Microsoft Wins Industry Standard Status for Office

everphilski writes "The International Herald-Tribune reports that Microsoft has won industry standard status for Office. EMCA International, a group of hardware and software makers based in Geneva, approved the MS file formats with only one dissenting vote - IBM. IBM backs the OpenDocument standard, which was approved by the ISO in May of this year." From the article: "Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president for open source and standards, called Microsoft's Office formats technically unwieldy - requiring software developers to absorb 6,000 pages of specifications, compared with 700 pages for OpenDocument. 'The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft,' Sutor said."

Comments

Sounds about right

[Anonymous Coward]

As long as by "industry standard" you mean buggy, bloated, insecure, unreliable, overpriced, nonintuitive, clunky piece of dog shit. Am I right, or am I right?

Re:Sounds about right

[ClosedSource]

I wasn't aware that file formats could have all those flaws. Perhaps you didn't even read the summary.

Re:Sounds about right

[AuMatar]

Sure it can

buggy- well, it can't be buggy but it can be so complex that its hard to implement without bugs

bloated- a file format can easily store data in unefficient formats

insecure- hold important data without encryption

unreliable- hold the data in a lossy way

overpriced- Standards don't have to be free, they can charge a license fee (or even refuse to license on a RAND basis)

nonintuitive- Ever tried to decode all the variations of .bmp?

clunky piece of dog shit- A hard to implement format is easily described as clunky

Re:Sounds about right

[Anivair]

I suspect they mean, "What the dumbest people use."

Basically, indistry standard must nessisarily play to the least common denominator. If 50% of the people are using word formats and they couldn't find the save as button with both hands and a screenshot, then the industry is forced to use word even ifit sucks, because the alternative is shutting down that industry.

Re:Sounds about right

[AKAImBatman]

"The great thing about standards is that there are so many to chose from." --Attributed to Admiral Grace Hopper

Re:Sounds about right

[Christopher_Edwardz]

buggy...

bloated...

unreliable...

nonintuitive...

clunky piece of dog shit...

A perfect description of printing in vb.net.

And it isn't so much that miker$of buys and mods crapware, which they do, but on top of it they try their damnedest to make it just incompatible enough to cause headaches for anyone who wants to work with them. I have no reason to expect that they will do differently here. They have a very valid reason for doing so. Open Office is getting closer to being good. This is a quick way to muddy the waters before a real standard gets established and undoes them.

Think that my view is unfair? Try to creating (pretty much any standard) compliant websites that play well with internut explunger 7. Without hacks. Bring painkillers and/or inebriants of choice.

That being said, miker$of has a right to make a profit and is under no obligation to make their software compatible with anyone, or if you believe the validity of the EULA, make it work at all.

Re:Sounds about right

[ewhac]

nonintuitive- Ever tried to decode all the variations of .bmp?

Yes. I wrote a BMP parser at a previous job just so the Web browser could display those cutesy little icons in the address bar and bookmark list. BMP is an ill-specified piece of $#!+ and should be slain in the public square before jubilant onlookers.

Schwab

Re:Sounds about right

[lowe0]

If it was such a sandbag, why would MS choose to use it?

Re:Sounds about right

[genooma]

Because is *their* sandbag?

Re:Sounds about right

[mencial]

Of course a format can be buggy. If the specification says one thing in one place and an incompatible thing in another, it is buggy.

Re:Sounds about right

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly? Word is snappier than OpenOffice here.

Re:Sounds about right

[Doctor Memory]

I didn't just read the summary, I took a look at the standard..

<xs:complexType name="CT_MetadataRecord">
        <xs:annotation>
            <xs:documentation>Metadata Record</xs:documentation>
        </xs:annotation>
        <xs:attribute name="t" type="xs:unsignedInt" use="required">
            <xs:annotation>>
                <xs:documentation>Metadata Record Type Index</xs:documentation>>
            </xs:annotation>
        </xs:attribute>
        <xs:attribute name="v" type="xs:unsignedInt" use="required">>
            <xs:annotation>
                <xs:documentation>Metadata Record Value Index</xs:documentation>
            </xs:annotation>
        </xs:attribute>>
    </xs:complexType>


So, we wind up with tags like <CT_MetadataRecord t=4 v=0>. Guess it would have ballooned the spec out if they would have had attributes with actual names like "typeNdx" and "valueNdx"...

Re:Sounds about right

[lowe0]

I doubt it. Microsoft may be ruthless, but they're not stupid.

Re:Sounds about right

[marcello_dl]

Because a simple to implement format would make it trivial to write applications that work with Office data, and all the installations of office that need only simpler processing of said data would have no reason at all to buy the office suite. Other example, if Microsoft had released perfectly documented APIs, WINE would have been completed long ago (and outperforming WinXP, probably) Were you being sarcastic? if not, read up about past MS practices.

Re:Sounds about right

[lowe0]

Yes, but their own developers now have to work with the same format. If there's a lot there that developers have to learn and implement, why would MS' team be an exception? They have to do just as much work as anyone else to implement that spec.

Re:Sounds about right

[bob frost]

No, you don't get it. The core issue is about certifying "industry standard" and who is the certifying body. Hey, I'm Diebold, and through a side door I fund am "e-voting standards organization' and surprise!, my products are certified as "industry standard." Whether they actually work reliably is not the question. It's like having 4,000 of the 5,000 dentists on Proctor and Gamble's payroll recommending Crest toothpaste.

Re:Sounds about right

[marcello_dl]

Sure thing, they have to eat their own doggy food. But that's not a problem if you have a company with their cash flow. Raising the bar means reducing the number of competitors.

Re:Sounds about right

[aliquis]

That is what they use internally but then they replace all occurancys of those names with senseless ones to match the spec and therefor make it harder for anyone else to implement ;)

Re:Sounds about right

[Bryan K. Feir]

Except that, when you get right down to it, they've already implemented pretty much all of the spec before submitting it to the standards agency. The spec being big won't slow them down any.

Re:Sounds about right

[ClosedSource]

"I didn't just read the summary, I took a look at the standard.."

Great. Now where are the bugs, the security issues, the unreliability, the overpriced aspect etc?

Re:Sounds about right

[lowe0]

The effort to create it didn't just magically expand after they documented it, did it?

6,000 pages (in what format?)

[yagu]

Wow, 6,000 pages to describe an "open" format? Never underestimate the power of committees.

Sutor, IBM's dissenting voter says: "The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft." This in the context that the OpenDocument (competing) standard is only 700 pages. Seems like both must be quite verbose, but I'd opt for mastering 700 pages.

6,000 is a lot of pages to master, but it should be freely available for others to interpret, correct? On the other hand, since it is "essence of Microsoft", there's probably lots to misstep with and lots to nuance for interpretation letting Microsoft essentially maintain a proprietary flavor of a supposedly open standard.

Also of note from the article:

Van den Beld of ECMA International said the standard recognized reality. "The vast amount of data in the world is in Microsoft format," he said.

Van den Beld might be an idiot. Using his logic we should strike Microsoft Windows XXXXX as the standard for OSes, not.

Hopefully there is still some inertia for the OpenDocument (yes, I know it's an ISO Standard) standard to gain purchase and compete. It is largely the emergence and work done with OpenDocument that has pushed Microsoft into the uncomfortable arena of pretending to like open standards.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[camperdave]

Yeah, we're going to need to send that off to the Reader's Digest to get it condensed.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[enc0der]

1. I'd hate to see the word file with 6,000 pages in it, will that fit on a dual layer DVD?

2. I guess I kind of look at standards like the dictionary...just cause I don't know everything in there doesn't mean I can't speak at least at some meaningful level. I'd also take 6,000 well written, well thought out pages as opposed to 700 if they were missing content. Comparing page count to me is like comparing CPU Ghz....it's not the whole story. I've seen neither document, so I really don't know.

3. Now I understand why word.exe was so huge... :)

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[SquareOfS]

6,000 is a lot of pages to master, but it should be freely available for others to interpret, correct? On the other hand, since it is "essence of Microsoft", there's probably lots to misstep with and lots to nuance for interpretation letting Microsoft essentially maintain a proprietary flavor of a supposedly open standard.

The problem is, if we know anything about Microsoft, even if they're doing it with otherwise decent intentions, they're writing Office-the-software first and Office-the-standard second -- and therefore, there's a significant risk that the standard will always lag the implementation, and since their installed base is so big, the implementation will just win over the standard.

Exactly what was happening on the web for a while when IE's implementation of HTML/CSS could trump the standard to the degree that other vendors had to encode "quirks modes" into their own implementations to deal with people who wrote to the implementation rather than the standard. . .

And I would feel differently about this if it weren't for the fact that MS is bolting an XML format onto an existing product, which means that reverse-compatibility decisions are likely going to be determinative in the engineering.

So it's not the 6,000 pages -- it's the internal memos interpreting the 6,000 pages that we never get to see that are the problem.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[timeOday]

Wow, 6,000 pages to describe an "open" format? Never underestimate the power of committees.

Even more important than the length, is it really accurate and specific enough to write software that can access .doc? Remember, Word was not written to this spec, it's the other way around. So it may be more descriptive than definitive.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[tlhIngan]

Question is, which version of the office formats?

If you don't know, Office 2007 changed file formats after nearly a decade of staying the same...

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[VGPowerlord]

Actually, "quirks mode" refers to the way earlier versions of Netscape displayed pages. That's why IE also has a "quirks mode" activated when doctype sniffing fails.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[itlurksbeneath]

From TFA, "the newest version of its Office file formats". Actually the previous format (the OLE container format) has varied slightly from Office version to Office version.

The other interesting point is from TFA:

Van den Beld of ECMA International said the standard recognized reality. "The vast amount of data in the world is in Microsoft format," he said.

The vast amount of data in the world is in the OLD format. I doubt very seriously there is very much content in the world in the NEW format in comparison to the old.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[nschubach]

I think if you remove or even replace all the instances of the word Microsoft or "Copyright Microsoft" in the document, it might reduce to somewhere around 2-300 pages.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[SquareOfS]

Ah. Thanks for the clarification. Turns out to be the same problem, even though a different company is behind it (Netscape instead of MS). It's still means that you're emulating an implementation instead of implementing a standard.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[ArtDent]

Wow, 6,000 pages to describe an "open" format? Never underestimate the power of committees.

This "standard" was not created by committee. It was simply offered by Microsoft and rubber-stamped in an effort to "recognize the reality" that "the vast amount of data in the world is in Microsoft format."

Granted, this vast amount of data is in older binary Microsoft formats, not this one, which isn't yet supported by any released products. But why let facts stand in the way of a good rationalization?

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[kryten_nl]

No need, the patent application will condence it to 15 words or less.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[Bert64]

Part of the size difference is because opendocument tries to reuse existing standards wherever possible (mathml, images are stored as jpeg/png/whatever format etc) and microsoft's format tries to reinvent the wheel each time.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is, if we know anything about Microsoft, even if they're doing it with otherwise decent intentions

you, sir, obviously don't know anything about microsoft. "decent intentions?" sheesh!

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[Evenstone]

When I worked for Microsoft, there was a special term used for specifications that were written after the code: a retrospec :)

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[timeOday]

Well there you go, the spec is useless. Good enough to confuse people into thinking it's open (just like OpenDocument!), but not good enough to actually open most .doc files. And to be fair, it would be a monumental task to write a spec for every version and bug of .doc, since there probably never was one in the first place.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast amount of data in the world is in the OLD format. I doubt very seriously there is very much content in the world in the NEW format in comparison to the old.

Depends what you consider data to be. There's a lot of DNA out there...

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[hilton_a]

Your comment relating the size of Microsoft's spec to the power of committees is laughable - and as usual with a slashdot post, totally unsubstantiated.

Have you considered perhaps that MS's Office format is larger simply because it may be more technically advanced, more descriptive and more feature complete than OpenDocument? Also that perhaps its size is due to the benefits of a collabarative design process rather than a comittee based process? Did you also consider that the document may have benefited from the fact that it has already been implemented by MS themselves?

All worthwhile assumptions, but I doubt the average slashdotter paused for a second due to built up anti-MS propaganda squeezing out all reaonable thought process.

There is considerable evidence however that committees for single industry wide open standards hold back technical progress. This is fine if the standard is simple and fexible enough not to warrant much change (such as comms protocols for example), but for anything else can be deadly (CSS for example).

To my knowledge it has never been proved that MS withheld information about an API for anti-competitive purposes. Stop propagating these myths. Every software company is guilty of questionable documentation, however in my experience MS often has excellent documentation - if you open your eyes and go looking for it.

When will slashdotters realise that one industry standard for something as variable as a word processing format holds back innovation? This is the age of XML - we should embrace multiple formats, implementations and the conversion between each, rather than stifling progress.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[macshit]

What's amusing is that a previous ECMA rubber-stamping of a microsoft product as a "standard" was the C# language, which (at that point) almost nobody used!!

It's pretty clear that ECMA exists mainly as a tool for rich corporations, when they want to add a veneer of respectability to something (and/or subvert government purchasing regulations).

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[kripkenstein]

Wow, 6,000 pages to describe an "open" format?
Sutor, IBM's dissenting voter says: "The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft."

This should make it clear that a spec is not necessarily enough for a 'standard'.

I suggest that standards committees (ISO, ECMA, etc.) require not just human-readable documentation for a new standard, but also BSD-licensed code that implements that standard, i.e., a 'reference implementation'. Otherwise, there is simply too much room for interpretation, and standardization is lost.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[Hal_Porter]

Condensed version of the Open XML spec:

Click on the icon, and it loads. Oh, you don't have office installed? Or Windows either? Well you better get started on re-implementing both just in time for the next version starts being marketed. If you're anywhere near successful, the next version will be really different. Might as well just pop down to the store and pay your few hundred bucks for the real versions.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of the 6000 pages is that it is complete, with examples, implementatin notes, ambiguities spelled out, etc. The ODF spec seems nice and light up until you go to implement it and discover everything that it's missing. 700 pages doesn't make ODF light -- it makes it incomplete. Besides, those 700 pages include references to lots of other things, like MathML for math, SVG for graphics, and Excel for spreadsheet formulas. ODF is really a patchwork of standards, all of which work differently.

Of course, you can ask why MS has to reinvent the wheel when they could just use what's aready out there, right? So let's say you're about to implement MathML in Word and find that MathML doesn't support a feature that Word has, like change tracking. Do you extend MathML and to support your feature and risk being called nasty names for making your implementation incompatible with anyone else's? Do you not implement the feature, thus not providing full fidelity with existing documents? Or do you design a language that is coherent with the rest of your product and supports all of the features you need?

Now what about SVG? It's great for making things like interactive maps, but it is incapable of describing text other than on a straight line. A word processor should be able to fit text inside a shape or wrap it around a shape, but SVG provides no way to specify either of those. I don't know how OOo implements those features, but if it does have them, it can't possibly be doing so with standard SVG.

dom

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[SanityInAnarchy]

Seems like both must be quite verbose, but I'd opt for mastering 700 pages.

So would I, but I don't even have to go that far.

Fact is: Ever crack open a WordML document? I thought it'd be easy for a work project to do some specialized convert-Word-to-XML -- just a quick XSLT, or maybe I'd actually have to write a quick Perl script...

Took one look at it and gave the fuck up. Ok, I Googled it, found nothing, took another long, long look, still couldn't even figure out where to start.

Remember: Saying you use an XML file format is like me saying I use an ASCII-based programming language. Now, I still hate Java, but I'd rather program in Java than Brainfuck -- and you'll notice, both are "ASCII-based" and "open standards".

So, end of my story, I not only found OpenDocument easy to read, I found a Ruby OpenDocument-to-XHTML conversion tool already written and LGPL'd, and I've been able to adapt it to our needs fairly easily. It's not a one-liner or even one page, but everything in there makes perfect sense, and where it doesn't, the OpenDocument XML does. It was worth the extra processing time to simply run the original .doc through AbiWord to generate ODT, then through a Ruby script (slowest language I know) to generate the HTML, and finally run it through a quick Perl script to upload it -- and all of that took less time than it would take me to figure out whatever the fuck Word was doing.

OfficeXML is NOT an open format. It is essentially an XML serialization of Office data structures. It makes it only slightly easier to decypher than it would be to decypher the .doc format -- and if they were really opening up, why not give us the actual .doc as well? We need that just as badly -- right now, the theoretical "best" way to switch to another format is to buy the latest version of Office, use it to convert all your files to Microsoft's XML, then use OpenOffice (or whatever) to convert MS's XML to OpenDocument. Since MS obviously isn't going to hand out upgrades for free, we need specs so OpenOffice can do what we already pretty much do -- read Word files directly and save them as ODT.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[drjzzz]

To my knowledge it has never been proved that MS withheld information about an API for anti-competitive purposes.

There's no ignorance that a little research won't cure. Here's a start: summary of anti-trust suits and objection to the settlement.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[SanityInAnarchy]

So let's say you're about to implement MathML in Word and find that MathML doesn't support a feature that Word has, like change tracking. Do you extend MathML and to support your feature and risk being called nasty names for making your implementation incompatible with anyone else's?

Well, it could be that you could do change tracking in such a way that it doesn't break said MathML, or provide simple XSLT to extract the MathML from your MathML + change tracking.

And, if you have to, you implement your custom changes in a very straightforward way and submit them to the MathML group to be included as a standard.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[mAIsE]

There is a big difference in open intentions and an Open standard. What is stopping them from running a new standard through ever time there is a new version of office ?

So just when people have mastered this standard the next one is trotted out ..

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[elgaard]

Also the majority of documents are not in the MS OXML format.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[hilton_a]

I cannot find any evidence in either of those linked documents that MS withheld information about one of their API's for anti-competitive purposes. They seem to be largely opinion pieces. But please, show me where I am wrong.

Re:6,000 pages (in what format?)

[drjzzz]

They seem to be largely opinion pieces.

Law is opinion. When your opinion is shared by the judge, then you win you case. MS was found guilty of a whole slew of anti-comptetitive practices.

EMCA

[AuMatar]

Does EMCA standardize anything other than MS apps? Before MS started using them, I'd never heard of them. My guess is its a mouthpiece for large companies who want a body to declare them a standard. At this point I'm ignoring anything from them- if you want to call it a stadard I want to see ANSI, ISO, IEEE, or IETF on it.

Re:EMCA

[jfclavette]

On the top of my head: EMCAScript, Eiffel. See for yourself.

Re:EMCA

[Bogtha]

Does EMCA standardize anything other than MS apps?

ECMA have ratified a few standards relating to JavaScript - for instance, ECMA 262 defines the language that JavaScript, JScript, ActionScript and QtScript are implementations of, and the E4X extension that allows XML literals is also an ECMA standard.

Re:EMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

They standaridized JavaScript; hence js's official name ECMAScript. However, although Netscape created javascript, ECMA based their standard on the "clean room" document Microsoft created in the process of reimplementing javascript, errors and all. The upshot was that after standardization, netscape was instantly in violation the standard of the language they themselves had created.

Re:EMCA

[julesh]

Assuming EMCA is a typo for ECMA, we're talking about the European Computer Manufacturers Association, basically the European version of ACM. Not exactly nobody, although you're right that they don't have quite the status of ANSI, ISO or IEEE. Probably about as important as IETF, though.

The main thing to note is that until recently they were mainly concerned with physical interoperability matters - defining data formats for interchange media and telecoms protocols, stuff that you don't normally hear about unless you're directly involved.

Re:EMCA

[Citizen of Earth]

Does EMCA standardize anything other than MS apps?

The Wikipedia page on ECMA doesn't show it to be much more than an MS rubber stamp. What are MSOOXML's chances at the actual standards organizations?

Re:EMCA

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

Ummm... that'd be ECMA you're thinking of. This would be EMCA. Two different groups.

Re:EMCA

[octaene]

Take that, J.D. Power & Associates!

Re:EMCA

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

::bangs head on desk after checking his links:: Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Re:EMCA

[NickFitz]

Actually, Netscape submitted the JavaScript spec for standardisation as ECMAScript in November 1996.

Re:EMCA

[NickFitz]

From the Wikipedia page:

For over forty years Ecma has actively contributed to world-wide standardization in information technology and telecommunications.

which, if it "isn't much more than a Microsoft rubber stamp" means they must have been twiddling their thumbs for quite a few years waiting for Microsoft to be founded.

Have a look at their list of standards; as far as I know, Microsoft make no claim to be the originators of Corporate Telecommunication Networks - Signalling Interworking between QSIG and H.323 - Generic Functional Protocol for the Support of Supplementary Services, Eiffel: Analysis, Design and Programming Language or File Structure and Labelling of Magnetic Tapes for Information Interchange.

Re:EMCA

[bersl2]

s/MS/industry/

Re:EMCA

[Woldry]

Why punish the desk?

Re:EMCA

[AndyElf]

Yeah, but hardly anyone really calls it "ECMA Script" -- maybe there's a reason for it? It's called JavaScript by just about everyone....

Re:EMCA

[Anonymous Coward]

A standard stays put forever, just like one gallon or one pound, or 100 cents to the dollar. I doubt this is a standard, and I sure as hell don't expect to pay royalties for scales that define "Microsoft one pound".
Like electronic voting machines, the modern day lemmings don't know that they are wrong.

Bias

[suv4x4]

IBM's vice president for open source and standards, called Microsoft's Office formats technically unwieldy - requiring software developers to absorb 6,000 pages of specifications, compared with 700 pages for OpenDocument.

This piece of information is of little use without comparing the supported *features* in both format and their implementation.

Re:Bias

[Timesprout]

I had to laugh when I hear IBM describe a competitors offering as 'unwieldy', as opposed to anything IBM which requires legions of IBM 'consultants' to achieve basic functionality. That aside though I belive the majority of the 6000 pages he is referring to is actually a 4000 page primer on the markup MS use, complete with verbose desciption, examples and pretty pictures etc.

Re:Bias

[DragonWriter]

That aside though I belive the majority of the 6000 pages he is referring to is actually a 4000 page primer on the markup MS use, complete with verbose desciption, examples and pretty pictures etc.

Even assuming that's true and the meat is only the remaining 2000 pages of the specification, its still over 3 times as big as the 600 pages cited for OpenDoc.

What value does it offer (aside from currently being implemented by Microsoft) that OpenDoc doesn't for the additional complexity?

Re:Bias

[Kjella]

Yeah, first thing that struck me is - are we comparing apples to apples.. for example, I know the OO format allows MathML, is that included in those 700 pages or is it really "700 pages + whatever we reference"?

Re:Bias

[Anonymous Coward]

This piece of information is of little use without comparing the supported *features* in both format and their implementation.

What do features in an implementation have to do with it? We're talking about standardizing a file format.

Re:Bias

[Hoi Polloi]

Pages 700-6000 are marked "This Page Intentionally Left Blank"

Re:Bias

[moochfish]

I think it's a stretch to believe Microsoft's specifications have over 11 times the "features" of their OpenDocument counter parts... no? I mean 6000 is a *lot*. Printed out, that'll stack up a foot or two... or three.

Re:Bias

[maxume]

Assuming Microsoft doesn't have a *lot* more pretty pictures in theirs, I bet I can read the OpenDocument spec in roughly 1/10 the time of the Microsoft spec. That has plenty of impact on implementation when you are talking about several days for the one and several weeks for the other...

Re:Bias

[mandelbr0t]

Well, the IBM consultants are at least implementing Open Standards. They push Linux servers, WebSphere for J2EE environments, and (OK there's one proprietary thing here) DB2. I'd rather pay the consultants for providing me with an accountable amount of service (how often were you in the office, what meetings did you attend, where's our new server, etc.) rather than some unknown amount of proprietary closed-source code that took some guy 2 days to write, but we have no idea what it is since source isn't provided. IBM is my favourite vendor these days, what with the pushing of the Linux and the SCO-whomping in the courtroom. A vendor this large that's pro-GPL might actually have some concept of why Open Source (and Open Standards) work.

mandelbr0t

Re:Bias

[ArtDent]

Naturally, a restatement of MathML is not included in the Open Document specification.

But here's the point: by reusing MathML, instead of reinventing the wheel, Open Document also allows existing implementations of that standard to be reused.

The size of Microsoft's spec is a real problem. A Word developer estimates more than 4 years for a team of 5 (within Microsoft) to implement just the Word portion in Word for Mac. Apparently, that's too much work, so they're just going to "port" the Windows version.

Is a standard with only one, proprietary implementation much use to anyone?

Re:Bias

[Bert64]

Even DB2 isn't so proprietary...
It's an implementation of SQL, and although SQL could be a lot more standardized than it is, in the vast majority of cases where a database is required it's not too much work to substitute DB2, Oracle, MSSQL, MySQL or Postgres etc...

Re:Bias

[Keeper]

For starters, it defines syntax for spreadsheet formulas ... (and once you realize that something that basic is missing from the ODF specification, you should start to understand the large disparity between the sizes of the specifications).

Re:Bias

[DragonWriter]

For starters, it defines syntax for spreadsheet formulas ...

And see that is a valid and useful-to-know difference.

(and once you realize that something that basic is missing from the ODF specification, you should start to understand the large disparity between the sizes of the specifications).

Certainly, things like that could explain the difference (not that I'm so sure that should be considered unqualifiedly in OpenXML's favor; while "standardize everything initially" has a certain appeal, a standard that specifies too much before there are multiple implementations and use cases considered and tried risks becoming stifling rather than enabling.)

Re:Bias

[Randle_Revar]

http://wiki.oasis-open.org/office/About_OpenFormul a

Re:Bias

[Keeper]

Bear in mind that I'm just trying to point out reasoning for the disparity in specification sizes, not that I'm advocating one standard over the other.

Standards, by definitions, are stifling. That's the whole point. You are restricting the featureset a complying application has available.

Not defining needed items in a standard isn't "enabling", it is stifling. Standards enable interopability; either you stay within the bounds and only do what the standard allows, or you go out of bounds and lose interopability.

Re:Bias

[Keeper]

Was that intended to counter my point, or agree with it? Because if you're intending to counter it, posting a link to a draft spec external to ODF kind of has the opposite effect...

Re:Bias

[DragonWriter]

Standards, by definitions, are stifling. That's the whole point. You are restricting the featureset a complying application has available.

Er, no. Good standards often don't restrict featuresets, they specify required features, which isn't the same thing. A standard for an interchange format that hopes to be useful into the future will not hamstring new feature developments and use. One complaint I've seen levelled at OpenXML (which, as I haven't read the standard, I won't pretend to evaluate) is that it simply standardizes the Microsoft Excel featureset. The OpenDocument Formula drafts (which aren't yet standardized, being very actively revised) have a lot of (in the explanatory notes) consideration of harmonization between the featuresets of existing spreadsheet applications (and even consideration, in some areas, of directions that it seems likely that some applications may take in the future) in putting together what the format should handle.

Re:Bias

[Randle_Revar]

My intent was to spread information.

It is true there was no formal spec, but formulas in ODF generally worked between different apps anyway, and there is a spec now. OpenFormula is now a sub-commitee and the standard should be incorparated into ODF 1.2 (coming soon) or ODF 1.3. Of course, you can still argue whether or not they should have created the spec before producing ODF 1.0.

http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/tc_home.php?w g_abbrev=office-formula

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenFormula

Re:Bias

[Keeper]

If you can't represent your "new" feature within the syntax/scope of the "required" features, you can't use the standard to encode that feature. End of story. Nobody else can consume your feature. You just lost the benefit of the standard for that feature.

If I want to write an ODF spreadsheet with formulas in fields, and I want to do so in a manner the rest of the world is guaranteed to understand, I can't. I can certainly try to use a scheme someone else has come up with, or I can do my own thing and make other applications figure out what it is I did, but there is no guarantee that any other application will be able to read my formula; in fact, you can pretty much be guaranteed that some other compliant application out there will NOT read the formula correctly.

If you want to add "new" functionality, you release a new version of the standard. You shouldn't leave functionality ambiguous and figure it out later.

Re:Bias

[Keeper]

Information without context can be confusing sometimes. ;)

I haven't had much of a chance to look very deeply into it so far, though it concerns me that they consider certain classes of functions "optional". The ability for "application specific" functions also taints the specification, reducing portability of documents. (someone could be completely complaint with the specification and produce a formula that nobody else could correctly display) *sigh*

Re:Bias

[DragonWriter]

Look, I'm not disagreeing with you. What I am saying is that, in the context where the utility of both standards is still largely in the future (OpenXML has, if I'm not mistaken, has released implementations until Office 2007 is out OpenDocument has several implementations, but has key areas that are not yet included in the standard) I'm not sure that having the formula functionality crystallized earlier is necessarily a stroke in OpenXML's favor, particularly if the criticism of OpenXML as narrowly tailored to the existing MS Office featureset is accurate.

On the other hand, I thought I was clear in acknowledging that having that feature was important, and noting that difference was significant.

OpenDocument vs. XML

[revlayle]

Which one can store more features about a document? which one is more flexible? Would that warrant the difference in the size of specifications? (besides a bad specification, if that being the case).

It's that or.... um... IBM used like a 6 pt. font for it's entire document! ;)

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[pembo13]

They are both XML

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[Ngarrang]

Which one can store more features about a document? which one is more flexible? Would that warrant the difference in the size of specifications? (besides a bad specification, if that being the case).

It's that or.... um... IBM used like a 6 pt. font for it's entire document! ;) OpenDocument *IS* an XML format. IANAD (I am not a developer), but the difference might come down to the number of tags and their usage. Maybe the Microsoft document is very verbose. Maybe the OpenDocument document is not.

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[Brandybuck]

So you're saying we should just give up and forget EVER trying to create and promote a different standard?

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[Falesh]

Well, I don't believe in god/devil based on lack of evidence. But if the devil appeared then religion would become scientific, i.e. I can test that the devil is sitting on my bed. Therefore I would not take the cure from the devil as I would not like the statistical probability of going to Hell.

If it were MS offering the cure then I would take it (while crossing my fingers that they had removed all the bugs in it first).

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[dedazo]

Not at all - the great thing about standards is that there's so many of them to choose from.

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[syphax]

As the Devil usually isn't in the altruism business, I would expect that we would be asking his usual fee, either explicitly or through deception.

So, my choice: So long, been nice to know ya.

You certainly made an interesting choice for an analogy.

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[forrestt]

while crossing my fingers that they had removed all the bugs in it first

Come on, that's just extra protein!!!

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[Total_Wimp]

For you anti-ms people i have a question, a hypnotical really. If you had cancer and were on your death bed and "Satan" creates a cure for cancer, do you take it? Your only option is die or take the cure. But the devil made it... what do you do?

The question isn't whether I'd take the medicine, it's whether I'd let Satan set the standards for the medicine, set the price for the medicine, and change both at will.

In the first scenerio, I get cured. In the second one, I may be cured, but those after me might get medicine that includes a mind control agent and those that cant afford the medicine's new prices would just die.

If a generic drug manufacturer was offering pretty good medicine for almost free, and any manufacture could use the formula at will, then I'm thinking that might be better than dealing with the devil.

BTW, I'm not anti-MS. I just don't think a category of product that is abosolutely neccessary should have a "standard" that effectively damands people buy proprietary, expensive goods. It's a bad idea.

TW

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[Directrix1]

This is more akin to Satan making a topical cream that makes skin cancer "look" slightly better in certain cases, but dries your skin out worse than with the other cream. Seriously, do you really think there is a lot new in the word processing world? Honestly? Some kind of killer features that require that many more pages of documentation? And besides that fact, a practical open source reference implementation is by far a better standard than any standards body could ever produce. I wish open source project leaders would wake up and realize: work together and your PROGRAMs are the standards. And the only reason I absolutely abhor the idea of anyone calling Microsoft's documentation a "standard" is because any support of proprietary originated "standards" result in the lag of adoption by others. So its not really a "standard" any more, is it, when other projects are continuously playing catch up with the last Microsoft bullshit deviation of "the standard". By contrast, open source originated standards could even be directly incorporated into other programs so there is no lag for anybody, with feedback and contributions from everybody, and the end result is an actual high compliance standard.

Fuck ECMA. And for that matter fuck IEEE, W3, IETF, etc. Open source *could* play this game far better. Modularize better, incorporate other's modules more, establish best of breed standards in your implementation and make sure its documented. Just imagine where Firefox would be right now if it actually pushed and promoted XUL to a first class, vector themeable, web enabled interface language. The Canvas extension is a nice step, but even it was brought out by ECMA first. Its time the open source community woke up. The other side is never going to actually "play by standards". So make the god damn standard, and shove it up the other side's ass when their users start requesting the features they only see in X open source product. *end rant*

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[ILikeRed]

For you anti-ms people i have a question, a hypnotical really. If you had cancer and were on your death bed and "Satan" creates a cure for cancer, do you take it? Your only option is die or take the cure. But the devil made it... what do you do?

This should not be an emotional argument. Microsoft's format is unwieldy, and there is almost zero chance that anyone else will ever be able to implement it 100% - which calls into question anyone who labels it a "standard". And you are implying the people who don't agree with you religious fanatics?!?

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[revlayle]

arrgh, i meant ".. vs. OpenXML"

another post down the drain :-p

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[Anonymous Coward]

MS's format is technically superior, and produces smaller file sizes because of the compression algorithms.

I have to call troll on this:

1. Open XML is an verbose, human-unreadable tagsoup that looks more like a memory dump then a real file format--it's technicaly superior (faster to be precise) if, and only if, your Office suite is MS Office.
2. Both use zip for compression

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[NullProg]

It is also going to be more widely used because despite the best efforts the OSS community Open Office just can't compete with Office 2007 in the work place.

With Open Office downloads at 76,972,853, I'd say Office 2007 is the looser here. People and businesses are tired of the forced obsolescence and the re-occurring $300 usage fee.

http://stats.openoffice.org/index.html

Enjoy,

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[SnowZero]

MS's format is technically superior, and produces smaller file sizes because of the compression algorithms.

Do you have any evidence to back this up? In my experience I have found OpenDoc text files to regularly be shorter than MS Word documents. In addition, MS Word documents continue to get bigger as you edit them, even if the document itself isn't getting longer. A lot of garbage is left in (which is also a privacy problem). That doesn't sound technically superior to me.

Also, what is the magic compression algorithm that MS uses which is so superior? OpenDoc is in XML, which is an inefficient format, but the whole document is compressed with gzip/zlib, which offers fairly decent compression for a non-proprietary algorithm. That also means that I can use gzip and a text editor to view OpenDoc content, if there was ever a need to recover information due to breakage. That's a real advantage. I don't think anyone who's used MS Word for 10 years can claim they haven't lost at least one document to corruption.

The big downside (for slashdotters) is that Open XML is a MS product and not "owned" by the Open Source community. People on this site hate it, not because it's bad or worse than ODF, but because it's MS's creation.

No, the big downside is that you might get in a lawsuit for using an MS "Standard". They can decide to charge money for it if they want (RAND), lock out open source with non-sublicensable licenses, and offer no guarantees that they will even follow the standard in the next version of office. If you follow that with your free implementation, you open yourself up to a lawsuit. Contrast that to OpenDoc, which is a free standard which is compatible with both proprietary and open source programs. Why limit yourself when you don't have to? If you were choosing between two cars, one which might cost a small amount of money and only works six days of the week, and another which is free and works all week, which would you choose?

For you anti-ms people i have a question, a hypnotical really. If you had cancer and were on your death bed and "Satan" creates a cure for cancer, do you take it?

Hypothetically, it sounds like you would sell your soul for a lollipop.

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[Bert64]

Microsoft own and control future versions of their format, and control the biggest (and currently only) implementation of it.
ODF on the other hand is controlled by a group of companies, a group that microsoft was given every chance to join. Any standard should be controlled in this way, either by a group of competing companies or an independent body, otherwise it can always be twisted to favour one vendor at the expense of another.

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[b.burl]

It depends what Mr. Satan wants in return...my children? my brain? make me work in a chinese walmart factory?

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[bubulubugoth]

lol, lmao, etc :)

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[Scarletdown]

In my experience I have found OpenDoc text files to regularly be shorter than MS Word documents.

I can corroborate this. As a quick little test, I opened up the latest chapter in progress of my latest story in progress (using OO.org 2.0). The document, using Times New Roman - 15 point, is thus far 11 pages. In it's native format (OpenDocument), the file occupies approximately 33KB of space on my hard drive. I then saved it in M$ Word (97/2000/XP) format, and the resulting filesize is about 185KB. That's about 5 1/2 times the size of the OpenDocument version. Oh, and just on a whim, I saved a copy in Rich Text Format just now. The RTF file is about twice the size of the odt file.

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[I'm Don Giovanni]

99.9999999% of the time, programs will be manipulating these documents, not humans.
Both formats are XML, so XML parsers will be able to handle them, and the parsers don't care about how "human readable" a document is. So you take a standard XML parser, and build on top of that the "domain" knowledge regarding these formats, and you're good to go. Human beings eyeballing the XML is not going to be the norm by any stretch of the imagination.

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[GnuDiff]

Well, to make it a cleaner experiment you should have actually copy/pasted the document into Word and saved it from there. ;P

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we all save us this debate and install OpenOffice on every computer we're called upon "to fix", incl. our own? Let's make a difference.
I think, ODF is a fantastic idea that came about 15 years late. But it's here now at last so let's put the capability to deal with it on every farking desktop regardless of OS. No more bullshit and excuses.

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[Scarletdown]

I don't have MS Word. I use OO.org on a Linux box (Debian - sid)

Re:OpenDocument vs. XML

[GnuDiff]

In that case, anybody may as well argue that OO simply is not able to save well in .doc format and lay the blame there.

Just to set things straight...

[Doctor Memory]

ECMA just confirmed the MS Open Office XML format as a standard, not Office in general. MS further states that OOXML will be an "open and royalty-free" specification.

What's also interesting is that MS will be offering a "bridge" (as a separate download) that enables Office software to read and write ODF (the OpenOffice Open Document Format) files.

Re:Just to set things straight...

[the_humeister]

Way to bring facts into the discussion. Your Slashdot license is hereby revoked.

Re:Just to set things straight...

[l2718]

MS further states that OOXML will be an "open and royalty-free" specification.

This sounds nice, but is a serious trap.

1. Microsoft "open and royalty-free" licenses are normally non-transferrable: users of software written by licensees have to get their own license to use the software. This sounds fine in principle, but in practice it makes writing free (or even open-source) software relying on such licensed technology impractical: people who download your software will have to individually logon to Microsoft's website, identify themselves, and exectue a license. As you are probably aware, the GPL is incompatible with such a setup. You see, non-MS people expect "Open" to be more than just "open for anyone to implement", it also means: "open for anyone to sublicense".
2. In particular, patents related to this technology must be made clear from the get-go.

MS adding ODF support to Office is great. It's what they should have done from the start (MS-Word has always supported import/export from other word processors, in large part to attract customers to switfch).

Re:Just to set things straight...

[Brandybuck]

There is a difference between specifications and software. Really there is. End users do not need specifications in order to run software. Thus, your dooom and gloom is unjustified. As long as the specs are patent-hindered, use them to your heart's content.

Reverse compiling Microsoft's software to figure out how they implemented the spec, on the other hand, is a whole other kettle of fish. So don't do it. Get the specs directly from ECMA and start implementing.

Re:Just to set things straight...

[Petrushka]

What's also interesting is that MS will be offering a "bridge" (as a separate download) that enables Office software to read and write ODF (the OpenOffice Open Document Format) files.

Do you have a source for that? Because it is contradictory to what I thought was the case, and Microsoft themselves give no hint of this on their FAQ about MSXML vs. ODF (which they've updated today). Incidentally, you seem to have adopted that FAQ's habit of identifying ODF as "the OpenOffice format" -- as you're aware, but others often seem not to be, it's a file format, not something dependent on a specific software product.

On an unrelated note, from TFA:

Van den Beld of ECMA International said the standard recognized reality. "The vast amount of data in the world is in Microsoft format," he said.

-- I'd be very surprised if it is indeed the case that the majority of the world's information is in MSXML format ...

Re:Just to set things straight...

[Bert64]

This "bridge" software as you put it, has many flaws in it's current incarnation...
The support for ODF is very poor, images are stripped, tables of contents are lost, hyperlinks are made into the most generic form of hyperlinks (formatting is lost) and many more such issues...

Also, when you install the plugin into word, you don't get an extra format listed in the save as dialog, you get seperate menu options entitles "open odf" and "save as odf"... If you try to save as odf, your prompted to first save the file in a proprietary microsoft format before you can "convert" it. I`m sure this is intentional, so people will find it inconvenient to first save and then convert.

Re:Just to set things straight...

[bhunachchicken]

"ECMA just confirmed the MS Open Office XML format as a standard, not Office in general. MS further states that OOXML will be an "open and royalty-free" specification."

You mean in this same way that C# is a "standard"..?

Re:Just to set things straight...

[Bert64]

But what's to say microsoft's implementation actually follows the published spec? Just because they published the spec, doesn't mean they will follow it. This is aiming at non technical people who want openly documented standards, but lack the technical knowledge to actually verify the claims.

Re:Just to set things straight...

[superiority]

Source. Listed under "Contributors": Microsoft (Funding, Architectural & Technical Guidance and Project co-ordination.

Re:Just to set things straight...

[Petrushka]

Cool, thanks.

Re:Just to set things straight...

[Doctor Memory]

What's also interesting is that MS will be offering a "bridge" (as a separate download) that enables Office software to read and write ODF (the OpenOffice Open Document Format) files.

Do you have a source for that?

I read it first here...

Authentication Error

[CheeseburgerBrown]

I'm sorry, but you're not running the right version of Office to read this comment. Click on me to learn more!

OpenDoc is NIBM

[ClosedSource]

(Not Invented By Microsoft) so naturally IBM would prefer it.

Someone must be confused...

[mechsoph]

Tom Brookes, a Microsoft spokesman in Brussels, said the software maker had created open-source versions of Office and...

Malice, or an incompetent journalist?

Re:Someone must be confused...

[ruben.gutierrez]

I agree. It seems MS creating an open source Office apps would be bigger news than some organization's acceptance of their open format.

Re:Someone must be confused...

[geekoid]

It would be funny as hell is th ext slashdot story was "MS opens Office!"

Re:Someone must be confused...

[ruben.gutierrez]

I think it would go something like this: MS Opens Office Suite In surprise news, Microsoft Corporation has announced a new, open source version of Office. MS spokesman, < insert name >, says users can now download the application and source code, free of charge.

Industry Std or approval by one stds body?

[mikelieman]

I don't think "Industry Standard" is any sort of official designation.

Re:Industry Std or approval by one stds body?

[the_B0fh]

Per a report in .uk, it's "industry standard sub-standard" please.

Will it backfire?

[Sgt_Jake]

If the format is designated as an "industry standard", won't that make it more susceptible to regulation by governments needing access?

why are there two standardization groups

[moochfish]

I am not an expert on these bodies so can someone please explain the difference between EMCA International and ISO and how the approval from each organization differs.

Re:why are there two standardization groups

[Kopl]

"The wonderful thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from"-Grace Hopper

Re:why are there two standardization groups

[belg4mit]

First off it's ECMA. Second, how hard would it be to look it up?

    European Computer Manufacturers Association
    International Standards Organization

Capisce? See wikipedia for digested details.

Sure ECMA rubberstamps stuff that gets adopted more broadly (or has already been)
e.g; LiveWire/LiveScript/JavaScript/ECMAScript, but they aren't the defacto int'l
group.

Really though, there's plenty more than two, don't forget IETF and W3C

Re:why are there two standardization groups

[Mattintosh]

And ANSI.

ANSI is the American version of ECMA, and I (as one who lives and works in America) won't consider this new format a standard until it's ANSI or ISO approved since the ECMA has no clout here.

IETF and W3C are web/internet standards groups and should not be concerning themselves with general technology standards that don't affect the web/internet.

Re:why are there two standardization groups

[belg4mit]

Yes, and ANSI. IETF/W3C were mentioned because of the JavaScript crossover.

Of course there's also IEEE, which largely concerns itself with hardware (e.g; Firewire)

In summary, it's all a big mess.

Re:why are there two standardization groups

[SEE]

ANSI is the American version of ECMA

Well, only very roughly.

ECMA is an association of computer and communications companies.

ANSI is a national standards organization, co-founded by both corporations and government agencies, with government and nonprofit involvement. It serves as the official representative of the U.S. to international standards bodies, and deals with a much broader range of issues than just computing and telecom.

Re:why are there two standardization groups

[ceoyoyo]

The ISO would get very cranky if they found out you said their name was an acronym. ;)

ISO is supposedly Latin, so as not to favour any particular actual language that is used by any of their members.

These are the useless trivia that you learn when a software engineering professor is on your candidacy examining committee.

Industry Standard?

[camperdave]

Now that it is a standard, does that mean that the specifications are openly available, and that other programs can use these standards to make compatible documents without royalty concerns? Does it mean that there are no hidden or proprietary options that only Microsoft can use?

One question...

[robyannetta]

'The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft,'

Then WHY was it approved as a "standard"?

Re:One question...

[jfclavette]

Because that's a biased point of view only held by one member of the voting council which has vested interests in the format that lost ?

Re:One question...

[zappepcs]

Then WHY was it approved as a "standard"?

You my friend are asking the exact right question, one that I'm sure is to be repeated many times in the near future...

Re:One question...

[belg4mit]

How does IBM have any more of a vested interest in OOo than anyone else?
Now if the lone vote were Sun (of StarOffice, predecessor/cousin of OOo) then yes.
IBM's special interest would be in the Lotus office suite.

Re:One question...

[loconet]

I believe his point is that given that Microsoft has over a decade of lead way into implementing that 6,000 pages spec and the only ones who will really know the quirks beyond the specs will be, are..., well, Microsoft, they are the only ones who will essentially be in a position of *really* implement the specs.

I for one

[Van Cutter Romney]

I for one welcome our industry backed overlords!



(pause)



Not! (like in Borat)

Re:I for one

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have to say "(Like in Borat)" it's NOT! funny.

Question...

[Anonymous Coward]

Which Industry?

Open source DB2

[Anonymous Coward]

Is IBM ever going to open source DB2? How about the database file's full specification? What about AIX, or the enterprise version of Websphere? I don't think they will.

Still, I thank them for fending off SCO.

Re:Open source DB2

[jedidiah]

Actually, there are infact ANSI standards for databases. This how you can have a single database schema and codebase support MS SqlServer, DB2 and Oracle.

AIX conforms to posix and uses utilities common to all Unixes.

Websphere can conform to the specs for J2EE.

Two more articles on the issue...

[GeorgGreve]

...that people might find interesting:

• Fellowship of FSFE: Is OpenXML now a standard?
• Groklaw: Novells "Danaergeschenk"

ECMA

[Ford Prefect]

EMCAScript

It's ECMA. It even says that in the page you've linked to. And the original article. This Slashdot typo's infectious - it seems to have spread to half the comments posted already...

Re:ECMA

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, it's really ECMA, but that's no where near as much groovy fun.

Young man, there's no need to feel down.
I said, young man, pick yourself off the ground.
I said, young man, 'cause you're in a new town
There's no need to be unhappy.

Young man, there's a place you can go.
I said, young man, when you're short on your dough.
You can stay there, and I'm sure you will find
Many ways to have a good time.

It's fun to stay at the E-m-c-a.
It's fun to stay at the E-m-c-a.

Re:ECMA

[Tim C]

It's ECMA. It even says that in the page you've linked to.

Not to mention the domain of the server that he linked to.

You'd think he'd have noticed with that many clues...

(Besides which, this is supposed to be a techy site - how come so many people are getting it wrong?)

Re:ECMA

[Dretep]

It's ECMA. It even says that in the page you've linked to. And the original article. This Slashdot typo's infectious - it seems to have spread to half the comments posted already... Tomatoe, Tomato, it's all the same...

Re:ECMA

[bersl2]

It also rhymes with "DMCA".

Re:ECMA

[ozbird]

I've heard they were trying for ACME, but something got messed up in the standardisation process.
(A pity, because these would have been a big hit amongst geeks.)

Re:ECMA

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they think E = MC^A for A = 2.

Who cares about pages?

[richardtallent]

IBM FUD. Comparing two standards by the number of pages is like measuring programmer productivity by lines of code. Many pages is just as likely to mean "complete and well-documented" as it is "unwieldy."

I'm all for open standards and I'm not a Microsoft fan-boy, but Microsoft's flagship product is Office. Excel kicks OpenOffice's ass around the block still in stability, speed, and features, so I'm comfy with Microsoft knowing what the hell it is doing with the standard.

I create XML Spreadsheets all the time without problems in the applications I manage, and I'm comfortable with what I've read of the newer XML standard in Excel 2007. I'm not happy about everything, particularly the separation of worksheets into separate XML files in the zip package, but overall I'm comfortable that we'll be able to support it well before 2-3 years from now when our clients finally upgrade.

Re:Who cares about pages?

[geekoid]

True, but none of those reasons makes a good arguement that it should be a standard.

You create a 'framework' thats a standard and people can build on that, and that at some level all products that meet that standard can share data.

MS has a history of changing thing unexpectedly, and that is bad for a standard.

Re:Who cares about pages?

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Comparing two standards by the number of pages is like measuring programmer productivity by lines of code. Many pages is just as likely to mean "complete and well-documented" as it is "unwieldy."

Fair enough. So here's a comparison of the ODF and MS-XML formats.

In this case, it means "unwieldy".

Re:Who cares about pages?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd have to agree - I use OpenOffice when I can, but MS Office is, sadly, often better. I can generally make do with OO Writer and OO Impress, but, as primitive as Excel is for making scientific applications, OO Calc is far worse. The other problem with OO is that it is a resource hog - it does about as much (or less) than my trusty copy of Office 97 (I've seen the newer versions through Office 2003, and there hasn't been anything worth upgrading for), yet takes forever to load, is sluggish, and eats tons of memory. The biggest problem (outside of OO Calc's incredibly ugly graphs) is that OO Impress can take 5-6 seconds to change slides (text & 1 bitmapped picture only) while showing a presentation, on a 1.5GHz laptop. You click to change a slide, nothing happens, so you click again, and find you're two slides ahead. How hard would it be to pre-cache all the slides in the presentation when you start, so you make immediate transitions?

I haven't read the ECMA standard, but at least they chose an organization that issues open standards. I think a lot of organizations issue standards you have to pay for; ECMA is free to view.

ECMA not EMCA

[duranaki]

That took a second. Typo is in the summary. I also asked who the heck is EMCA?
I think it must be one of those typos from constantly typing DMCA. :)

In other news....

[tnk1]

Microsoft's spokesman countered the IBM executive's statement by pointing out,

"Actually the Open standard we propose is six thousand pages, but that's only because we printed it in 256 point boldface fonts in order to be handicapped accessible for the visually impaired, you insensitive clod."

Microsoft further countered allegations of being too hard for developers by pointing out,

"If you take away the title information, the table of contents, the index and the pages that say This Page Intentionally Left Blank, all the standards document says is 'Buy a copy of Microsoft Office'. What could be simpler than that?"

Re:In other news....

[Hoi Polloi]

"...we printed it in 256 point boldface fonts..."

Actually the layout was done by an ex-editor for the New York Post.

"OPEN STANDARDS WREAK HAVOK ON CITY!"

Re:In other news....

[abradsn]

Oh, Shi...

Re:EMCA - Javascript, Actionscript, JScript

[smurfsurf]

You might have heard of some ECMAScript (ECMA-262) implementations. Like Javascript (not only used in browsers, but also for scripting in PDF and Photoshop), JScript and Actionscript.

EMCA != ECMA ?

[weston]

Conspiracy Theory: EMCA created/used for the purposes of the appearance of endorsement by ECMA without the burden.

More likely theory: editorial dyslexia.

Re:EMCA != ECMA ?

[KDR_11k]

EMCA is just ACME spelled backwards.

Re:EMCA != ECMA ?

[Zencyde]

But Whacko taught us that ACME backwards is really e=mc^2. Then again, his a really did look like a 2.

Will Microsoft stick to it?

[kherr]

It's all well and good that OOXML is a published standard, but how long until Microsoft decides they need some enhancement and just add it without going through a revision to the ECMA standard? It's one thing to get something to become a standard, quite another to adhere to it. Think of how Netscape decided they wanted new HTML features but didn't want to wait for W3C and just dreamt up stuff like the blink and marquee tags. Once Microsoft Office diverges from the OOXML standard we're right back to where we started—a proprietary document format.

Microsoft as a company may decide product features mean more to them than adhering to a standard, even one they created. I'll never forget Microsoft's FORTRAN compiler under MS-DOS described by Microsoft as "a superset of a subset of FORTRAN 77." In other words, whatever they hell they felt like implementing.

Re:Will Microsoft stick to it?

[belg4mit]

Umm blink was NS marquee was IE.

Re:Will Microsoft stick to it?

[SquareOfS]

{VB, VBA, C++} : a superset of a subset of Fortran

Hear me out: remember from math that the null set, {}, is a subset of any set -- so if you're just supersetting the subset that is the null set, you can do whatever you want.

And it's instructive that MS thinks so.

Seriously, parent post is spot on -- MS's allegiance (and profit motive) is for the implementation, not the standard. And if they need the format to do something funky to enable the next wave of you-can't-live-without-it super-collaboration mumbo-jumbo to justify major $$ outlay for Office v. 23, they'll do it and never look back.

Re:Will Microsoft stick to it?

[prshaw]

You need to quit confusing people with facts! Especially here on /.

Re:Will Microsoft stick to it?

[abradsn]

They might add a feature that isn't in the standard, but that doesn't mean that the standard is irrevocably broken. Many standards are growing entities that are added to as necessity dictates.

Since, the underlying data format is inherintly extensible, if the format is modern and well designed (as this one is) then it could last (even with modifications) a very long time. I would say 20 years or so, which isn't as long as txt files will last (forever), but still a pretty long time.

Also, on another topic, I would like to point out, that most implementors are not going to give more than a cursory glance at the standard before implementation begins. They'll work from example documents, and then they will look up whatever extensions to various tags that need to be implemented after they get a skeleton of a system in place.

Begin Rant
This is how most systems are developed. So, even this doc is 10k pages, I don't care if the format is understandable. I'm not going to read most of that doc anyway. If it is that long, it must be filled with a ton of unnecessary garbage. Then again, the smtp rfc is less than 20 pages, and *I think* half of it is filled with unnecessary text that can be taken for granted. (I'm just saying here that perhaps my view is skewed) Standards need to remove all ambiguity if possible. That typically means unnecessary clutter to an average developer.

Mostly common sense stuff like this: show an error if the data is too big or whatever

There is probably page after page talking about how every feature works with every other feature...thus adding a lot of duplicate garbage.
End Rant

Standards for Standards.

[camperdave]

I guess your standards for standards is higher than the standard industry standards standards used by standard Microsoft employees. In other words, "I've upped my standards, so up yours".

OSI is an "industry standard" protocol, too...

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

... that doesn't mean anyone will support it.

I sure don't care

[Jugalator]

requiring software developers to absorb 6,000 pages of specifications, compared with 700 pages for OpenDocument

OK then. Well, since neither of these documents seem to be intended to be read by mortals, I'm personally feeling more than a little "emotionally detached" from these news... :-p

This will make for some slick legal arguments...

[PHAEDRU5]

"Your honor, since Microsoft is recognized by ECMA - an independent European standards organization - as an industry standard, any attempt to will irreparably harm ."

Damn, they're good.

Meaning MS Office docs will have public specs?

[erroneus]

I'm all for it if the world will be able to implement code to read the docs and the specs are openly available for that purpose. It would mean that OpenOffice would be able to read and write office formatted documents correctly right?

I don't expect this to be true. What I expect to be true is the same that has been true for the Windows API. In Win32's API, you can know all the documented functions and features, but could never implement the stuff that's not documented... at least not publicly.

Now would this mean, though, that MS docs will likely be decidedly non-compliant with their own "standards?"

Re:Meaning MS Office docs will have public specs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good question. More likely, though, this would be just a checkbox item to jump the gov't requirement hurdle (think POSIX) that is inefficient and rarely ever used, and their "native" closed format will remain as it is today.

Re:Meaning MS Office docs will have public specs?

[zuiraM]

Of course you can implement the undocumented stuff.

ReactOS, for example, is reimplementing XP using a "clean-room" reverse engineering approach, and from the screenshots, they run games like Unreal Turnament already.

6000 pages

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Holy crap, 6000 pages? I thought OpenDocument was bloated (which it is), but that's just absurd.

And in other news

[dave562]

Microsoft's PR/media department launches a not so subtle stealth marketing campaign intended to drum up support for software that most people don't seem inclined to purchase.

iWork?

[Midnight Thunder]

Does anyone know whether Apple will include support for ODF (Open Document Format) in Pages? For more a bigger testament of industry standard is getting it used by enough people.

BTW It should be noted that Office essentially uses OLE for its binary document formats. For this reason anything you add to an Office document is essentially an embeded data type. Their XML format is another beast.

Re:iWork?

[a.d.trick]

For this reason anything you add to an Office document is essentially an embeded data type

So basically, OOXML is unless unless they open up OLE and all the interfaces behined everything that OLE uses too.

Re:iWork?

[a.d.trick]

unless unless

Sorry, typo: useless unless

Re:iWork?

[Anonymous Coward]

OLE's interfaces are already open you idiot.
Hell, OO.o supports OLE. Lots and lots of nonMicrosoft apps implement and use the OLE interfaces, you dolt.

Re:iWork?

[a.d.trick]

Yes, but not all the software that OLE interfaces with. I stick a video in an MS Word document, I probably won't be able to open it in Linux. This is a fundamental problem with the way that OLE works, and OLE's goals are incompatible with a standardized document format.

No

[overshoot]

Now that it is a standard, does that mean that the specifications are openly available, and that other programs can use these standards to make compatible documents without royalty concerns?

According to Marbux (a retired attorney; see GrokLaw) the MS "we won't sue you into oblivion" pledge contains enough lawyerese that it turns the apparent promise into "unless we damn well feel like it, and there's nothing you can do about it."

Re:Someone must be confused... obvious malice

[Anonymous Coward]

It's another piece of the MS attack on the term. It's no mistake.

Does anybody remember "Did the term "Open Source" mean anything, any longer?"

e.g. http://www.smallworks.com/archives/00000472.htm

The question is ...

[Intron]

Which version of Office does the ECMA standard match, and what version are they trying to sell to Massachusetts?

Bitch, bitch, bitch......

[LibertineR]

Less pages than Open Document = "Microsoft sucks, Office is too basic."

Equal number of pages with Open Document = "Microsoft sucks, they copied Open Document."

6000 pages = "Microsoft sucks, the format is too complex for anyone than Microsoft."

Apparently, no matter what they do, Microsoft cant suck enough.

Re:Bitch, bitch, bitch......

[Grishnakh]

They could have avoided sucking by just using Open Document instead of inventing their own pseudo-open format. Why reinvent the wheel?

Re:Bitch, bitch, bitch......

[Bryansix]

Apparently, no matter what they do, Microsoft cant suck enough.

I'm glad you have finally learned.

Re:Bitch, bitch, bitch......

[cnettel]

I'm still not convinced that Open Document is, in practice, that independent of the ideas behind the document storage structure in OpenOffice.org. Just the fact that it's just about impossible to represent a Word document exactly the same in ODF means that there are some orthogonalities. Not-Invented-Here gets quite relevant if it means that you are going to try to fit a square into a circle. (Of course, that's what everyone else has done with MS' formats so far. I think that relatively well-documented XML formats, even if they're quite different, will still be a step forward for interoperability, as you can apply XSLTs and other 3rd-party customized processing with much greater ease.)

Re:Bitch, bitch, bitch......

[abradsn]

Wait a minute, didn't MS Word come first... Wasn't there this thing called Rich Text Format... Couldn't all modern word processors just be reinventing a "wheel" ...namely the type writer. :)

Re:Bitch, bitch, bitch......

[Bert64]

Microsoft were invited to participate in the development of the ODF format, and yet they refused.
This was before ODF got any momentum, so microsoft had no motivation to pay lip service to open formats yet. Organisations didn't start waking up to the dangers of proprietary formats until after ODF version 1 was finalised... There's no reason why microsoft couldn't participate in the development of future versions, they just choose not to.
Obviously it would be much better to have a single standard with every vendor on board.

Re:Bitch, bitch, bitch......

[Anonymous Coward]

Oldie but goodie: The only way MS could fail to suck would be to make a vacuum cleaner.

Re:Bitch, bitch, bitch......

[Anonymous Coward]

don't you mean Open Document could have just used existing formats rather than reinventing the wheel.... POORLY.

ECMA & ISO

[Anonymous Coward]

ECMA seems to do good business approving MS tech specs as "standards." How much funding do they get from MS? What is the relationship between ECMA and ISO?

MS Office XML sucks badly

[idlake]

Go take a look at it and judge for yourself. The open document formats are fairly reasonable XML-based structures (as "reasonable" as XML can ever be). MS Office XML abuses XML and is horrendously complex.

From a practical point of view, OpenDocument already works for interchanging between multiple open source apps.

In addition, Microsoft's file format is patented and Microsoft uses that patent to spread FUD. While the patent probably wouldn't stand, it's an additional reason not to use MS's office formats.

Re:MS Office XML sucks badly

[Anonymous Coward]

From a practical point of view, OpenDocument already works for interchanging between multiple open source apps.

ASCII(UTF-8) text always has and always will. There is no need for anything more. XML is a load of crap.

MS file formats, OpenDocument formats, XML formats of various types are all useless to me.

Plain text files require virtually no documentation (can probably explain it all on one page) and are universally useful and readable. (granted line endings can sometimes ba a pain but that is trivial). .TXT .CSV ... Are the best file formats period. All the rest of them are make work projects, nothing more.

Re:MS Office XML sucks badly

[Anonymous Coward]

I assume you have so much time to read slashdot because no employer has been impressed by your cv.txt so far.

Re:MS Office XML sucks badly

[urbanradar]

From a practical point of view, OpenDocument already works for interchanging between multiple open source apps.

I'm an open source enthusiast, use Linux exclusively and love the idea of the OpenDocument format, so I'm definitely not a Microsoft astroturfer or Office fanboy. But I'll have to disagree there.

Frankly, when I create a document in OpenOffice Writer and then open it in AbiWord or KWord, more often than not it looks quite different - pictures are suddenly mispositioned, the bullet points in my list seem to randomly disappear, tables change, the page margins are all wrong, etc etc. The same goes for creating a document in AbiWord or KWord and then opening it with OpenOffice. The document is never really mangled, and definitely never to the point of being unreadable, but it's still slightly wrong almost every time. In my personal experience, anyway.

Yes, OpenDocument does work for interchanging between multiple open source apps. But it doesn't work all that well yet. Basically, it still creates a form of lock-in, even if it's probably unintentional. I can't just switch away from OpenOffice, lest I want to have to fix the formatting on all my documents.

(I'm still a supporter of the OpenDocument format and will continue using it happily - but still, this had to be said.)

Re:MS Office XML sucks badly

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I've applied for several jobs where the only acceptable format for submitting your resume/CV was plain text, because it is one of the most universal ways to transfer text. Name for me a modern computing platform that can't read ASCII.

Re:MS Office XML sucks badly

[idlake]

Frankly, when I create a document in OpenOffice Writer and then open it in AbiWord or KWord, more often than not it looks quite different

And MS Office format would be better in this regard... how?

OpenDocument is, for practical purposes, less than a year old. It will take a while for office suites to catch up and fix bugs.

Furthermore, even when all the bugs are fixed, your documents will always look slightly different in different apps and different versions of apps. That's true even for Word documents in different versions of MS Word, or the same version of MS Word installed on different machines. Office formats are not designed for bit-identical rendering. You can avoid that by using logical markup and styles properly. Most "it looks different" bugs are due to user error.

Basically, [OpenDocument] still creates a form of lock-in, even if it's probably unintentional. I can't just switch away from OpenOffice, lest I want to have to fix the formatting on all my documents.

Bullshit. OpenDocument doesn't "create" the lock-in, it alleviates lock-in. what creates the lock-in is incompatibilities and bugs in how the various office suites implement it.

In addition, the primary point of open document formats is not to let large numbers of people switch suites (although that is very useful, too), it's to enable post-processing, indexing, and groupware built on top of the format. That, rather than FOSS competition, is also why MS has made their formats public.

Re:MS Office XML sucks badly

[idlake]

ASCII doesn't work for figures, tables, most non-English languages, etc.

Multipart MIME encapsulating standard web formats (HTML, JPEG), however, does. It's a better for document interchange, because everybody understands it and because it runs on so many platforms, and may well represent the future.

But right now, people want MS Office-like formats, and OpenDocument is a better way of supporting them than MS Office XML.

Re:MS Office XML sucks badly

[urbanradar]

And MS Office format would be better in this regard... how?

I didn't say it's better. Stop putting words in my mouth. What I did say, though, was that I still prefer OpenDocument and will happily continue using it.

OpenDocument is, for practical purposes, less than a year old. It will take a while for office suites to catch up and fix bugs. Furthermore, even when all the bugs are fixed, your documents will always look slightly different in different apps and different versions of apps. That's true even for Word documents in different versions of MS Word, or the same version of MS Word installed on different machines. Office formats are not designed for bit-identical rendering. You can avoid that by using logical markup and styles properly. Most "it looks different" bugs are due to user error.

This as nothing to do with "bit-identical" rendering. If I make a list in a document, it should bloody well *stay* a list. The margins I put on a document shouldn't just be ignored. Something that is aligned to the right shouldn't suddenly decide to move to the left all by itself. This isn't about thing being not quite perfect, it's about things being ALL WRONG. You can throwing around things like "you should be using logical markup" and "user error" all you want, but IF I ALIGN MY TEXT TO THE RIGHT, IT SHOULD STAY THERE. Look at this from a business perspective. If you have no idea how your OpenDocument files look on your customer's machine/s, chances are you won't send them along in that format. If your secretary has to do a rain dance before using the OpenDocument format to keep the layout from randomly changing in between applications, chances are you won't tell your secretary to save things in that format.
And besides, there's no technical reason why OpenDocument files couldn't be 100% exchangeable between applications one day. There is no basic law in computing that says "all files must look slightly different on different machines".

Bullshit. OpenDocument doesn't "create" the lock-in, it alleviates lock-in. what creates the lock-in is incompatibilities and bugs in how the various office suites implement it.

So first you go on to call what I said "bullshit" and then you repeat it. "what creates the lock-in is incompatibilities and bugs in how the various office suites implement it." Yes, Sherlock, I probably called it an "unintentional lock-in" for a reason, didn't I?
It's still lock-in. It's not as bad as the MS form of lock-in, but lock-in nonetheless. If switching to another product breaks all my documents, chances are I won't be switching, right?

In addition, the primary point of open document formats is not to let large numbers of people switch suites (although that is very useful, too), it's to enable post-processing, indexing, and groupware built on top of the format. That, rather than FOSS competition, is also why MS has made their formats public.

I don't care whether it's the primary point or not - it should still be possible. And that *is* the point most people are interested in, because it allows them to potentially save money they would otherwise be spending on MS-Office licenses.

Once again, I *like* OpenDocument - but nonetheless, it's a simple fact that there are still problems with the format that urgently need to be addressed. If we want OpenDocument to become the industry standard one day, these problems need to be pointed out and fixed NOW. "It's not a bug", "It's all your fault anyway", "You should be using logical markup", "A patch will be out next year", "Fix it yourself", etc. are all answers that might be A-OK within the open source community but are completely unacceptable within a business environment. Ignoring the problem isn't getting anyone one single step further.

Re:MS Office XML sucks badly

[idlake]

So first you go on to call what I said "bullshit" and then you repeat it.

False. OpenDocument does NOT create lock-in, it alleviates (unintentional) lock-in that previously existed.

it's a simple fact that there are still problems with the format that urgently need to be addressed

You haven't given an example of a single problem with the format. All you keep pointing out is bugs in individual implementations. Yes, there are bugs. What the hell do you expect? The format just got approved recently.

Ignoring the problem isn't getting anyone one single step further.

People aren't "ignoring" the problem. The format has been defined now and open source office suites are implementing it and progressing fast. I'm sorry it's not fast enough for you, but there will always be whiners like you.

If we want OpenDocument to become the industry standard one day, these problems need to be pointed out and fixed NOW.

Well, they won't be because they can't be. Software development just takes a certain amount of time. Given how slow Microsoft and Apple are at updating their stuff, it seems to me open source is doing quite well in comparison, thank you very much.

Re:MS Office XML sucks badly

[urbanradar]

I pointed out that the fact that there are so many incompatibilities and bugs creates a de-facto lock-in. To which you replied: "Bullshit. What creates the lock-in is incompatibilities and bugs." Aren't we essentially agreeing there?

You haven't given an example of a single problem with the format. All you keep pointing out is bugs in individual implementations. Yes, there are bugs. What the hell do you expect? The format just got approved recently.
I can only repeat myself - once again, I believe in the OpenDocument format and happily use it myself. And the format itself is all fine and dandy, but in the real world, it quite simply won't be able to make a difference unless it is widely used. And if all implementations of it have bugs up the wazoo, many people won't want to touch it with a ten foot pole. Imagine what Microsoft's FUD machine would make of this problem. Especially in business things would be difficult, and to win business over to open source is *vital*.

I'm perfectly aware that software development takes time. I'm perfectly aware there will always be bugs to be ironed out. What I'm on about is KOffice and AbiWord releasing new versions and yelling "We now ship with OpenDocument support too!" even though their OpenDocument support was anything but up to standard. Maybe they should have pushed OpenDocument support to a later release, or maybe they should have moved the release date. It seems to me that they would have needed more time to improve their implementations of OpenDocument.

So, to sum it all up: I believe there is a chance of OpenDocument failing due to implementation problems. That seems like a potential problem to me, and I haven't really seen it mentioned it, so I point it out. But apparently, that makes me a "whiner". And anyway, it was my fault in the first place for not using logical markup.

Hrm.

Re:EMCA - Javascript, Actionscript, JScript

[DragonWriter]

I'm not sure on the history here, but wasn't ECMAScript standardization a product of Microsoft working to get its somewhat-incompatible copy of JavaScript written into an international standard? If so, I'm not sure its really the best possible counterexample to the claim that ECMA is just standardizing Microsoft apps.

definition of 'standard'

[abigsmurf]

I'm probably going to get all sorts of dictionary quotes but last time I checked, standard is a by-word for Norm.

Most people use Office, few use Open Office, why should it becoming the standard really suprise people? When you force standards which few people are already following you get the farce caused by the W3C who are constantly revising and ammending what was an established format so that every browser has a different implementation of the supposed standard and everyone of them has flaws in meeting it.

Re:definition of 'standard'

[jZnat]

Most people use Office 2007? I didn't even think that hit stores yet. wtf...

They standardised MS Office 2007's file format, not anything prior to that.

Re:definition of 'standard'

[value_added]

I'm probably going to get all sorts of dictionary quotes but last time I checked, standard is a by-word for Norm.

You make the same mistake that Creationists make when they disingenuously use the term "theory" in its colloquial sense instead of its scientific meaning. The unfortunate effect is that the layman doesn't notice when the terms of the conversation have been redefined and wonders what the fuss is all about.

As an end user, you may not be aware of the importants of standards, or have even stopped to consider to what extent they affect your life, but consider this: most everything around you has probably been built to specification by some engineer or designer working from some standard. That's why cars drive on the same side of the road, on roads of set widths and grades, why your plumbing fits together, why you can plug a radio into an electrical outlet and can expect to get reception, and why the intarweb works the way it does. You simply can't design, build or code something without someplace from which to start and have it make sense or be functional for anyone but you. Document standards may be less tangible, but no less important.

Could we get one thing straight:

[Anonymous Coward]

ECMA is NOT a standardisation organisation !

Whatever.

[lifebouy]

Sorry, but the only practical effect of this is to boost Microsoft's stock. People will use what they will use. In shops where .sla is used, it will still be used. OpenOffice is still going to continue to refine itself and spread into all sorts of nooks and crannies just like Firefox. With Vista being so disenchanting, and OpenOffice being part of the standard install on Ubuntu, I expect this will end up looking like what it is: Microsoft trying to plug it's finger in the hole in the dam.

Re:Whatever.

[aileanmacraith]

OOo may not be part of the standard install on Ubuntu for too much longer. It is a listed goal (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+ spec/kubuntu-koffice-by-default) to replace it by KOffice in Kubuntu and there have been discussions about using GNOME Office in the standard Ubuntu install. I don't know that OOo is the unstoppable force you're suggesting it is.

Anybody can compress a file.

[Kludge]

MS's format is technically superior, and produces smaller file sizes because of the compression algorithms.

Anybody can zip a file, doorknob. In fact that's what OpenOffice does automatically.

It is also going to be more widely used because despite the best efforts the OSS community Open Office just can't compete with Office 2007 in the work place.

I would bet differently. The good thing about Open Document is that everyone is implementing it:
Word, WordPerfect, OpenOffice, Koffice, Abiword, and many others. Once people realize that they can
buy a cheaper software tool and still have it interoperate with everyone else, I think you'll see change.
That is why M$ is so strenously trying to knock it down in Massachusetts.

Re:Anybody can compress a file.

[Anonymous Coward]

> The good thing about Open Document is that everyone
> is implementing it:
> [snip] WordPerfect, [snip]

Search Corel.com

[ OpenDocument ]

We're sorry, we could not find any documents that match your query.

LOL.

mod me (parent) down

[l2718]

My post (parent) is wrong. Having re-read MS's license, it's entirely a covenant not to assert patents. This clears both questions since there is no sublicensing issue here.

I sincerely hope this does not gain wide adoption

[Anonymous Coward]

"So, for most of the world, the Gregorian calendar has been the law for 250-425 years. That's a well-established standard by anyone's definition. Who would possibly ignore it or get it wrong at this point?

If you guessed "Microsoft", you may advance to the head of the class."

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2006/10/leap-back.html

Tips on writing a "standard":

http://www.robweir.com/blog/index.html

Problem with MS Word

[orkysoft]

But there's a very dangerous security vulnerability in Microsoft Word that doesn't have a patch yet, and which will not get patched any time soon either. That means it is very risky to rely on Microsoft file formats!

(In the same way that the OpenOffice's suboptimal support for disabled users means you shouldn't use ODF, that is...)

de facto

[Dracos]

MS Office formats have always been a "de facto" standard, meaning they appear to be standards merely because a majority of people use them, and because there is only one implementation of them (regardless of versions). No matter how many industry groups, in this case ECMA, give them a stamp of approval, they will never achieve true "standard" status.

Just because the vast majority of people use something (especially when they have no means to consider alternatives) does not make it a standard. That is textbook "de facto" status.

Standards are what everyone agrees on after open, cooperative discussion. MS simply churns out what they think would be useful, influenced more by their bottom line than by user need. As long as alternative formats exist, are implemented, and are actively used and developed, MS Office formats will never be truly "standard", no matter how lopsided the usage shares are. The patent and IP issues just make this more true.

I'm sure everyone would laugh just as hard if ECMA (or any other group) had declared AIM a standard over Jabber, ICQ, MSN messenger, Yahoo IM, or even IRC (Jabber and IRC being the closest thing to standards among all of them).

There are countless examples of multiple ends to the same means in hardware and software. Which is the standard among SCSI/IDE/SATA? AMD vs Intel? MP3 vs Ogg? Gnome vs KDE? Emacs vs vi? None of them.

MS is incapable of producing a real standard, unlike the *NIX community which has been doing so for decades. I can't think of a single RFC published by MS that has influenced other platforms, meanwhile MS is forced to implement (sometimes badly) such things as TCP/IP and email (among many other).

Calling the MS Office formats a true standard is a meaningless label that can only be explained by MS having bought it. So they put a bright red "ECMA says this is standard" sticker on every box of Office 2007... the average person has no idea what the ECMA is.

Now, Microsoft is...

[WED Fan]

...standard compliant.

W A R N I N G

Alert to all Anti-MS Agents!

Argument number 319 is no longer relevent. Switch to plan B, switch to plan B.

Plan B: Explain why Microsoft is still evil and bad. Preach to the choir (slashdot). Place padding under the underside of all desks to prevent injury during sudden knee-jerks.

Above all, do not despair, there are other weak points - try the interface argument that if the Settings menu doesn't provide 300 check boxes and necessitate the use of text editor to edit otherwise inaccessible conf settings, then the app must be meant for a little girl and written by a Microsofty.

Re:Now, Microsoft is...

[hitmanWilly1337]

WARNING!!!

The Anti-MS types have found our secret out!!

Default to plan B-17. Repeat, Default to plan B-17.
Step1: Go on offensive. Try to marginalize all non-MS users as reactionary or zealots.
Step2: Create large, bulky, complex standards document full of security flaws, incomplete implementation, and legal loopholes.
Step3: Use litigation, hidden functionality, and mandatory updates to gain royalties from all Open Office users.
Step4: Paint ourselves as the "good-guys" by claiming to reach out to the open source community while providing a half-assed implementation.
Step5: Claim "user-friendliness" while decreasing functionality (at least to non-MS programmers).

Remember: Reach out, embrace, eradicate.

Re:Now, Microsoft is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Alert to everybody with an IQ above 80.

Microsoft still has patents on this and will not grant redistributable licenses (never mind royaltee free).
This makes it impossible to distribute compatible software, and the standard pointless.

Steve says...

[WK1]

It is only 6K pages in print. It is conveniently sized to fit onto 1 web page.

It's The License That Kills It

[mpapet]

How about this one:
No right to create modifications or derivatives of this Specification is granted herein.

There is a separate patent license available to parties interested in implementing software programs that can read and write files that conform to the Specification. This patent license is available at this location: http://www.microsoft.com/mscorp/ip/format/xmlpaten tlicense.asp.

The link with the actual license to READ and WRITE a file to their specifications is dead. This one works though, http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/xps/xpspatentlic.msp x. Is it the same? different license? Bad links happen to everyone.

Some handy excerpts: "Necessary Claims" do not include any claims: (i) that would require a payment of royalties by Microsoft to unaffiliated third parties; (ii) covering any Enabling Technologies that may be necessary to make or use any product incorporating a Licensed Implementation,....

This says to me that they have not indemnified developers from patent time-bombs for the functions one step beyond their proposed standard or other patent time-bombs laid by lesser-known Patent IP firms. Maybe someone with more coding skills can explain if it would be possible to implement a standard without so-called "Enabling Technologies"?

(iii) covering the reading or writing of documents other than XPS Documents, or rendering of XPS Documents in a manner that is different than the rendering allowed by the XML Paper Specification. "Enabling Technologies" means technologies that may be necessary to make or use any product or portion of a product that complies with the XML Paper Specification, but are not expressly set forth"

To me this says Microsoft can come after you if you do something they didn't think of.

I don't see how this benefits any developer outside of a select few.

Re:It's The License That Kills It

[flakier]

That whole mess has been superseded by the covenant not to sue (a long time ago now!). So no, the sky is not falling...

See: http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2006/08/ 04/688932.aspx

Not sure why parent was modded 'flamebait'

[Tarlus]

That's a very valid point, I don't see what makes it a "flame".

I am also pro-open and have my own irks with Microsoft. And I do use OpenOffice.org when I can.

But like it or not, MS Office is still in the lead as far as being intuitive and functional. OO is close, but certain parts of it still fall short of MS Office. Microsoft has been developing and refining this stuff for a long time, and it is by far used by more people (and businesses) than any other office software suite.

Plus, it works. Sure, MS Office has its flaws, but let's face it: So does OpenOffice. This doesn't change the fact that it's the most widely used, and as such would be a reasonable candidate for becoming an industry standard.

(Of course, I use 'industry standard' loosely since different groups seem to declare different standards for document formats...)

Since it's apparently grounds for automatic down-modding to express a valid opinion in favor of Microsoft on Slashdot, you people can 'troll' or 'flamebait' me all you like. Doesn't make my point any more or less reasonable.

Big, Fat, Stinking PIG.

[Erris]

This piece of information [6,000 M$ vrs 700 ODF pages] is of little use without comparing the supported *features* in both format and their implementation.

No, that order of magnitude difference is informative. I imagine 6,000 pages can buy you:

1. ODF, so I can tell you about it in text, spreadsheet and presentation with all of the same features M$ Office has.
2. PNG, to draw you a picture of a pig
3. OGG, so you can hear it squeal
4. a database to organize the pig stye
5. a computer language to implement it all
6. FTP, to get it to you
7. DICOM, so you have a place for the medical records generated by your heart attack on seeing the bill.

And then some because I'm only at seven.

300 pages is roughly two inches of shelf space. M$'s specification will take up 40 inches of your shelf and burden your floor with a hundred pound load. I don't even want to think of how log it would take to read 40 inches of XML specs.

For all that, it will be incomplete in a typical Microsoft way, rendering it useless outside of PHB relations.

old format*s*

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the old data is not even in a single format old or otherwise. It's in a shitload of old formats, each a little different. That's how the company has been able to force sales of new packages anyway : tweak the format a little each new version so that old versions can't use it,make sure the tweaks are undocumented so that competitors can't use it either.

For a supposed member of a standards board he sure is going out of his way to be misleading.

Specification Weight

[4of12]

While I'm inclined to a cynical view that Microsoft is unnecessarily burdening the specification - and they probably don't mind the fact that this will impede the development of competitors products - I do have to admit the possibility that they are addressing a different criticism that many have made of them in the past.

Namely, that Microsoft specifications are incomplete and/or imprecise (corner cases, etc.).

Albeit verbose, is their specification technically watertight?

Or is it merely, "Here's everything Word can do as a result of development since 1985." with no overall logical structure?

That was the dissenting opinion.

[Spaceman40]

Thus, the reason for the dissent.

there goes..

[JustNiz]

all my respect for ECMA.

Where Have I Seen This Before?

[4of12]

Isn't this the sequel to SOAP vs XML-RPC?

So I Guess Notepad and Text Files are Safe?

[littlewink]

I am so pleased.

The EU said it wanted thorough API documentation

[yagisencho]

And 6,000 pages sounds pretty darned thorough.

What's IBM trying to do? Shame Microsoft into another antitrust violation?

Embrace and extend, business version 2.0

[bigpat]

How long until Microsoft embraces and extends its own standard? This is simply an old Microsoft trick with a new twist. As soon as Microsoft documents break compatibility with ECMA OOXML, then every other third party software will lose the ability to read and write compatible documents. Worse than the current situation, because an attempt to maintain compatibility with Microsoft Office might violate the conditions of the OOXML license. And no doubt break the format they will, in subtle ways of course, a little bit off here and there just enough to make a document look much better in Microsoft Office than it will in other applications.

The Microsoft license to use ECMA OOXML is contingent on following the standard to the letter, which is a seemingly innocuous condition until you realize that Microsoft itself is under no legal obligation to follow the standard to the letter. So you will have a bunch of third party software that follows the standard which won't be able to accurately read or write documents written by the dominant office software, it will just look like the other software is defective when really it is working according to the standard. And even if the other software developers want to break the standard in favor of microsoft compatibility, they won't be allowed to do so under the OOXML license. Microsoft wouldn't do this at first of course, what good is a trap sprung before your prey are fully in, so I am sure that Microsoft would spend a year or two adhering rigorously to the standard, just enough time for other software to incorporate OOXML compatibility. Then it would be time to break compatibility and continue the microsoft monopoly for another few years, while things work their way through the courts.

If Microsoft itself makes a legally binding and enforceable commitment to follow the ECMA OOXML standard to the letter, then I don't see a problem with another document format standard. But as the licensor, I don't see how they could be forced to adhere to the OOXML standard. Unless Microsoft itself can be forced to rigorously follow the OOXML standard, then this is just a monopolist's trap.

Re:Embrace and extend, business version 2.0

[Socguy]

I'm not familiar with the legality of this so I need to ask: why make their own format, couldn't they do the same thing with someone elses format? I mean, they could do the same thing with ODF right? Adopt it as their default then, in a few years, make their version of ODF incompatible with every other word processor. Or is this impossible? S

Re:Embrace and extend, business version 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you think microsoft would break compatability with themselves? One of the big strengths of Microsoft in general is that they are more or less backwards-compatible all the way to windows 95 and Office 97. Furthermore, this new standard is not backwards compatible, so that means microsoft is likely to support it for a very, very long time. Breaking compatibility would piss off millions and millions of (paying) users, something that microsoft probably doesn't want to do.

Re:Embrace and extend, business version 2.0

[Keeper]

It is certainly possible. And I guarantee you you'd see tons of people accusing them of attempting such an act if they switched to ODF tomorrow.

Re:Embrace and extend, business version 2.0

[ceoyoyo]

Like they did with HTML? CSS? Other things I can't think of right now?

Re:Embrace and extend, business version 2.0

[geert]

This is a two-edged sword: now they have their own standard.

So people can write requirements that insist on using software that follows the standard.
Hence as soon as Microsoft changes Office to not follow the standard 100%, people can start to complain...

"I'm sorry, we will not buy your next version of Office, as it's not compliant to the ECMA Office Standard"

MOD PARENT UP

[eck011219]

I also saw no reason to call the previous poster's comments flamebait. MS has problems in the open-vs-proprietary arena, we all know that. True open source is preferred around here, we all know that. But geez, let's try to be civil HERE anyway. Some salient points were made, and this poor schnuck got modded down for it. Do you not see where this is going? Eventually, anyone who speaks against the general tone of Slashdot, no matter how truthfully, correctly, or accurately, will be modded down and left invisible (thanks to the moderation-based threshold system). And let's just say, for sake of argument, MS comes up with the be-all end-all solution to some big document handling problem -- no one here will ever hear about it. That's neither news for nerds nor stuff that matters.

Except that IBM....

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president for open source and standards, called Microsoft's Office formats technically unwieldy - requiring software developers to absorb 6,000 pages of specifications, compared with 700 pages for OpenDocument. 'The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft,' Sutor said."

Except that it's IBMs fault that MS is where it's at right now. Had they pressed with OS/2 back in the day, Windows would be NOWHERE NEAR what it is today, nor would MS, the company.

So everyone should hate IBM for being retards. They should, in the words of many WoW gamers, "cry more, noob"

Time/Date format insanity

[The Monster]

There is no excuse for a new file format that's using zipped XML to store dates and times in anything but ISO-8601 format

2006-12-08T22:46:59Z

(The - and : could be omitted to save space). Going so far as to enshrine an Excel bug into the weekday function is just nuts.

Re:Time/Date format insanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Only it's not an Excel bug, it's a Lotus bug. The only way Excel could get a foothold in the market is to be compatible with Lotus 1-2-3 files (and keystrokes -- to this day, slash still activates the menu in Excel). If Excel didn't have Lotus compatibility back then, Excel would have never caught on, and we'd all be bitching about 1-2-3's crappy file format now instead of Excel's. The reason Excel for Mac uses an epoch starting in 1904 instead of 1900 is the the Mac toolkit functions for dates used 1904 to start their epoch.

And dates can't be stored in ISO format because they're not dates. They're just floating-point numbers that can be formatted as dates on the screen. Complain all you want, but it's important for backwards compatibility with 25-year-old spreadsheets.

Remember, OpenXML isn't designed as a new format, it's designed as a means of formatting the world's billions of Office documents in XML.

dom

OpenXML is not open

[Eric Damron]

FOSS should avoid "Open" XML because Microsoft has encumbered it. Their game is now on. Offer code and protocols that they claim is "open" but, when push comes to shove, they alone control.

Down the road a bit they will begin strategic law suits and try to make FOSS programmers look like a bunch of thieves for implementing the "open standards" they pushed through without paying royalties.

Microsoft is not even a bit interested in competing on a level playing field. For a very long time they have used their monopolies to gain unfair advantages; antitrust laws be damned. Now they want to use their monopoly muscle in their Office package to control a "standard" that they feel will lock out their greatest competition. They know that GPL'd software CAN NOT be encumbered by patents.

They have no intention of real cooperation.

The solution: EVERYONE must work to make them irrelevant. Put them into a position where they either start playing fair or die. Not an easy task. We must press our Justice department to hold them accountable for breaking antitrust laws. The Courts MUST break Microsoft into a least three separate companies. This can easily be justified by their continued disregard for the law.

We should only support protocols and "standards" that are truly free. No unacceptable licenses, no royalties etc. As Linux gains market share there will come a time when Microsoft's insistence on being incompatible with OSS will begin to work against them.

We should push for laws that force standards and protocols to be truly open and available to everyone including Open Source.

Re:OpenXML is not open

[zuiraM]

You do realize that these patents are invalid in many places, right? Here in Norway, for instance, there is nothing to prevent me from making an XSLT to translate between the "de facto" implementation by MS (not just the exact spec, but what actually works with Office), and an actual open standard, and back again. This is how they provide unencumbered crypto in many projects, etc.

Re:This will make for some slick legal arguments..

[hitmanWilly1337]

note: OpenXML, Office, Document, Operating System, Internet, Industry,Standard, and Product are all registered trademarks of the Microsoft corporation. Any and all use of the preceeding terms must be approved in writing by Micro$oft prior to use in this or any other public forum.

Thank you for your co-operation.

The Power of ODF

[John Harrison]

Let me tell you how simple ODF is. I did the following with ZERO documentation. No knowledge at all.

I implemented a photo directory for my church congregation. Since it would need to be easily updated I kept the information in a CSV spreadsheet, including names, addresses, and the name of the photo file. I looked at doing a mail merge with either OOo or Word and it didn't look like I could get what I really wanted with either. So I made a sample doc in OOo Writer and saved it. I then renamed it to a .zip file, opened content.xml and found the xml for what I had put in the test doc. I then wrote a Java program that would parse the CSV and output xml that looked like the xml in the file. Cut and past the generated xml into the document, drop the photos in the pictures directory, and then zip it back up and change the name back. It just worked.

I'll admit that you would have to be a programmer to do something like that, but it was really easy and required no documentation or specialized knowledge. That is the power of the ODF. I'm guessing the same isn't possible with the MS format.

Re:The Power of ODF

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm guessing the same isn't possible with the MS format.

Guessing being the key word there, slick.

Re:The Power of ODF

[John Harrison]

Hey Mr AC, if you want to send me a new copy of Office so I can try it out go right ahead. If you're such an MS supporter can you explain why it is good for consumers that they went their own more complex route rather than use the established standard?

which one?

[Tom]

So which file format is this they're talking about? That from MS Office 95, 97, 2k, 2003? And which version, the documented one or the actual one?

Fact is that even though MS tries to cover it up by keeping the names constant, the office file formats are just as fragmented as the various versions of windos. It's a neat trick, but "Windows 3.1" and "Windows XP" really don't have much in common except that the later contains a backwards compatability layer, i.e. "Wine from Redmond".

Same with the file formats. Yes, newer versions of MS Office contain importers for the older file formats. That just hides the fact that there are probably 10 different versions out there.

Re:which one?

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Word 2007 - the one that is not out yet.

A blow for Open Office

[greengarden]

One of the open office's selling points to governments, the use of open standards, will be more difficult to fight against Microsoft. And governments seem to be a good penetrations point into the mass market. I hope this is not too hard for open office. At jbilling, we use it a lot for all our documentation and it's been great.

Cheers,

Paul C.
Sr Developer
http://www.jbilling.com/ - The open source enterprise billing system

Remember "Undocumented DOS"

[mysticgoat]

I guess I'll try to encourage the adoption of ODF while waiting for the first edition of "Undocumented Office Open XML" to hit the bookstores. Not much point in taking on OOXML before the critical tool to make it work is available.

It feels like deja vu all over again. "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run"; Win Quattro Pro and Win Word Perfect that can't compete with Win Excel and WinWord because the MS developers didn't limit themselves to the authorized Windows API; etc, etc.

Get serious

[ClosedSource]

So you think if MS made the software source that implements the specs available, the F/OSS community is going to perform a comprehensive test of that software to determine if it properly implements the spec? Have they even done that level of testing on Open Office to insure that OpenDocument spec is perfect?

Re:Get serious

[Bert64]

Why do you even need the source?
Once multiple implementations of a specification are available, and people start trying to interoperate with them, compatibility issues will get discovered and reported, and developers will investigate and determine which implementation is the buggy one by comparing output against the spec.

Re:Get serious

[ClosedSource]

So what's the problem?

Re:Get serious

[Bert64]

As per the original post you replied to...
Microsoft won't fully comply with the standard, and other vendors will be forced to reverse engineer their nonstandard implementation in order to be compatible with it.
And because their software is so widely used, people will (incorrectly) assume that every other implementation is the broken one. Just look at the web, and how horrendously broken IE is.

May the best standard win!

[GWBasic]

"Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president for open source and standards, called Microsoft's Office formats technically unwieldy - requiring software developers to absorb 6,000 pages of specifications, compared with 700 pages for OpenDocument. 'The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft,' Sutor said."

May the best standard win!

Seriously, with the move towards web-based document editors, and people getting sick of paying high prices for MS Office, there's plenty of room for some honest competition.

That being said, I'm going to continue to use my $20 corporate liscense version of Office for the forseeable future. ;)

Yay standards!

[nixkuroi]

Weeee! Now they can be sued for being a monopoly!

Once you reach the top, the way to go is down (to the anti-trust court).

Microsoft got what they want

[euice]

What do we get out of it? Nothing because their license says so.

What do they get out of it? A slashdot headline "Microsoft wins industry standard ..."

It looks like they already won

The practical effect...

[Anonymous Coward]

The practical effect is the only people who are going to be in a position to implement Microsoft's specifications are Microsoft.

And Novell.

Standards are sales points

[symbolset]

This lets MA save some face when it comes to dropping OpenOffice format for this nonsense. Not that it's really necessary, since Microsoft got their mouthpiece appointed as an IT advisor be being generous to the successful candidate for governor.

Anyway here's how the ECMA feels about patents: http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/codeofco nduct.htm . Note the liberal use of the word "should" and "reasonable". It seems unlikely the members of the ECMA who vote on such things, the ordinary members (list: http://www.ecma-international.org/memento/ordinary .htm ) have the same understanding of those words than you or I do. Even if they did, there's an escape clause:

Members who have not taken part in the technical work on a Standard are encouraged to vote in its favour in the General Assembly. The provisions of clause 2 of the Code of Conduct are not intended to discourage such supportive action and, therefore, do not require members to undertaken a detailed patent search in this situation. However, known rights should be claimed.

So if a majority of the members (see the list above) didn't work on a Standard, they're encouraged to vote in favor of it. Since the majority of that list has no interest in Office document minutiae, adoption of whatever standard Microsoft proposed seems predictable. Further, if they can't get a company to commit to being reasonable about licensing their patents, they assume the company will be reasonable at least to the other members (see that list again).

Anyway, if you don't care about patents, here's a list http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/sta ndards/Standard.htm of their standards.

Obviously unobvious?

[geoff lane]

I think it was Tony Hoare who said that a specification should be short enough so that it was obvious there were no omissions, not so big that there were no obvious omissions.

Re:fud fud fud

[MrNaz]

We must be stupid. Please tell us how this is the case.

Word formats not so ever-changing

[martrootamm]

Actual MSOffice formats in Windows versions of Office have changed little: There were the * Word for DOS 3.x-5.x format; * Word 2.0 (probably since version 1.x); * Word 6.0/95; * Word 97/2000/XP * Maybe Word 2003 has its own format; * Word 2007 has XPS probably, based on Microsoft's Open Document XML format (not the space between 'Open Document'). All in all, I don't think that formats change, but how the user perceives the document in a different version of the same software title. For example, AFAIK, margins are set individually in each Word app depending on paper size. AFAIK, margins are also differently set in OpenOffice.org and Word apps. In addition, OOo uses a different font than MS Word, which means that people who may have long-time experience with MSWord, but still no real experience in proper document formatting, may discover that their document looks different in another word processing application. Then also there are the hopeless and hapless people who whine just about everything that does not look in OOo exactly as it would in MSWord.

Well, that was fun

[nurb432]

Another nail in the coffin for freedom.

See my post.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I actually was all ready to embrace MS's Office format as something to read from directly to get stuff out of word. I was thinking some simple XSLT or XML parsing.

I was wrong. Actually, OfficeXML is not "open" at all. It is to XML what BinHex is to ASCII -- sure as hell not human readable.

OpenDocument, I can actually read and understand, as a human, without documentation. OfficeXML, I'd be lucky to write a program that could decypher it with documentation. And these are on simple text documents -- I don't care what else the format supports, but it should at least look good for unformatted test text documents.

There is considerable evidence however that committees for single industry wide open standards hold back technical progress. This is fine if the standard is simple and fexible enough not to warrant much change (such as comms protocols for example), but for anything else can be deadly (CSS for example).

I'm really sorry you believe this, because open standards do far more for technical progress than they do against it.

The Internet would not have gotten to where it is today without standards. In fact, the #1 thing about CSS that limits web development is not what's missing from the spec, but what's completely broken in various implementations because someone thought they could do better than the spec.

Even people working for MS realize that the IE CSS Bug Suite is a Bad Thing.

To my knowledge it has never been proved that MS withheld information about an API for anti-competitive purposes.

Not any more than it's been "proved" that things fall when you drop them. We can only go on our observation.

Or do you have another reason MS has withheld information about APIs or file formats? Why they didn't even make their half-assed "standard" attempt until Mass started showing interest in OpenDocument?

This is the age of XML - we should embrace multiple formats, implementations and the conversion between each, rather than stifling progress.

Ooh! A buzzword and a false dichotomy!

It does not stifle progress to standardize on something like OpenDocument. It stifles progress to expect every word processor out there to have to read and understand a dozen different kinds of XML, some of which (OfficeXML) are retardedly impossible to read.

Throwing <xml> tags around unreadable crap doesn't hide the fact that it's inreadable crap. Stop propagating these myths that XML is some magic bullet that automatically makes everything transparent and understandable, and a breeze to write a parser for. Show me one thing OfficeXML can do that OpenDocument can't do, and we'll talk. Until then, you're a poorly disguised Microsoft lackey.

Re:See my post.

[hilton_a]

Sorry about the late reply.

So you're basing your comparison on whether the XML 'looks good' in unformatted text documents? Surely the ease of implementation or translation is more important than perceived readability? This in itself is highly subjective. Of the examples I've seen, I certainly wouldn't describe it as 'unreadable crap', and can't understand your objection. Maybe you should trying writing some XSL or similar and report back on your experiences, then we might get somewhere - for now it's conjecture.

IE dominated the landscape for many years and it didn't seem to have a huge effect on the progress of the internet. Arguably the creation of HTML created the most impact. Proprietory technologies such as flash have also made a huge impact.

With regards to CSS, its entire structure may well be wrong, but we wouldn't know, due to the politics and requirements of the parties involved. Would it be faster and more efficient if some parts were specified in a different way? Would it be more powerful as XML? etc. These questions are not likely to be answered. What we have now is an ever bulging CSS spec that's trying to accomodate everyone and moving beyond its original purpose.

I agree that XML is not that magic bullet. But it's better for this task than anything else we have.

There are many things that OfficeXML can do that OpenDocument cannot do. See 'Advantages of Office Open XML formats over OpenDocument' in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_OpenDoc ument_and_Microsoft_Office_Open_XML_formats/

Have a read of Brian Jones blog http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/default.aspx or for a quick run down: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_XML for more information.

Re:See my post.

[SanityInAnarchy]

So you're basing your comparison on whether the XML 'looks good' in unformatted text documents? Surely the ease of implementation or translation is more important than perceived readability?

Perhaps -- and yet, I can read the raw ODT XML and roll an implementation that does something useful, without ever touching the specs. I also was able to find a very simple Ruby implementation to do close to what I wanted. So, while I haven't tried writing XSL, I am currently working with a Ruby script that does what an XSL template might.

The Office XML, I couldn't do anything with, and I couldn't find any kind of decent implementation to work with.

Maybe it's just me, but I can't see how to work with Office XML without reading the spec, or one of the books that has already been written on the subject. OpenDocument was just intuitive, and that counts for a lot.

IE dominated the landscape for many years and it didn't seem to have a huge effect on the progress of the internet.

Many web standards -- the most obvious being CSS -- have been held back by missing, incomplete, or bastardized implementations in IE.

Arguably the creation of HTML created the most impact.

True enough. But imagine where we'd be if IE actually supported things like XHTML. (Actually, it might in IE7, I'll have to check that...) In other words, imagine where we'd be if we could use technologies available in 2006, instead of having to limit ourselves to what IE could do in 1996.

Proprietory technologies such as flash have also made a huge impact.

Yes... in making the Internet into something other than what it was intended to be, and something I don't like. The Internet is meant to be open, and you should be able to view a webpage from any browser that's bothered to implement the standards properly. Flash is not a standard.

In fact, look at the biggest use of Flash right now: YouTube. YouTube could've been implemented with, say, MPEGs, and have all the same functionality -- but actually have it with whatever plugin the user wants (maybe one that can actually go fullscreen?), on whatever platform that someone's bothered to implement it. But it seems that no one can agree on what format to support for embedded movies, so YouTube and the like decide to use Flash, which works well on Windows and OS X, and is only just beginning to have a decent Linux version -- and there still won't be a 64-bit version.

I place the blame for this directly with Microsoft. We've had SVG + JavaScript elsewhere for awhile, but it doesn't work on IE -- and that, plus existing support for embedded sounds and movies, really would duplicate what people use Flash for.

Same with CSS. And MS doesn't stop with crippling open standards -- remember Java?

With regards to CSS, its entire structure may well be wrong, but we wouldn't know, due to the politics and requirements of the parties involved. Would it be faster and more efficient if some parts were specified in a different way? Would it be more powerful as XML? etc. These questions are not likely to be answered.

The same thing is true of HTML, and many other technologies... For that matter, there are similar questions about Office XML. Why does that stop Microsoft from providing the same level of CSS support as everyone else?

What we have now is an ever bulging CSS spec that's trying to accomodate everyone and moving beyond its original purpose.

I don't know about that. What I do know is that, as a web developer, I have to design every site twice. Once in standard CSS that will work everywhere, and again in broken IE CSS. I can see why most web developers either do an IE-friendly version and stop, or avoid CSS altogether, knowing it'll be broken in IE. People still use tables because they're afraid of what IE will do to their CSS!

I agree th

Not necessarily BSD...

[SanityInAnarchy]

I'd say LGPL or freer. So long as it doesn't restrict what links to it, we should be fine.

But even this doesn't help much. It does help in that the reference implementation can be the spec in areas where the spec is wrong or incomplete. But if it's a full app, it could be just as useless as the specs (OpenOffice is HUGE), and if it's a library, it's problematic because now you've got a whole new spec to describe: how to talk to the library.

Long arm of Microsoft

[Eric Damron]

Don't underestimate the power of Microsoft's money to buy laws not just in the United States but other countries as well. They are bribing.. I mean lobbing government officials from many countries to get the laws they want to use to make Open Source competition illegal as a matter of practicality.

Re:Long arm of Microsoft

[zuiraM]

Others have lobbied pretty hard for a lot of this stuff too, but with limited success, and thanks to the PirateBay noise, the tide may soon start to turn. I think the EU is more susceptible, although I'm hardly pleased with my own gov't either.