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Microsoft Blasts IBM Over XML Standards
carlmenezes writes "Ars Technica has up an article discussing Microsoft's latest salvo against IBM. Microsoft's open letter to IBM adds fresh ammunition to the battle of words between those who support Microsoft's Open XML and OpenOffice.org's OpenDocument file formats. Microsoft has strong words for IBM, which it accuses of deliberately trying to sabotage Microsoft's attempt to get Open XML certified as a standard by the ECMA. In the letter, general managers Tom Robertson and Jean Paol write: 'When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we recognized customers' interest in the standardization of document formats.' In contrast, the authors charge that IBM 'led a global campaign' urging that governments and other organizations demand that International Standards Organization (ISO) reject Open XML outright."
It does not take a rocket scientist with a good look at the spec to figure out it sucks. The fact that it sucks has little to do with IBM.
Got Code?
Perhaps IBM's actions are based on the format qualities, not on its favoritisms. About those, since when IBM was in bed with Sun any more than it was with Microsoft?
This "Open Letter" is nothing than another piece of FUD and whining.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Hmm. Assuming you have no budget and no alternative computing facilities..
Could the IBM product function without the MS one ? Yes, you could download an alternative OS for free.
Could the MS product function without the IBM one ? No.
Go with IBM, brother.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Besides being an open standard, the standard needs to be usable by people other than Microsoft. Why would any document standard need specific tags for Windows 95? IBM lobbied against it because it was a bad standard, not because it was made by Microsoft.
This is similar to convicts trying to get jobs once out of prison. There is no longer an assumed trust due to prior actions. Who trusts MS to NOT pervert any of their documentation or standards if they see an economic benefit in doing so?
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
So what Microsoft is really saying is that because we didn't block ODF (as there was nothing wrong with it anyway) you should not block OpenXML accordingly (irrespective of any reasons)
Boring Boring Boring. More posturing as per usual
Be alert the world need more lerts
'When ODF was under consideration, Microsoft made no effort to slow down the process because we recognized customers' interest in the standardization of document formats.'
Yeah... are we supposed to believe that? If anything creating there "open" format looks to me like a blatant attempt to prevent the one thing that open format people are trying to accomplish, namely having one open format that can be used by everyone and can't be arbitrarily obsoleted by any one company. Or maybe I missed something.
I don't give a damn for a man that can only spell a word one way.
Mark Twain
Their heads are so far up their asses they cant even see that the problem with Open XML has less to do with Microsoft being the one who created it (which in MY mind is a problem in it's self) and a lot more to do with Open XML, which as a format, makes baby kittens cry.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
After all they had to create a 6000 page document without releasing any information on how to make their "open" standard work. There are so many statements like "functions as per Word 95" without explaining what that means. They must have worked long hours creating a specification that doesn't actually specify how to implement it.
IBM is being a big bully and not allowing Microsoft to screw the public and private companies of the world as Microsoft wants to.
Naughty Naughty Big Blue.
I just read thru the whole pile of shit, and all I've got to stay, standing here in front of you in great astonishment given all this impudence, is: BIG FUCK YOU, Microsoft. You can only feel ashamed for what this pathetic company of well-organized assholes is trying to pull of once again with this "open letter".
In XML-based file formats, which can easily interoperate through translators and be implemented side by side in productivity software, this exclusivity makes no sense except to those who lack confidence in their ability to compete in the marketplace on the technical merits of their alternative standard. This campaign to limit choice and force their single standard on consumers should be resisted.
Yeah, right. I hope you die.
Microsoft's format in and of itself is an attempt to sabatoge OpenDocument. Their refusal to support it, despite having the most popular Office Suit is another clear sign of their contempt for it, and the customers they claim to care about now.
God forbid IBM promotes their own standard. Jeez, that's almost like having competition! We'de hate to have to make MS actually compete with anyone. On top of all that, why in the world would IBM trust MS not to tweak the standand and make it MS only? Why would anyone who actually cares about an open format trust MS to touch it?
Having looked into both formats, I realized that they're both trash.
The major problem is the use of XML. At least with HTML, the tag names were kept short. But both standards use rather long element names, often in excess of eight characters, plus eight or more namespace characters beyond that. For some of the XML element names of each format, we're looking at over 16 characters overhead! When such tags are used repeatedly, especially in a large or heavily-formatted document, a lot of space ends up being wasted.
Another major problem is that they don't really solve any problems that LaTeX or GROFF haven't already dealt with. Both LaTeX and GROFF allow for far more compact document files, and they easily allow for output in a wide array of formats, from DVI to PostScript to PDFs to HTML. The HTML that is generated, for instance, is actually human-readable. OpenOffice.org and MS Office's HTML output is garbled and insane.
After reading the Open letter, it's very clear that Microsoft claims IBM's want to stop Open XML stems from their ODF format making it through the standards group first and being adopted. MS claims that people should be able to choose their open standards...
Call me crazy but having two different standards doesn't really capture the idea of having Standards at all. I thought the point of standards was to make it so we (the developers) only have to implement one thing. I can fully understand IBM's reasoning here. The only thing it seems MS wants to do is create more vendor lock.
"When did Windows stop working on other Laptop/Desktop models.."
:)
I have to assume GP was referring to the fact that GGP bought the laptop with Windows installed. That being the case, he more than likely bought an OEM license which, I am sure you are aware, is non-transferable. That being the case, the laptop *will* work fine without Windows, however, since Windows cannot be (legally) transferred to another machine, it *will not* work on other hardware (legally).
"...wait, don't answer that."
Ooops... too late
Nevermind that customers are rejecting Microsoft Office because they are trying to get out of the lock-in of Microsoft's proprietary document format. Nevermind that Microsoft is into "Open" only to fudge the line between "Open standards that are documented and that anyone can implement and use" and "Proprietary with an open wrapper". Heh ... if I embed an MS-Word file into an XML document and compress the result using the Open Source program Gzip, does that make the resulting file "Open"? No? According to Microsoft's own logic, this would be the case.
And all this just to disguise the fact that their proposed "Open" standard allows them to put their their (totally proprietary) Office format into a document that follows the standard and then call it "Open". It's squarely aimed at fooling manager types into ticking a box labelled "Open Standards compliant" on their checklist.
Of course it's a fine example of complete intellectual dishonesty on Microsoft's part ... but whenever did Microsoft ever care about honesty? Intellectual or otherwise? Microsoft didn't become big by using such stupid tactics ...
Take that video demonstration for example. You know ... the one that showed Windows "crashing" when Explorer was removed. Any ordinary person would have gone to jail for perjury on that "testimony" ... but large companies are exempt it seems. "A regrettable communication error sir." Yeah, right.
As many people know ... Microsoft's OOXML is a blatant attempt to perpetuate Microsoft's proprietary standards through a selection of backdoors in a 6,000 page standard proposal that Microsoft is trying to rush through. Just see the "criticism" section in this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML
Since ECMA is willing to recognize crap as a standard, I'm just going to stop recognizing ECMA as a standards organization.
"...today consumers have been conditioned to think of beer when they see a bullfrog..."
Additional keys are all well and good, but what I think really irks people about this particular key is that it has the Windows logo on it.
It would be exactly as useful and 0% as annoying if they kept the key but printed something else on it, like a star, or a light bulb or something.
The article's uninteresting, but did you read the discussion? There are some people who spent a lot of time posting, who quote Microsoft documents, and keep steering the discussion back to Microsoft's talking point, and away from technical points, whenever they're raised.
I don't know the people involved, and I don't know where they're coming from. But I suspect something. That suspicion colors everything I read in it.
I cannot read a discussion of my peers and believe what I read today. Every peer is possibly specifically paid to market and lie. Therefore, I have no peers.
We need a law against astro-turfing.
I've sat on a couple standards meetings. I have no idea how ECMA produces "standards" but a 2000 to 6000 page spec won't become a standard any time soon, not a standard that is implemented by more than one party. It's a standard in name alone. They "fast tracked" it? You can't read 6000 pages in a month, let alone make valuable architectural decisions or discuss the impact of it on your products. This is nothing but a PR campaign, the one thing I will say though in IBM's defense, they've been working on an open doc standard for years and MS is a late comer to the party, despite being invited. A 6000 page spec? haha, I wouldn't expect a "standard" for 20 years...
There is a reason why MS goes for ECMA standards rather than ISO or ANSI. Look at javascript, it's an ECMA standard, you still code to the browser with firefox and IE, you still have to deal with both browsers. C++ is an ECMA standard, point to one example of any legitimate interop between C++ compilers... Point to one example of an MS ECMA standard that took any input at all from a competitor or independent implementor, just once, point this out.
MS intends to release the complete implementation details as soon as optical disc technology catches up and 8 Terabyte quad layer discs become commonplace and the drives are available on all Compaq and Dell computers; MS will open source its BlakDeth-Ray(tm) technology to speed the development process, however, the BlakDeth-Ray(tm) SDK requires an NDA, a per-seat license and a DRM dongle compatible with Windows Vienna. It must also "function as per Microsoft Bob".
MS also needs to locate a programmer named Karl to produce his code comments for the Word 95 spec, but they have been saved in Multi-Tool Word format and are currently unreadable in Office 2007.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
Having looked into both formats, I realized that they're both trash.
... OpenOffice.org and MS Office's HTML output is garbled and insane.
So (assuming any legitimacy to the complaint) then use a different tool to convert OpenDocument to HTML. Geez. It's XML and there are quite a few ways to make the transition, many of which are quite good.
You do realize that the article is about the format and not the applications which use them, don't you ? Yeah. I thought so. There are something close to three dozen applications which support OpenDocument, of which OpenOffice is only one.
MS shills seem to be working over time to try to confuse the issues regarding OOXML vs ISO/23600 aka OpenDocument. Two of the main themes are here.
Crissakes, even the government of China is trying to harmonize with OpenDocument. You also have the 5000 or so participants in OASIS representing 600 or so organizations, companies, agencies and universities participating in OASIS, which is responsible for OpenDocument. You also have about 2 billion MS Office users tired of being forced into a new office suite and/or operating system purchase every the vendor decides to change its undocumented, binary formats.
The whole thing seems to be MS doing the only thing they're good at, waging a PR war, to try to 1) bring focus away from the technical issues being discussed at ISO, and 2) try to hide the groundswell of support for a universal file format.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
You actually are mostly making my point for me. The "a", "b", and "g" and upcoming "n" suffixes denote ammendments to the same 802.11 IEEE standard. The reason they exist are to give additional functionality or updated performance, while ensuring adherance to the same standard. For example, it is because they are ammendments of the same standard that allow b and g to work with each other. The 802.11 standard is the poster child for creating a successful single standard that is widely adopted by countless (competing) vendors and continuously updated to reflect improvements in technology.
Choice is standards is a negative thing for consumers, which is also something you example with your reference to GSM vs. CDMA. While there are enough differences in the goals of GSM vs CDMA that might technically make a valid case for both standards existing, their wide adoption in different geographical areas represents something of a failure in the standards process to ensure interoperability for the consumer.
So, thank-you for making my point on why we do not want competing standards, only competing implementations.
Microsoft is free to publish documentation on their file formats at any time. They don't have to be a standard to be unlocked. That they haven't published their file formats until now indicates, to me, that inter-operability with other office suites is low on their priority list.
The autoSpaceLikeWord95 flag is *not* for Word 95. It is for all subsequent versions of MS Office and it translates to a set of special case, undocumented format attributes.
Here is how the flag is used today:
1) Open Word95 document containing full-width East Asian characters in Word 2007+
2) On open (import) Word 2007+ sets the "autoSpaceLikeWord95" document property in the new document
3) On display, Word 2007+ displays the document using the special case formatting rules.
4) On Save as OOXML, the document gets saved with the "autoSpaceLikeWord95" flag set
So the problem for non-MS OOXML implementers is: WTF does "autoSpaceLikeWord95" mean? The only way to determine this is to reverse engineer the behavior by studying Microsoft Word 95 in detail. That is completely inappropriate for an open standard.
If MS was sufficiently motivated to produce a true "open" standard they should have translated the "autoSpaceLikeWord95" into a set of document presentation attributes whose meaning does not reference the behavior of any particular implementation. (Something like: autoSpaceLikeWord95 in a Word document translates to "allow 2px of space on either side of the character, except in years evenly divisible by 3, in which case allow 3px.)
Bullshit. First: ODF is format and M$O2007 is (unreleased) product. Feel the difference.
Second. Guess why StarOffice file format (SXW, tried and proven in real product) spent that much time in OASIS/ISO until finally reaching stamp of approval. You seems to have missed that completely. The main difference between SXW and ODF is support for extensions: SXW is vendor specific XML schema, while ODF does support all kind of extensions on all levels - to be truly vendor neutral and allow proprietary extensions.
M$ intentionally kept silence during ODF development to claim now that ODF can't support all what they need from it. The whole argument that they were silent during ODF since they didn't wanted to intervene with its progress is totally BOGUS. Standardization process isn't place for political games "take and give" - it is place for finding common ground. M$ didn't wanted finding common with rest of industry - and now they try to turn tables around and paint IBM (who raised valid technical point) as bad guys.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.