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

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.

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.

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.