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Microsoft XML Fast-Tracked Despite Complaints
Lars Skovlund writes "Groklaw reports that the Microsoft Office XML standard is being put on the fast track in ISO despite the detailed complaints from national standards bodies. The move seems to be the decision of one person, Lisa Rachjel, secretariat of the ISO Joint Technical Committee, according to a comment made by her."
There are all sorts of ISO standards that people refuse to use in their current form. Not seeing this one as that big of a deal however. I'd rather have a published standard for microsoft interoperation via XML file formats then the old .doc & .xsl files.
Oh yes, "Groklaw SMASH!"
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
If people didnt jump on whatever the newest Microsoft software is they wouldnt get away with this sort of thing.
What? You mean that there should be some drawn-out process to keep the most-commonly-used XML format from being standardized?
MS's XML should be marked and tagged as standard ASAP -- that way, when Office 2010 rolls around, OpenOffice 3.0 can simply say "we put out docs according to MS's standard. If it doesn't work, it's THEIR fault."
"despite the detailed complaints from national standards bodies."
So what is the point of these national standards bodies? Standards without a method of enforcement, are called "suggestions".
We are all just people.
And I'd rather have Microsoft use the already ISO-standardised and widely used ODF standard.
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
I think you miss the point.
{If|When} "Open XML" gets set as a standard, Microsoft will claim that Office is "standards-based and open". Which, by definition, it would be.
Open Office et. al will implement ODF. It will also implement a partial version of Open XML - as best as it possibly can do, given the vague nature of some of the Open XML implementation points.
Microsoft Office will only implement Open XML.
Now, which format is a consumer to choose? Obviously Open XML. Put simply, we'll be no closer to a real-world, workable word document standard than we are now.
Open Office will say "we tried to implement the standard as best as we could". Normal consumers will hear essentially "Open Office wont open my documents properly".
> irreversably intermeshed with the microsoft file formats.
That's rubbish, Microsoft can easily add ODF support.
> I'd rather have a published standard then not.
ODF!
MS Office software would get cheaper if they were forced to compete in an open market. Remember that Office and Windows are Microsoft's only profitable divisions, with every Office license you're subsidizing expansion of the most profitable monopoly in history. ODF is a win for everyone except Microsoft.
What do you mean "as poorly defined"? With the binary formats there was basically no documentation: now we have detailed vendor-supplied documentation of virtually the entire XML format.
As you will note if you follow the previously supplied link, MSOfficeXML references the results of their old binary cruft without further definitions, which is no better than nothing at all.
If they really cared, they would reveal what they already know and quit keeping those old secrets. They don't and all their efforts are just so much PR, aka a big lie. You were lied to before and you are being lied to again.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Seems interesting that the ISO is in a hurry to sanction a standard that is specifically designed to make compliance as difficult as possible.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
The only reason that Microsoft wants this to be a standard is to get past the proposed laws that specify that government documents use an open standard. That's why these proposed laws, like the one recently introduced in California, need to specify that the standard must have an open-source reference implementation.
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True, there is a tag for "Do Line-spacing the way Word version x.y.z used to do it on a Mac" (with no further specification what exactly that was), but if you're just *writing* the files there's a simple solution to that: don't use that tag at all. (it exists only for backwards compatibility anyway, I very much doubt that it's possible to make a new version of Word write that tag if you're starting from a clean new document)
If you need to *read* the stuff though, you're out of luck, because you can bet someone is gonna complain if you're able to correctly read only 99% of all Ms-office documents, despite the documents themselves being the insane ones.
You have pointed out that there are a few, legacy, parts of the specification that aren't defined. What we have for XML is several thousand pages of detailed specifications, compared to close to nothing before. How is that not better?
Soon enough M$ reps will be FUDing it up with the same old noise they've always made about "partial" implementations. All day long, you can hear them say that Open Office is not up to snuff because it does not "properly" translate all of those crusty old formats. Their new XML will be much the same, so it's no better.
If they get an ISO stamp, it will be worse because they can claim some kind of reputability and "openness" that they don't deserve.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
HTML5 doesn't say things like "render like Opera 7 does"
No, I think he is against the failure to document the expected behavior instead of merely mandating mimicing of legacy applications behavior without specification of what that behavior is.
One would facilitate implementation. One is a barrier to implementation. Microsoft, unsurprisingly, chose the latter, either through incompetence or desire to produce a standard that could not practically be implemented by third parties.
Microsoft only certifies software that fully implements the standard and when it's a Microsoft standard no certification means no deal.
Have you seen any ISO 9001 certificates?
The idea of going ISO is to be able to certify and advertise you compliance.
There is no 97% compliance certificate!
An all-new format that supports backward compatibility with an older and supposedly unrelated format? Are you reading what you're writing?
Backward compatibility shouldn't enter the specification at all. It's the seemingly endless instances of backward compatibility support that has made Microsoft's stuff the resource-sucking pig that it is today. Here, they have an opportunity to divest themselves from all that legacy crap and get neat, fresh and unified. They just keep playing the same endless games they have always played because they worked yesterday.
Part of the intent for the recent data standards movement is to simplify and clarify. Supporting legacy junk shouldn't really be much of a factor at all.
Actually, if Microsoft would have done it right, both loading and writing would be easy. Imagine Microsoft Word 2007 detecting a Mac Word 5.3 document (binary, evidently) that has odd margin handling. Instead of writing a tag "emulate-word-5-3-mac", it would write "margin="-77,3pt"
If you do this, the output and thus target format would just have the clean information for displaying. No "just do as if you are Word on Mac", but "compensate margins -77,3pt". That this was because it was created on a Mac or that the user specified that, has no importance...
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That's fine, but it only takes one complaint ('contradiction' in ECMA parlance) to stop the process, and there was one such provided by three separate national bodies. It stated the objection, raised elsewhere in this thread, that elements in the standard such as autoSpaceLikeWord95, which basically state, 'do things like we did in this version of this application', are contradictory to the the very essence of a document standard.
ECMA's response is not at all satisfactory. First, they provide the self-serving argument that they're reproducing the state of the art, then they say that they can throw in any missing details later in the process, then they conclude with a statement that is patently absurd:
We can sum this up as 'We accept that nobody has ever done this before, but we don't think that contradicts other standards. Anyway, even if it does, let's just agree to talk about this later.' Ultimately, ECMA is saying, 'Whatever faults may exist, even if they're unprecedented, let's just get on with it. We'll figure things out as we go.' That is hardly what one would expect of any self-respecting standards body.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
I remember awhile ago an employee at Opera pointed out that using html and css would create a much easier to adopt document standard. Since it is well understood and universally used. There are a half dozen html renderer's that could all be used to read content on all platforms.
This has many advantages over everything that is being offered now. A universally viewable open well understood and easily learned document standard? That makes too much sense to go anywhere.
Your argument (that the comments were misguided and show misunderstanding) is hardly a reason to fast track. If national standards bodies don't yet understand the standard then they are not yet ready to accept it. One of the biggest problems with the standard is its size. Until the standards bodies are able to make sensible comments and recommendations, it should not be proceeding, except perhaps to extinction.
Even funnier that these highly spun articles keep making it to the front page... One might start to believe that the OSS community has a bigger marketing budget than Microsoft does! Oh that's right I forgot, ther is no real OSS community anymore. It's all wrapped up in the whims of IBM, SUN, etc... politics.
Has everyone forgotton that ODF was fast-tracked with no complaint period at all? I'm amazed that something as woefully incomplete and ambiguous as ODF is already a standard and no one seems to give a good rat's ass about that. That fact certainly isn't getting any press that I can see. ODF isn't any more "community designed" than OOXML. It's simply a partialy (and hastily) documented, previously application specific markup that happens to be plain text, released under a perpetually gratis license. It simply enjoys a slight headstart over OOXML.
It's just all about beating MS at any cost (those evil mother F***ers, ruining our geeky free world!). Who gives a F*** about a standard's technical competance or compeating on technical merit? The funniest thing is the "high morals" of ODF. Yet, ODF is just as patented and closed as OOXML. If you dare point out any technical deficiancies in ODF you won't see anyone say, "why you're right, let's fix it!" Nope, all you'll see is some half assed and ignorent attack on OOXML lobbed back over the fence.
I'd love to hate Microsoft as much as the next person, but all I see are well reasoned and technical responses in the face of the tantrums in the ODF preschool.
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No, it's for use when not bothering to convert documents from Word 5.0.3 properly. If you were really converting a document, you'd implement the behaviour of Word 5.0.3 using the new tags. If Word 5.0.3 in double-line-spacing mode did 1.97x line spacing and added a 0.05 inch extra margin at the bottom of the page, you should code that, not just have flag which says "be like Word 5.0.3". The place for details of legacy file formats like that is in a conversion tool, not the specification.
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I found the answer from the reply from ECMA to ISO (here: http://www.computerworld.com/pdfs/Ecma.pdf) very enlightening.
As it turns out OpenOffice has a similar feature the "config:config-item" XML property, and there are a number of these config properties that remain unspecified (from page 14):
It has taken OpenOffice almost two years since standardization and still they cannot fully support ODF yet and they actually started with a big headstart. You comment suggest that one can just built in ODF support on any an accepetable level for MS Office not realistic. MS Office has even more features and also would have to adapt and or extend on ODF to put al those features in ODF (or they would be accussed of adding a handicapped implementation of ODF). Adding a complex fileformat and fully supporting it is also a very complex and lengty process. By using the plugin support the ODF support can be continuously developed and if in the future the need is there to add ODF support directly in MS office they can reuse that code as I think they released in on an OSS license that does not require implementations to share it's code.
The Wraith http://ooxmlhoaxes.blogspot.com/
Standardized formulae only become relevant when moving spreadsheet data between different applications. I use SC, I'm certain it uses a vastly different formula engine than Gnumeric or MS exel.
Next you'll be telling us there are no valid patent concerns over OOXML.
The implication being that committees make better decisions than individuals? Please, be serious!
I think the implication is that individuals are cheaper to persuade, easier to intimidate, or are simply suspect in the first place because they need not consult anyone else about their decisions or reach a consensus, no matter how evil or ill-advised their decisions may be.
I'm not saying that's the case here, I'm saying that's my understanding of the way the summary is phrased.
Of course, it also serves to mark her as a target for the ire of the OSS community. Microsoft collaborator! Boo! Hiss! etc.
Anyway, committees make decisions just as good or bad as an individual would in most cases, they just take much longer to do it. :P
I wasn't aware that something had changed and suddenly two wrongs make a right.
No, it's not a showstopper, but it's a damned good reason not to put a spec on the fast track, which was the issue at hand.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.