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It's a really bad spec, and should never have been submitted to the "fast track" process. Rob Weir analyzed OOXML using a sampling technique, and found that the ISO process found 1.5% or less of the errors in the spec. That suggests there are at least 172,000 errors in the spec that were not even NOTED in the last gathering for ISO's fast track. Inigo Surguy's "Technical review of OOXML" also found a massive number of errors. It's hard to express how warped the process has become. In a five-day meeting, they couldn't address almost all the errors (because there were too many) - instead, they did a block vote, and I know of no one who really even understood what had been accepted by the vote. The countries "approving" the spec don't even have a final spec to approve - instead, it's an original document with a bunch of text describing the kinds of changes to be made to it.

ODF was submitted via the PAS process, OOXML was submitted via the Fast Track.

By saying they both had remaining issues you make the errors seem somehow comparable. ODF was approved through PAS that allowed review and stability. OOXML is using Fast Track as a development process and there's significant security and technical errors. There's no comparison between quality here, I assure you.

see comment 3.

So this argument is rubbish. I suspect they will not ever supply a proper mapping, otherwise it would just be used by ODF, and make OOXML even more redundant than it already is.

That post by Rob is particularly good, I recommend it.

In addition,

Patrick Durusau is one of several editors on ODF (in ODF 1.0 he was one of six editors) and in ODF 1.1 and the 1.2 drafts he's one of three and one of two respectively. So he's not the editor, he's an editor.

Patrick doesn't present technical arguments, he only presents political ones, and generally he seems to be of the opinion that it's better that Microsoft be involved in ISO than not (and this opinion overrides any issues of quality, or whether anyone else can implement OOXML). This is the idea that this way we get to have more of an impact on Microsoft.

In my opinion OOXML is an insincere involvement in the ISO process (as shown by minimum change during the fast-track, and poor documentation of OOXML) and I think it's naive to expect more in the future. So to me the political angle on this fails.

The technical angle on it fails completely.

on his blog for more details.

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/contra-durusau-part-1.html

This guy Durusau seems to have changed his mind to a pro-MS shill in recent times.

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/contra-durusau-part-1.html

No. "OASIS submitted the ODF specification to ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) on November 16, 2005, under Publicly Available Specification (PAS) rules."

Rob Weir, another delegate for US, agrees that in some cases the ECMA responses were not improvements. From his blog:

The third and last member from the US delegation is a Microsoft employee, he certainly wouldn't agree with Frank and Rob, but at least 2/3 of the delegation expressed that.

Not to mention that other countries mentioned that too. I know that Canada, Malaysia and Brazil delegates were particularly unhappy with the outcome of the BRM, as they blogged about it. I don't have the particular references for those, but if you read their blogs you'll see they agree.

Also, my original comment that cited Frank Farance's statement was in response to:

Which, as I just demonstrated, is not the opinion of all attendees.

You're still off...

1. The 900 change block vote (the 80% that were not discussed) passed based on approve/disapprove votes, but only by counting votes from non P attendees.
2. There is disagreement about whether non P attendees were entitled to vote on this ballot, under ISO rules.
3. The consensus is settling toward the non P vote being against ISO rules.

P-members ("P" as in participant) are the ones with the right to vote. O-members ("O" as in observer) have the right to attend meetings, receive documents, make suggestions, but they don't have the right to vote (in general). The votes in the BRM were counted for both P and O members, when according to the directives, only P members should be counted. Here the situation is well explained, the rules seem clear to me, but ISO stands on the grounds that the decision to allow O members to vote was right.

Personally, I don't see much problem with O members voting, many of those that were at the BRM were working really hard, Brazil is a good example, you can see from the blog of one of the delegates. Disallowing O member votes would also only disapprove around 100 of the 900 approved resolutions (some preliminary accounts were suggesting that all of them would be disapproved). And also, although OOXML is a terrible specification, I don't think the technical issues are the most relevant here, I believe the standard should be disapproved even if the text was perfect, on the basis that there is already another standard for the exact same purpose.

Even if I don't think O members voting was a problem, breaking the rules was a problem. If ISO breaks the process, then how can they promote such things as ISO 9001, which is all about the processes themselves?

No. Abstentions are normal, specially on issues that only some countries have the knowledge of the issue. For instance, I read that for bidirectional writing, only Israel has the expertise, and most other countries cannot really have an opinion on it, because most of them don't really know anything about it.

The real problem is that the issue should not be decided by vote, but by consensus. Many delegates tried to raise that issue, and I even read that India's delegate expressed his indignation to travel to Geneva using government and public resources to fill a paper ballot, which he could very well have done without the need of travelling. Here's another account on the sad decision to vote the resolutions.

You're still off...

1. The 900 change block vote (the 80% that were not discussed) passed based on approve/disapprove votes, but only by counting votes from non P attendees.
2. There is disagreement about whether non P attendees were entitled to vote on this ballot, under ISO rules.
3. The consensus is settling toward the non P vote being against ISO rules.

P-members ("P" as in participant) are the ones with the right to vote. O-members ("O" as in observer) have the right to attend meetings, receive documents, make suggestions, but they don't have the right to vote (in general). The votes in the BRM were counted for both P and O members, when according to the directives, only P members should be counted. Here the situation is well explained, the rules seem clear to me, but ISO stands on the grounds that the decision to allow O members to vote was right.

Personally, I don't see much problem with O members voting, many of those that were at the BRM were working really hard, Brazil is a good example, you can see from the blog of one of the delegates. Disallowing O member votes would also only disapprove around 100 of the 900 approved resolutions (some preliminary accounts were suggesting that all of them would be disapproved). And also, although OOXML is a terrible specification, I don't think the technical issues are the most relevant here, I believe the standard should be disapproved even if the text was perfect, on the basis that there is already another standard for the exact same purpose.

Even if I don't think O members voting was a problem, breaking the rules was a problem. If ISO breaks the process, then how can they promote such things as ISO 9001, which is all about the processes themselves?

No. Abstentions are normal, specially on issues that only some countries have the knowledge of the issue. For instance, I read that for bidirectional writing, only Israel has the expertise, and most other countries cannot really have an opinion on it, because most of them don't really know anything about it.

The real problem is that the issue should not be decided by vote, but by consensus. Many delegates tried to raise that issue, and I even read that India's delegate expressed his indignation to travel to Geneva using government and public resources to fill a paper ballot, which he could very well have done without the need of travelling. Here's another account on the sad decision to vote the resolutions.

You flaws 1 and 2 also applied to the ODF ISO standardization.

Not true. ODF standardization by ISO didn't use the fast-tracking process, it was done by the PAS (Publicly Available Specification), which allows the appropriate time for scrutiny of a standard, differently of a fast-tracking process, which is supposed to ratify a de facto standard, which OOXML isn't at all. If you want more details, read Fast Track versus PAS.

Also, from Wikipedia, you can see that the work on ODF started in December 2002 in OASIS, it was approved by OASIS as a standard in May 2005, was submitted as a PAS to ISO in November 2005 and "after a six-month review period, on May 3, 2006 OpenDocument unanimously passed its six-month DIS ballot in JTC1, with broad participation, after which the OpenDocument specification was approved for release as an ISO and IEC International Standard under the name ISO/IEC 26300:2006". If that's not enough scrutiny, I don't know what is.

(And it needed fixing...see the massive changes in ODF 1.2 and compare to 1.0)

Not true. The changes in newer versions of ODF are evolution of the standard. New features are being introduced. Version 1.1 introduced accessibility features. Version 1.2 introduces metadata capabilities, which allows the use of ODF in the semantic web.

So why is Microsoft being required to operate under different rules?

Actually, Microsoft is playing by their own rules, but not in the sense you imply. The rules for fast-tracking seem to have been written specially for OOXML.

People seem to want theirs to be flawless before allowing it to be an ISO standard--a requirement no one else has been subject to.

You're making a lot of false statements on ODF, I wish you could back them out. You base your whole line of thought on the assumption that OOXML is following the same process than ODF, which is completely false, as all the links I included here will show. Agreed, the links are from ODF backers, but it's clear that Microsoft wouldn't start making these comparisons, it only shows how they're abusing a process to have their way.

However, even if Microsoft would submit it as a PAS, after reviewing and finishing it in ECMA, and even if they didn't use dirty tricks to try to approve their standard, it should never be considered for standardization anyway! The thing about standards is that, unless everybody uses the same standard for the same purpose, they're irrelevant. They only solve problems if they're adopted. There already is a standard for office documents, it's ODF.

Instead of promoting their own, on the basis that it provides legacy compatibility (fallacy, otherwise there would be tables on how to convert binary documents), and that standards should compete (fallacy, products should compete, they should all use the same standard so that you can move from one product to the other and take all your documents with you, you would choose products based on features and would not be locked into any vendor), Microsoft should instead just adopt ODF.

The argument that ODF is insufficient for MS Office is a fallacy as well, because ODF supports extensions, and for versions 1.1 and 1.2 (or 1.3, there's still time!) Microsoft could indicate exactly what they think is needed in ODF to support conversion from legacy formats. Microsoft is part of OASIS, they were actually invited to cooperate on ODF when the process started, but they refused. ODF proponents would certainly be interest

You flaws 1 and 2 also applied to the ODF ISO standardization.

Not true. ODF standardization by ISO didn't use the fast-tracking process, it was done by the PAS (Publicly Available Specification), which allows the appropriate time for scrutiny of a standard, differently of a fast-tracking process, which is supposed to ratify a de facto standard, which OOXML isn't at all. If you want more details, read Fast Track versus PAS.

Also, from Wikipedia, you can see that the work on ODF started in December 2002 in OASIS, it was approved by OASIS as a standard in May 2005, was submitted as a PAS to ISO in November 2005 and "after a six-month review period, on May 3, 2006 OpenDocument unanimously passed its six-month DIS ballot in JTC1, with broad participation, after which the OpenDocument specification was approved for release as an ISO and IEC International Standard under the name ISO/IEC 26300:2006". If that's not enough scrutiny, I don't know what is.

(And it needed fixing...see the massive changes in ODF 1.2 and compare to 1.0)

Not true. The changes in newer versions of ODF are evolution of the standard. New features are being introduced. Version 1.1 introduced accessibility features. Version 1.2 introduces metadata capabilities, which allows the use of ODF in the semantic web.

So why is Microsoft being required to operate under different rules?

Actually, Microsoft is playing by their own rules, but not in the sense you imply. The rules for fast-tracking seem to have been written specially for OOXML.

People seem to want theirs to be flawless before allowing it to be an ISO standard--a requirement no one else has been subject to.

You're making a lot of false statements on ODF, I wish you could back them out. You base your whole line of thought on the assumption that OOXML is following the same process than ODF, which is completely false, as all the links I included here will show. Agreed, the links are from ODF backers, but it's clear that Microsoft wouldn't start making these comparisons, it only shows how they're abusing a process to have their way.

However, even if Microsoft would submit it as a PAS, after reviewing and finishing it in ECMA, and even if they didn't use dirty tricks to try to approve their standard, it should never be considered for standardization anyway! The thing about standards is that, unless everybody uses the same standard for the same purpose, they're irrelevant. They only solve problems if they're adopted. There already is a standard for office documents, it's ODF.

Instead of promoting their own, on the basis that it provides legacy compatibility (fallacy, otherwise there would be tables on how to convert binary documents), and that standards should compete (fallacy, products should compete, they should all use the same standard so that you can move from one product to the other and take all your documents with you, you would choose products based on features and would not be locked into any vendor), Microsoft should instead just adopt ODF.

The argument that ODF is insufficient for MS Office is a fallacy as well, because ODF supports extensions, and for versions 1.1 and 1.2 (or 1.3, there's still time!) Microsoft could indicate exactly what they think is needed in ODF to support conversion from legacy formats. Microsoft is part of OASIS, they were actually invited to cooperate on ODF when the process started, but they refused. ODF proponents would certainly be interest

I also like Rob Weir's blog at http://www.robweir.com/blog/

Yeah, but it's Microsoft's way to interoperate, as usual... If they were really interested in interoperability, they would have implemented ODF as a first-class citizen in Office already.

The current top article, for example, is about the ISO BRM on OOXML.

I am really amazed that Slashdot hasn't picked up this story yet. I mean, I just can't believe it! This is the story of the week. This is a huge thing, as those who have been following it are well aware. The process at the BRM was so flawed as to bring into serious question the integrity of the ISO/IEC JTC-1. I won't add to the tens of thousands of lines of text that have been written about it here, in fear of being ruled off-topic. I only want to question why this hasn't been aired on Slashdot.

Beginning on Friday, I was scanning the news anxiously to see how the BRM went, and shortly the first reports began to emerge. By Monday, the first report from an actual BRM participant came out. By Tuesday, the available information was growing exponentially. I was following all this on Groklaw, and kept flipping back and forth from Groklaw to Slashdot to see if they had picked it up yet. When a second blog by Andy Updegrove became a resource of links to every report by BRM participants, I could wait no longer. I wanted to see how this story was viewed by my fellow Slashdotters, naturally. I was so concerned that this still hadn't reached Slashdot that I reluctantly submitted the story myself. Then I started backtracking on the Firehose and discovered that there had already been 6 submissions at that point, and that was on Monday. I'll bet there have been dozens by now, besides thousands of people people clicking on those "Submit to Slashdot buttons all over the place". I just can't imagine why the editors haven't put this important story in front of Slashdot readers yet.

Please forgive me for interrupting the current story. I just had to get this off my chest.

And here's their latest trick: sending all the JTC1 NB's a poorly-researched, demonstrably inaccurate study.

For legacy reasons, an implementation using the 1900 date base system shall treat 1900 as though it was a leap year. [Note: That is, serial value 59 corresponds to February 28, and serial value 61 corresponds to March 1, the next day, allowing the (nonexistent) date February 29 to have the serial value 60. end note] A consequence of this is that for dates between January 1 and February 28, WEEKDAY shall return a value for the day immediately prior to the correct day, so that the (nonexistent) date February 29 has a day-of-the-week that immediately follows that of February 28, and immediately precedes that of March 1.

Unbelievable! So... I have egg on my face, but Microsoft has far more on theirs. So I did a little digging, and it seems that Microsoft are spinning this like crazy. Brian Jones, a program manager in Office, actually has the temerity to blame Lotus 1-2-3 for the problem. Quite frankly, I'm amazed. If you don't believe me, read it yourself. Firstly he quotes this Microsoft KB article.

His justification is that it would break all the existing spreadsheets...

If we decided to fix this bug and shift each date value down by one, how many spreadsheet formulas out there would we break? Here's a really simple example, where the following function that had worked in previous versions would no longer work:

=IF(TODAY()=39013, "Due Today!", "Not Due Today!")

Amazingly, he then states that "We not only wanted to create an open format that folks could build solutions on top of, but we wanted the format to be something that our customers would actually use... otherwise what's the point? We didn't want this to just be another optional format that only some people would use, it's the new default format and we hope that all of our customers will use it."

When he was openly questioned about it, he said the following:

Sinleeh,

I wish it were as simple as you and Ben suggest, but it's not. We can't just tell our customers that they are idiots.

Especially when that are doing something that has been supported since the first version of Excel shipped. I'm sorry but that's just not an option.

Again, this format is designed to fully support the existing base of binary documents out there. It's not a format that's designed to be the format to end all other formats. It's fully documented so that anyone can use it, there is nothing that depends on a particular operating system or office application. Remember though that it's an open standard that was designed to be fully compatible with the existing set of extremely valuable documents. If you build the ultimate general file format and no body uses it, what's the point? Our customers would never use the formats if they broke existing formulas.

There is no way we can predict what people are doing in their files and with their formulas. If you take the date 12/10/2004 in both Excel and in OpenOffice and you format that date as a number, you get "38331". So are you suggesting we should change this so that in the new file formats 12/10/2004 is now equal to 38330 instead?

The only inconsistency comes into play for 2 months (from 1/1/1900 to 3/1/1900). It sounds like you and Ben are suggesting that that inconsistency (which is super easy to workaround) is bad enough to actually cause real pain to customers either by breaking their existing formulas, or even worse, by mak

I saw this blog from one of the current chairs of the ODF committee in OASIS: http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/12/bait-and-switch.html

So, ODF was adopted as an ISO standard about a year ago, and since then there has already been a new version of ODF (1.1) released by OASIS, and they are supposedly close on version 1.2. I believe 1.2 is supposed to be significant as they've promised it will include a formula definition for spreadsheets (although the working group hasn't seen much activity lately if you look at the mailing list archives: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/office-formula/). So, the maintenance of ODF right now is being handled solely by OASIS, and I'm not sure what their plans are for bringing new drafts to the ISO.

Now, one of the Chairs of the ODF committee (IBM and Sun are now co-chairs of the ODF committee) has a blog post saying that Microsoft is somehow pulling a "bait and switch" because Ecma has proposed to ISO that a joint maintenance agreement be set up once DIS 29500 is approved. We're still months away from approval, but TC45 has already reached out and tried to start a discussion around maintenance.

So it's been a year since Rob's committee had its ISO approval and has since then maintained sole control; and TC45's DIS 29500 still has a few months before approval and they are already trying to establish a maintenance agreement. And this is now called a "bait and switch"?

That's my Weird Moment of the Day.

For what it's worth to you, it's been known for some time that the Open Document Foundation doesn't represent any actual source of authority vis-a-vis ODF - nobody's really sure what the organization was for to begin with. More info in this (oft-linked) blog entry.

I'm going OT here but seriously, Weir is just the cat's meow. Every single time Microsoft has challenged his hyperbolic rants and outright lies he's essentially ignored them or just penned some more. He thinks the OpenDocument Foundation is an irrelevant fly-by-night fanboy club (which I guess is possible), but he has no problem quoting obscure African groups and his groupie bloggers to prop up his "Microsoft is evil and Office sucks and remember, IBM had nothing to do with this post" arguments. If the man spent 1/10th as much time writing some code or documentation as he does bitching about the Office toolbar buttons, ODF would have conquered the world by now.

With people like that at the helm it's not difficult to see why a document format controlled by a single company and an elite group of testy technorati has gotten to where it is now. Not that I think OOXML is a particularly good idea, but at least there's someone out there with the balls to point out that the emperor is buck naked. I guess they better get ready for the DoS attacks, hate mail and death threats.

I'm going OT here but seriously, Weir is just the cat's meow. Every single time Microsoft has challenged his hyperbolic rants and outright lies he's essentially ignored them or just penned some more. He thinks the OpenDocument Foundation is an irrelevant fly-by-night fanboy club (which I guess is possible), but he has no problem quoting obscure African groups and his groupie bloggers to prop up his "Microsoft is evil and Office sucks and remember, IBM had nothing to do with this post" arguments. If the man spent 1/10th as much time writing some code or documentation as he does bitching about the Office toolbar buttons, ODF would have conquered the world by now.

With people like that at the helm it's not difficult to see why a document format controlled by a single company and an elite group of testy technorati has gotten to where it is now. Not that I think OOXML is a particularly good idea, but at least there's someone out there with the balls to point out that the emperor is buck naked. I guess they better get ready for the DoS attacks, hate mail and death threats.

The Opendocument Foundation isn't officially related to the OpenDocument standard. They're just a bunch of guys who took the same name so that they could ride on the coattails of the ODF movement, and doing MS's bidding, derail the process... and look, they're trying hard.

Before taking this article too seriously, you might want to read this posting too:
Cracks in the Foundation

"The OpenDocument Foundation", in spite of its name, is nothing. They are not the "official" foundation backing ODF. They are just two guys, with a good name and without a garage, which used to develop a OOXML ODF converter. Read this for more information: Cracks in the Foundation.

The mythology of Silicon Valley is filled with stories of two guys and a garage founding great enterprises. And here we have two guys, and through blogs, interviews, and constant attendance at conferences, they have become some of the most-heard voices on ODF. Maybe it is partly due to the power of the name? The "OpenDocument Foundation" sounds so official. Although it has no official role in the ODF standard, this name opens doors. The ODF Alliance , the ODF Fellowship, the OASIS ODF TC, ODF Adoption TC (and many other groups without "ODF" in their name) have done far more to promote and improve ODF, yet the OpenDocument Foundation, Inc. seems to score the panel invites. Not bad for two guys without a garage.

There's no "platform lock-in" to the iPhone. If there was an iPhone SDK, there would be, but as it is if you don't have an iPhone you can get another phone that can still use all the same third-party content you could if you had one, and if you do you aren't locked into it. This is a different kind of lockin-in, and it's got nothing to do with developers.

Oh, I can only agree, but Steve isn't going to do that, so my recommendation is to stick to the Mac, ignore the 'appliance' products, and have an exit strategy so you can jump ship if Apple decides they're going to get serious about making the Mac an appliance again. That way we'll never have to put up with 1984 being just like 1984.

Steve Jobs (1996): The PC wars are over. Microsoft won a long time ago. If I were the head of Apple, I would milk the Mac for all it's worth and then move on the next big thing.

• OpenMoko looks nice, but is severely crippled and doesn't yet work well as a phone, let alone incorporate things like a finger operated touchscreen and wifi support.
  
• Palm OS is a joke which is no longer funny
  
• Windows Mobile Edition or whatever it's called now is also crap, *and* is made by Microsoft.
  

Hello Miguel, have you ever read this weblog: http://www.robweir.com/blog

This weblog makes it very clear to me how OOXML is not such a great 'standard' and how Microsoft is trying hard to lock the world into their Office format.

I'm so curious, you're apparently a VP and one hell of a programmer, so I guess you're a smart and intelligent guy. How can you ignore all the bad news and keep up this facade in the face of critics. Are you lying? Naive? Afraid to admit you were wrong?

Or is there something we are missing? If there is, please tell us, because it would save everyone a lot of energy.

Thanks!

I don't think anyone can argue that ODF is perfect. But we don't need to accept an alternative standard just because we accepted ODF in the first place.

In fact, there's a strong case for the opposite (instead of dilluting so much effort, why not concentrate it and get one cool standard? Guess what, ODF already is a really good standard; Microsoft tried really hard with no luck to convince anyone that's not the case).

Fact remains, the whole process surrounding OOXML is a whole play by Microsoft. All the energy that was required in order to stop it from being fraudulently passed as a standard (just tell me it would have been good to approve this standard in this state under these circumstances) would have been much more productive if invested in advancing ODF.

And I can only blame all this wasted energy on Microsoft's deceitful behaviour.

But, to the point, Jody, you said that ODF sucks regarding formulas. You did know that formulas are intentionally not specified, and left for another standard, right??

I remember a blog post[1] by a Rob Weir who worked on OpenFormula, the coming standard regarding formulas, and compared its drafts against the overly underspecified formulas OOXML (I guess you didn't run into those problems because Gnumeric already knew how to read Excel files, so it already knew about the odd-meaning and under-documented features).

What is hypocrisy is pushing through any means a rushed standard which can only serve to preserve an unlawful monopoly and undermine genuine industry initiatives, and claim it is for the benefit of the industry and its users...
Setting the bar high in what should be called a "standard" is definitely NOT hyposcrisy.

[1] http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/formula-for-failure.html

nacho

You are too kind. You both(?) forget that the "Fast Track is not a standards development process" http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/09/how-to-hack-iso.html.

Besides, there are much worse problems than the "xxxLikeWord95", see e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OOXML#Technical_criticisms.

Furthermore I am quite certain Microsoft Office 2007 will never support OOXML as specified.

Plaintiff's Exhibit 3020
Comes v. Microsoft

From: Bill Gates
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 1999 8:41 AM
To: Jeff Weslorinen; Ben Falbi
Cc: Carl Stork (Exchange); Nathan Myhrvold; Eric Rudder
Subject: ACPI extensions

One thing I find myself wondering about is whether we shouldn't try to make the "ACPI" extensions somehow Windows specific.

It seems unfortunate if we do this work and get our partners to do the work and the result is that Linux works great without having to do the work.

Maybe there is no way to avoid this problem but it does bother me.

Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open.

Or maybe we could patent something related to this.

MS-PCA 1389717
HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL

Gates Deposition Exhibit 32
2/28/02

I have been following the OOXML saga fairly closely; from Rob Weir's blog, to the NO-OOXML site (admitedly that is a rather partisan site, but I've found the technical arguments presented there generally to be both verifiable and compelling), and the Standards Blog, by Andy Updegrove who seems to know his stuff (which is bizarre since he is also a lawyer, but I guess he came from a parallel universe). I've also looked at sections of the spec myself, and I agree with the major technical criticisms; aside from being redundant in that there is already an ISO standard that could -- with well defined extensions -- cover everything Microsoft wants to include (ie, the backwards compatibility stuff), the OOXML document is a poorly worded draft of a 'standard' that is incomplete, inconsistent, and not ready for standardization.

By usual ISO standards (if it hadn't been submitted on the fast-track), it would be at the stage of a 'committee draft', with at least a couple of years of serious effort into working it into something useable. This is the process that ODF, along with most other ISO standards, went though, and if OOXML makes it through without a similar amount of scrutiny, ISO will have egg on their faces.

For Miguel to say it is a 'superb standard' means he either hasn't read it or followed the technical discussions (in which case he deserves the panning he will get for making such a clueless statement), or he really has sold out, in which case he deserves exile.

It looks almost like it's not a human-produced document but rather a dump of MS internal .doc memory structures translated to english.

And then to think that Microsoft put it on a "fast-track" through ECMA (=rubber stamped) and then ISO is amazing. I can think of only one reason why they are in such a hurry, and that must be that customers are hesitantly considering the merits of standardizing on ODF (the next-largest standard, at the top left of the graph).

That standard is so large, it would cost Microsoft weeks to implement with the developer capacity that they have. I wonder when they'll announce that Microsoft Office 2008 supports it 100% :-)

irrelevant in a way because ODF looks to be fast becoming a de-facto standard regardless. out numbering OOXML something in the order of 250 to 1.

see:
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/05/so-where-are-a ll-ooxml-documents.html
http://www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/archive/2007 0813-1201

of course, the MS tactic is to get OOXML recognized and then default to it across the windows suite.

but as I remember they have tried this was a number of formats before - but once a file format is recognized as a de-facto standard (MP3, HTML, JPG) they are notoriously hard to shift.

irrelevant as it may be its still a damn depressing indication of the way business is done and sensible, rational decisions are perverted to line company pockets. this sort of thing annoys me.

I do not think the "UseWord95Spacing" is as big a problem as it has been made to look. Much worse are other aspects, like problems with accessibility http://atrc.utoronto.ca/index.php?option=com_conte nt&sectionid=14&task=view&hidemainmenu=1&id=371 and problems with robustness http://www.arstdesign.com/articles/DefectiveByDesi gn.htm.

The blog to follow is Rob Weir's.

Some of those countries "participating" are observers.

This is the best explanation of the voting process I have seen.
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/02/merely-flesh-w ound.html

Andy Updegrove is great; I find Rob Weir is also an excellent source of info on MS standards shenanigans.

Wrong! Only required parts of specification are covered by NLA & CNS, any implementation of OOXML would need to implement optional parts of specification to do anything usefull. Read this blog entry from Rob Weir.

Maybe you should read about the actual OOXML specification before saying that kinda thing.

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/formula-for-fa ilure.html
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2007/07/mathematic ally-.html
http://www.noooxml.org/
http://ooxmlhoaxes.blogspot.com/
http://blog.janik.cz/archives/2007/07/18/T18_02_54 /

Read these. Then decide if you really, really believe that making this specification a standard will do anything good for the environment. The spec is simply too big and poorly-defined for anyone else to come close to implementing. If it was worth the paper it was printed on (and if you see the last link, that can be quite a lot) Microsoft wouldn't be trying to fast-track it--specifications should speak for themselves in terms of quality. Anything reasonable would have no trouble getting written into an ISO-accepted standard, no matter what company it came from.

Pop quiz: Why the hell is fast tracking with this kind of system possible? Emergency economic situations?

"If MS wants to keep that going having a completely open spec format kinda limits their "keep buying Word, or you wont be compatible" argument. There has to be another reason but it eludes me."

Perhaps you haven't heard, but OOXML is not anywhere near an open standard. Google: autoSpaceLikeWord95 (...how exactly do you autoSpaceLikeWord95? Decompile Word 95 on Windows 95? Where do you get these programs?), VML (is that even implementable outside of Windows and Internet Explorer? oops!), WMF (ditto), and "referenced" patents. MS is even employing Linux companies to write "translators" that can never fully implement OOXML because of these intentional problems. Just read the Halloween documents where MS says they need to innovate above standards (embrace + extend) or some Comes v MS documents. Google "Microsoft on standards". http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/01/microsoft-on-s tandards.html

I'll have to say, so many people are falling for the Open Office, er, I mean Office Open XML "standard" that MS's PR firm must have been paid very well.

From the OOXML patent promise:

"Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification (Covered Implementation), subject to the following. This is a personal promise directly from Microsoft to you, and you acknowledge as a condition of benefiting from it that no Microsoft rights are received from suppliers, distributors, or otherwise in connection with this promise. If you file, maintain or voluntarily participate in a patent infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of such Covered Specification, then this personal promise does not apply with respect to any Covered Implementation of the same Covered Specification made or used by you. To clarify, Microsoft Necessary Claims are those claims of Microsoft-owned or Microsoft-controlled patents that are necessary to implement only the required portions of the Covered Specification that are described in detail and not merely referenced in such Specification. Covered Specifications are listed below.

This promise is not an assurance either (i) that any of Microsofts issued patent claims covers a Covered Implementation or are enforceable or (ii) that a Covered Implementation would not infringe patents or other intellectual property rights of any third party. No other rights except those expressly stated in this promise shall be deemed granted, waived or received by implication, exhaustion, estoppel, or otherwise."

Oh, you mean VML is only referenced and therefore not covered by the patent promise, at the same time MS is throwing their patents around Linux? Too bad it's inherently part of the OOXML spec....

It's especially interesting how Microsoft is trying to hack the standards process. If you read this linked comment you'll see the list of new members, their relationships to Microsoft, and a long and interesting essay by Marbux about why this shouldn't be happening.

But it is.

The good news is that it appears money can fix this - short money for most (the cost of a couple copies of Microsoft Office). If you have any discretionary budgetary authority and would be adversely affected by OOXML being an ANSI standard, please go here, read about the membership process (it appears to cost $800 to be on the technical committees) and fill out the membership form. If you're an academic institution you can get on the technical committees and have an advisory role for $2000.

Yes, the process is broken, but it appears this can be stopped pretty quickly. They're hacking, all we can do is hack back.

It would be great if a hundred universities and a couple hundred Slashdotters' businesses were able to get on the committee by the end of the week. It would reverse the trend, by quite a margin. By all means, try to get the process fixed in parallel, but any such efforts there will likely come in too late.

Who is the author, Rob Weir?

I work for IBM, as a performance architect, as well as on various ODF technical topics. (source)

So a guy working on a different document format, for a company who competes with Microsoft, has unkind words? Color me shocked.

OOXML defines spreadsheet formulas, and ODF doesn't. The Microsoft boosters have been parroting the party line for quite some time.

Uh... ODF doesn't define spreadsheet formats. There's no standard for spreadsheets in ODF. How is that "parroting the party line?"

There is a compatibility pack for Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003. Maybe they should research that!

Oh, you mean that thing that sucks life that Rob describes in his "Interoperability by Design" article? What makes you think that will fix the equation editor problem with M$'s new formats?

It's always been this way with M$. You change versions, you lose work. Office 2007 is just a bigger problem not a different problem. It's good to see it being rejected.

interoperability by design

Miguel for EOXML:
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Jan-30.html/

Rob Weir against:
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/01/more-matter-wi th-less-art.html/

The comments on Rob's blog are better then /.

Slahdot is now peopled with Morons. Yes even smart people become drooling morons when you mention MS.
Go find your roots!

First people were mad that MS had abandoned 'industry' standards by not shipping an MP3 ripper in WMP in Windows.

Then when they do put MP3 ripping in, this is what happens?

I don't blame them for using their own toys like OpenXML or anything else, every time they have tried to work with non-MS technology they get bit for it.

So is anyone else ready to tell all things associated with MP3 and variants to shove it up their ass?

There are so many statements like "functions as per Word 95" without explaining what that means.

Exactly. More about this here - how to hire Guillaume Portes.

What's the point if the add-in doesn't allow ODF to be set as the default file type, or even used via the Save As menu?

Hopefully the Word "interop" API actually allows for this sort of thing to be properly integrated.

it's clear to me that all your counter arguments are based on your own personal experiences.

I'm pretty sure there are less than 1% of companies use Gnucash.(i'm talking about business fiance but you clearly missed that).

how much marketshare do MS have when they started gaming console? how much marketshare do MS have now within only two generations? what's gp2x's marketshare? did MS magically gain all the marketshare by marketing?

Gamers are even more harder to please than software users but hey, MS are full of marketing droid, right?

MS doesn't really make stuffs that's worth paying for, right?

how come Zune didn't knock-out ipod since MS's marketing and business tatics work wonder.

No mater what i say, you will just dimiss it even when MS does have good software/hardware.

Dear troll,
you are sadly mistaken.

you don't even have spreadsheet formulas spec'ed
  how did you come to this conclusion?
  Please read:
  http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/About_OpenFormul a
  http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2006/11/the_formul a_iss.html

OOXML is just as open as ODF,
  RTFA

does more than ODF,
  Maybe. But, this is not necessarily a good thing. Actually, reading the article, is probably a bad thing. What are you referring to?

is faster to load than ODF, and has smaller file size than ODF.
  is it? There are many who come to opposite conclusions. And they do have numbers to back it up:
  http://www.robweir.com/blog/2006/10/why-is-ooxml-s low.html

You lost, both on technical merits and in the marketplace.
  Don't think so. As we can see above, OOXML pretty much looks like crap to me.

You can view all the atrocities of OpenXML that he's blogged about here. Highlights include dumping bitmasks into XML as hexadecimal on a byte-by-byte basis, and an XML element for specifying whether the dates in the workbook start in 1904.

I'm can't believe this became a ratified standard.

"Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for the number is that of a standard; and its number is three hundred and seventy-six." Common-freaking-sense 13:16-18

- shadowmatter

There's nothing wrong with saving in a file format that matches your internal representation, in fact, it's a darn good idea (see .ABW for AbiWord, .DOC for Word, .WPD for WordPerfect I would also wager is the same idea).

Documents are worth far more than software, and they outlive the applications used to create them. See the comment to the original article - reading documents after 5, 20, 30, 100 years or more is not optional. You can pay the price of developing an independent format now, or you can pay the price of reverse engineering over and over again every time you change your internal representation.

Repeated implementation limits future change and innovation. It's expensive: it likely costs more even for Microsoft. But they can afford it; their competitors may not be able to. Plus, Microsoft already has their first implementation.

interoperability seems to work best when taken from the ground up - when working with another application's data structure of any complexity, you simply can't do a lossless roundtrip without losing before you've started.

Perhaps so. But compare that cost to the cost I've just outlined. It is in the best interest of users and software developers (maybe even of Microsoft) to bite the bullet now, do the conversion once, and develop a clean format for the future.

Maybe you have in mind an argument you're not making, but I don't see any sufficient basis for your broad contention that using a file format based on an internal representation is a "darn good idea". In specific cases, yes (e.g. where the cost of development time or effort are the most important factors). In general, I very much doubt it. That successful applications in the past have taken that approach is weak evidence. They were developed when the up-front cost of development in a time of rapid innovation, the loss of customer lock-in, and a lack of open-format competition where good business reasons for making such a choice - even if it was inferior technically, increased cost in the long term, and was bad for consumers. In today's climate of slower innovation, competition from open formats, and customers who are running into their own long-term interests, the situation is different.

Which is not to say Microsoft's apparent attempt to set the rules of the game and throw sand in the gears of change is not in their interests, or that it will be unsuccessful.