X marks the new format

DOCX. XLSX. PPTX. XPS. Microsoft Office 2007 has ended the freeze on file formats it has maintain since Office 97 and introduced these new XML-based ones. The first three are the new file extensions for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint respectively. XPS is a new Microsoft attempt to compete with Adobe Acrobat PDF (the result, according to industry gossip, of a dispute between the two companies over licensing terms for PDF in Microsoft programs.

You and I haven’t been demanding XML-based file formats, but the IT community has. XML is a formatting language that can be used interchangeably for documents and web pages. Plus it also is the format for the RSS news feeds that are spreading like wildfires. Putting information in XML allows for wide distribution options. Plus the new Microsoft file formats are zip-compressed, substantially reducing their size.

The open source world already is on board with XML via the OpenDoc file format used in OpenOffice. But Microsoft, as it always does, wanted its own standard, which it calls Open XML. I have little or no interest in getting into the tedious debate raging between supporters of the two standards.

From a practical, real world perspective the key issue is this: virtually everyone uses some flavor of Microsoft Office or uses the existing Office file formats – and no version of Office except 2007 can read the new format natively. Furthermore, the new formats are turned on by default in Office 2007, which means that sooner or later someone with a new PC will send you one of the X Files.

Microsoft has released a conversion package ( HYPERLINK "http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en" http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=941B3470-3AE9-4AEE-8F43-C6BB74CD1466&displaylang=en) that will allow users of older version of Office to hand the new files. You probably ought to install it now. Mac users, though, will have to wait a couple of months because converters for OfficeMac won’t be released until March or April.

As for conversion between Microsoft Office and OpenDoc, Microsoft has started an open source (!) project – HYPERLINK "http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter" http://sourceforge.net/projects/odf-converter – that so far has yielded only a converter for Word 2007. However, this is a dramatic reversal for Redmond, which previously vowed it would never support OpenDoc.

XPS, though, I wouldn’t worry about much yet. Only a PC with both Windows Vista and Office 2007 (and then only if the Office 2007 user installs an add-on) will be fully capable of creating or viewing such documents. The software to work with other versions is not yet released.

HTML is the winner

An online poll of TNPC Newsletter readers found that by a 4-1 margin you wanted to receive the newsletter in HTML format instead of plain text. Verily, times have changed.

One hates to give away the fact that one is an old fogie, but back in the day when the network of computing enthusiasts who ultimately set this publication in motion were first getting acquainted, we relied on the old CompuServe network. And I do mean the old CompuServe network: not just dialup, not just 2400 baud, but pay-per-minute of use.

From that came the First Commandment of Netiquette: Thou Shalt Not Waste Bandwidth. Among the corollary principles was that knowledgeable users sent email as plain text. To resort to HTML or rich text formatting would make one a Philistine – or even worse, an AOL user.

Of course, once AOL's all-you-can eat pricing model caught on and connection speeds escalated, there was little reason to maintain the plain text standard. You weren't costing anyone either time or money, and you were making your messages more readable. With the widespread adoption of broadband, in fact, plain text became frankly a sign of Babbittry.

Technology is a funny thing, though. Of late there have been increasing security concerns with respect to rogue code hidden behind HTML messages. Plus so many people now are using portable messaging devices such as BlackBerries, Treos, and the like, which do not display HTML messages well. The upshot: plain text is making a comeback.

Requiem for a floppy

A major computing milestone passed by not too long ago and no one noted it: the effective end of the floppy disk.

As computer devices go, the 1.44 MB, 3.5”, double-sided floppy was a veritable Methuselah. It came into widespread use in around 1990 (when IBM adopted it for its latest PCs; Apple much earlier had adopted a 720 KB, one-sided variety for the Macintosh), and it remained an industry standard for roughly 15 years.

Curiously, the 3.5” floppy kept the “floppy” nomenclature even though it encased its magnetic media in a hard plastic case. The old 5.25” disks used in the original IBM PCs actually were floppy.

In any case, the disks were all-in-all a pretty handy medium. A PC could be booted from one. It could hold a fairly large number of word processing documents and spreadsheets. Long before users set up home networks, file transfer via “sneaker net” – copying from one PC to floppy and then copying from the floppy to another PC – was a well-established practice.

Ultimately, of course, multimedia and escalating file sizes did the floppy in. CD drives and flash memory sticks with the capacity of scores of floppies now are the favored medium for physically transferring files. At some point – I would guess it was some time in the last two or three years – the number of computers sold without floppies exceeded the number sold with them, and that effectively marked the end of the floppy as a standard.

Aside from marking the end of an era, the end of the floppy also marks a particular computing problem: what to do with the data on your old floppies. Remember, once your last PC with a floppy drive is gone, those disks are effectively unreadable. So now is the time to take your floppies and burn them on a CD.

Which in itself is a lesson: One CD will take the place of about 485 floppies.

All for nothing

TNPC Newsletter likes to point its readers in the direction of free software, so here is a place well worth visiting: SoftwareFor.org.

Their gimmick is “Software for Staving Students” – a bundle of free apps that comes in both Windows and Mac flavors. It can be obtained as a normal download, but you will get it much faster if you use the Bittorrent peer-to-peer network. (Plus it gives you a rare opportunity to download something from Bittorrent legally.)

You'll find a lot of the standbys often mentioned in TNPC: OpenOffice, FireFox, Thunderbird, and the like. But it also includes graphics, sound, and video software, security tools, system utilities, and even some games.

Included is my favorite multimedia player: VLC. An open-source program, it has proven itself capable of being able to play almost anything. Media streams or files that flummox most players will run in VLC.

Even if you aren't a starving student, the bundle could be well worth your while. Because of activation and other anti-piracy features in commercial software today, moving your apps to a new PC is no longer just a matter of reaching for the installation disks. You need to deactivate the software on the old PC first, leaving it useless. A free applications bundle will let you restore functionality to your old PC.

The striking thing about the Starving Students bundle is that the retail equivalents would set you back a sum well into the four-figure range. It demonstrates that the open source and freeware movements have generated some interesting alternatives to commercial software. To be sure, the free programs aren't as slick as their commercial counterparts. But you can't knock the price.