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

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: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: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: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.

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...

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: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.