Serious content-producing organizations have evolved large-scale, specialized processes for their documents. Often they manage revisions and notes in Microsoft Word, then transfer content to PDF, and print with strict editorial guidelines. In contrast, traditional copy and paste web publishing interrupts the existing system. In the process of rethinking a current client's web workflow, we took an interest in this problem and devised a new solution: two modules, word2web and xslt_book, which together combine the advantages of Word and the power of Drupal. Here is a screencast showing the two new modules.

This is awesome.

Local mirror of Word2Web screencast

"ODF has clearly won," said Stuart McKee, referring to Microsoft's recent announcement that it would begin natively supporting ODF in Office next year and join the technical committee overseeing the next version of the format.

"We sell software for a living. The ability to implement ODF in the middle of our ship cycle was just not possible," he said. "We couldn't do that during the release of Office 2007. We're looking forward and committed to doing more than [ODF-to-OOXML] translators."

By owning the "standard" and developing it in secret, without participation from other vendors, in an Ecma rubber-stamp process, Microsoft rigs the system so they can author an ISO standard with which they are effortlessly compatible, while at the same time ensuring that their products maintain an insurmountable head start in implementing these same standards. There is no balance of interests in OOXML. It is entirely dictated by Microsoft, and voted on, in many cases, by their handpicked committees in Ecma and ISO.

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Remember, standards bring interoperability, the ability to try out new tools and techniques, the ability to migrate, the ability to chose among alternatives, the ability even to run non-Microsoft products. If standards are meaningless and ineffective, then the incumbent' vendor lock-in will win every time. At that point, isn't it convenient for them to have a monopoly in operating systems and productivity applications? This, in my opinion, is the essence of Novell's 2004 complaint, Opera's present complaint, and the ongoing file format debate. Microsoft's monopoly power and the resulting network effects have lead to a relationship with standards where they win by winning, by drawing, or even by cheating so much that they discredit the system.

I think I personally drove our previous IT guru to retirement with my constant nagging about 'open source' that and 'free' that. (See this post from 2005 as an example.) His responses started off generous-but-condescending -- "that's an interesting idea, but as you know, we don't have the staff to support it" -- and eventually became downright testy. But it struck me as a good idea then, and it strikes me as even more so now. In a time when we're shrinking the cadre of full-time faculty to save money, why the hell are we buying servers and paying staff for our own internal email system? Why not use gmail (or something similar) and use the savings to, I don't know, hire faculty?

Going farther, why the hell are we sending boatloads of cash to Microsoft for a gazillion Office licenses when AbiWord and OpenOffice are out there for free? (Google Docs shows promise, too.) For that matter, why not try Linux instead of Windows? Let Bill Gates absorb the hit, rather than my English department. He's better able to take it. And the time we save with fewer system crashes wouldn't be trivial.

And have you tried Blackboard/WebCT recently? Sheesh. I mean, Sakai and Moodle are just sitting there...

The only semi-persuasive argument I've heard for continuing to feed the Windows pig is that it's the "industry standard." That's true, but circular. It's true until it abruptly isn't.

Also, if the Windows ecosystem used open document formats, then switching to another system (Mac, Linux, whatever) would be trivial.