will generate all the JavaScript, everything necessary to put that in the page for you," Murray said. A beta release of jMaki is planned for release in November. "We've been working away just to polish the edges," said Murray. A general release is expected in January or February 2007. Phobos is a way to script server-side code in JavaScript, rather than write a JSP page or a servlet, Murray said. The technology is planned for release early next year. Sun anticipates making jMaki and Phobos add-ons to the Java Enterprise Edition 5 platform. The future of JSF, meanwhile, involves an upgrade being called Project Dynamic Faces or JSF 2.0. This version will extend the component model for server-side components to better support AJAX, Murray said. This release is driven by feedback from users who seek AJAX functionality but want a strict programming model for the server, which JSF provides, Murray said. Dynamic Faces has been available in an early access release since the May timeframe.ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Sun backs an EU standards push for interoperability between office software. Microsoft says it's already there.
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OpenLink Software are pleased to announce release 2.1 of the OpenLink AJAX Toolkit (OAT).    This release introduces the following new features:     * Enhanced RDF Parser (includes support for RDF/XML and RDF/N3)    * New Faceted RDF Data Browser    * RDF Graph Visualization Control with sidebar for Graph Density manipulation    * New RSS Reader Control    * Visual SPARQL Query Builder added to + Form Designer's Data Source control    * OpenAjaxAlliance conformance    * Inter-control messaging system    * Enhanced Tree and Dock Controls    * Enhanced Anchor tag that facilitates lookups to SQL, XML, and RDF Data Sources via In Page Activation of Data Driven Web Pages    * Updated Animation API  For further information, please see:   Project homepage on sourceforge.net: http://sourceforge.net/projects/oat   File downloads: http://sourceforge.net/projects/oat/files   Live Features Demonstrations: http://demo.openlinksw.com/DAV/JS/demo/index.html
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(InfoWorld) - Standards body Ecma International has formed a technical committee to develop a standard built on Microsoft's XML Paper Specification (XPS), a rival file format to Adobe Systems' Portable Document Format (PDF). According to Ecma's Web site, the goal of the TC46 - XPS Technical Committee is to create "a formal standard for an XML-based electronic paper format and XML-based page description language which is consistent with existing implementations of the format called the XML Paper Specification." XPS is one of many file formats natively supported in Microsoft's Office 2007 productivity suite and was developed internally by the company. Currently, Microsoft has the only implementation of XPS. Microsoft had planned to include PDF -- used widely as a de facto document standard for years but only submitted to a standards body earlier this year by Adobe -- as a native file format as well, but Adobe put the kibosh on that plan. Microsoft does offer PDF as an add-on file format for Office. Microsoft has been criticized by rivals for how it has handled submissions to standards bodies, though the company has instituted a formal interoperability effort across all its product groups in the last 18 months in what is says is an effort to be more effort. Open XML, another Office 2007 file format for documents, already has won Ecma approval and will be put before the ISO toward the end of the year for a final vote as an international technology standard. But critics -- mainly those who support Open Document Format for XML (ODF) as the standard format rather than Open XML -- have complained that Microsoft is too controlling when it comes to ensuring the technology it submits to Ecma as a "standard" looks the way Microsoft wants it to at the end of the approval process. And since the company didn't allow third parties to create implementations of Open XML before it was submitted to Ecma, critics say Microsoft has misused the standards process, which is meant to be more open. Naysayers and rivals are using the creation of TC46 to discourage approval of Open XML -- now known as Ecma 376 in the standards approval process -- as an ISO standard. "If [Open XML], and now Microsoft XML Paper Specification, each sail through Ecma, and are then adopted by ISO/IEC JTC1, then I think that we might as well declare 'game over' for open standards," said Andrew Updegrove, an intellectual property attorney and outspoken open-standards and ODF advocate on his blog. "It's time for the national bodies to draw a line in the sand and reject Ecma 376 -- before it's too late." IBM's vice president of open source and standards Bob Sutor, also a vocal proponent of ODF -- particularly since his company supports it as a default file format in software products -- also criticized Ecma and Microsoft on his blog. He said Ecma will create a "standard" of XPS that goes along with Microsoft's wishes for the technology rather than letting an impartial group develop the standard. "The standard must be compatible with Microsoftâs implementation, which is the only implementation," Sutor said. "How open. How independent. How collaborative." Neither Microsoft nor Adobe could be reached for comment Friday.
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BOSTON -- A data format used in Microsoft Corp.'s prevalent Office software line has been approved as an international standard _ a move aimed at preserving access to documents created with the package for years to come.