Real World Computing
Looking to the future
Microsoft has also started an open-source project to create converters to migrate documents from the old binary formats into the new OOXML formats (see http://b2xtranslator.sourceforge.net). This project should have its technical specification made available in April, and the Word document translator should be available by July. Anyone will be able to use this source code in their applications under a very liberal "BSD-like" licence.
Online office suites
There's a plethora of "online" alternative office suites arriving at the moment, among which Google Docs and Adobe Buzzword are the most prominent. All of them trumpet their ability to let users collaboratively edit documents, or share them with others. Most will keep your documents private unless you decide to share them with other nominated users, and some, such as ThinkFree, let you publish your documents on other web pages, such as blogs. Most of these online applications are free for personal use, but some have paid-for, corporate versions. j2e, for instance, allows whole schools to sign up for a fee, but individual users can use it without paying.
These applications vary greatly in the features they provide: some manage quite complex layouts, with tables and wrapping words around pictures, but others are more rudimentary, suitable for bashing out a quick draft but not much more. Several don't even support common functions like fully justified text. Spreadsheet applications may or may not support complex functions and the presentation graphics applications can be slow when working with large graphics files. Printer support can be another of the stumbling blocks, as margins and page layouts can be difficult to get right when controlling a printer remotely through a web browser.
Many of these online applications have their own internal file format, but will import and export Microsoft Office binary files, OpenOffice ODF or Microsoft Office OOXML. However, the fidelity of the translation to and from the various file formats often leaves quite a lot to be desired - documents you import into an online application sometimes bear only a passing resemblance to the original and sometimes the document won't import at all. In addition, the number of fonts supported is often very limited, and word-wrapping, picture placement and table support may not match the facilities of the offline applications used to create the original documents. Buzzword, for instance, supports just seven different fonts, and only three of these will be familiar to most people.
Online applications, of course, require you to have an active internet connection in order to run them, and they also store your data on the application servers rather than on your own hard disk. If those servers fail for any reason, you'll lose access to your documents, perhaps permanently. The servers may be in a different country from you, which may mean you have to register with the Information Commissioner's Office (www.ico.gov.uk) - formerly called the Data Protection Registrar - to tell them that you're shipping and processing data overseas. The data protection rules say you mustn't ship personal data outside of the EU unless the destination country has data protection legislation on a par with that of the UK and EU. The US doesn't have, but you may ship personal data there if and only if the company you're sending it to is party to a Safe Harbour agreement recognised by the US and UK governments. It's up to you to check, or else risk a fine, a jail term or both.
