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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.
That may be true, but there was strong opposition to the OOXML standard by many countries. In fact, when the standard went up for comment the ISO received more participation from commenting countries then it has seen with previous standards. Although Microsoft has actually created a competitor to ODF (which from an archival viewpoint is a good thing, the more ways we have of doing the same thing means a bigger safety net for our data) it's done so in a pretty ass backwards sort of way. This move to fast track it makes me uneasy, as there are some huge glaring holes in the standard which need to be fixed before it can really be declared as a good standard.
The Refined Geek - Technology, Finance, Space and everything in between
...is there are so many to choose from. Yes?
This is likely just a fast track off a short pier.
"The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality." -- George Bernard Shaw
There are all sorts of ISO standards that people refuse to use in their current form.
The article linked to that M$ party line statement, and it's pathetic on two levels. The first is that it's a sorry excuse to push a new bad standard. The second is that it's admission that Microsoft Office XML is a bad standard.
The parade of backlash to their bullying is heartening. The tactics are, as usual, backfiring on them. "Microsoft, just say no." sounds like a nice slogan.
Oh yes, "Groklaw SMASH!"
Indeed, but shit is always easy to smash.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The industry is fifteen years down the wrong path. We (many of us) tried to warn our nontechnical peers before things came to this point. We tried to express the benefits of a diverse field. We tried to illustrate the merits of alternative technologies. We tried to sing the praises of other operating systems and other companies. The sad fact is that computer technology was wrestled away from the true technologists who invented it and was thrust headlong to the public sector by the businessmen, politicians, stock brokers, and bankers who saw a massive profit potential in it but had no real knowledge or appreciation of the intellectual advancements which created it.
.com bubble, we paid for the infrastructure on which the rest of the internet was built, and we paid for the products, the software, and the services on the consumer end. Where, then, did the profits from the .com bubble go? The profits went into the hands of the same major investment groups who have been carefully profiling and controlling the market for generations--people who, when the .com bubble became the .com bust, shrewdly bought the real estate being sold by the common people seeking to ameliorate their losses (which had been carefully planned by those people who were now buying their real estate at dirt cheap prices). When America began to return to consciousness after the .com blackout we now find that the same real estate which we sold to keep ourselves from bankruptcy is being rented or sold back to us--as condos, apartments, are housing communities--at three, four, ten, even hundreds of times the cost.
Billions of dollars in taxpayer money were funnelled, through government grants, contracts, and subsidies, into social circles and corporations who had demonstrated a willingness to put aside the morals and values of the true scientists in favor of ensuring their own priveleged paychecks, pensions, and long term profit margins. The American taxpayers subsidized the startup of the
The pyramid scheme is so beautiful we could almost cry for joy if we were on the financial winning side of it. As it is we have no choice but to cope with a world where Motorola is relegated to handhelds, HP has partnered with Compaq and become just another x86 retailer, and Microsoft holds a betting majority of the chips when it comes to influencing the direction of software development and globally recognized protocols.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
The problem with Microsoft's "standard" is that in many places it says things like "do what Word 5.0.3 does in when in double-line-spaced mode" without saying just what that means. The specification for Microsoft's XML format is not in the standards documents, it exists in only one place - the source code for Microsoft Word. Making a fully compliant implementation of Microsoft's XML format when you haven't got access to the Word codebase is therefore virtually impossible.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
That said, it should be noted that the MSOXML does not fully expand out the data. When you read the article, you find that there are still things that are binary-encoded and proprietary.
As for standards, especially ISO ones, using the words of one of my graduate class professors when he was referring to stuff from OSI: "They're camels. A camel is a horse designed by committee."
OCO is Loco
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Guess we all know what she got for Christmas.
I'd rather have a published standard for microsoft interoperation via XML file formats then the old .doc & .xsl files.
This too seems to be the M$ party line - the magic of XML is better than their old secret formats. It's bogus, of course, because their new XML is as poorly defined as any of their formats. If M$ was interested in interoperability, they would use ODF and make a converter using their knowledge of their crusty old standards. It's an impossible task because their old "standards" were contradictory to begin with. At the end of the day, the old formats are doomed to well deserved neglect, and there's no reason M$ could not just publish everything about them and let their former users translate things for themselves.
There's so much double talk around this issue, it's not even funny.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's kind of like .doc only with obfuscation and litigation clearly called out.
What you fail to realize is the published standard in this case is handcuffed to an arsenal of undocumented licensed components.
From http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx
Q: Why doesn't the OSP apply to things that are merely referenced in the specification?
A: It is a common practice that technology licenses focus on the specifics of what is detailed in the specification(s) and exclude what are frequently called "enabling technologies."
Hmmm... So the specification alludes to closed and undocumented "enabling technologies" without specifying them OR licensing them. Same old Microsoft.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
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".
An AC, trying to annoy, asks:
Do you express yourself that way in everyday interaction with other people? I'm actually curious.
Only 2/3 of those statements is mine, but yes I do express myself this way in real life. Most people think it's fun to be around, thank you.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Guess we all know what she got for Christmas.
A copy of Vista? Ha ha, that will motivate her.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well, I suppose a standard could be created based on the documentation from Microsoft. It is hardly an independently-implementable standard, however.
Alternatively, a workable standard that is truely interoperable could be accepted that is not anything Microsoft would implement.
I seriously doubt there is much middle ground between these two positions. Microsoft is after all in a position to just say no.
The real problem is that even with (X)HTML/CSS it is not currently possible to take two different implementations and produce the same printed output from the same source material. This is a far, far simplier standard than anything being discussed as a word processing format, and yet there is no common implementation. I am not even sure there is today an accepted "correct" implementation for printing HTML.
How are we going to have a multi-implementation standard for word processing that produces identical formatted documents? I would say it is clear we are not going to have this. This makes the "standards" process a joke.
If you somehow believe that the "presentation" can be separated from the "content" in important documents, you probably need to have more familiarity with government processes.
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.
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.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Fast tracking only shows how much push they have and gives them more time to try again if it gets shot down. Reviewers should be respected, given the time they ask for and listened to when they finally form opinions.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I know no slashdoter wanted this (too much anti-ms in the air), but think of the bright side.
MS has the market by the balls with the only real competition being the WordPerfect suite...Personally I do not like it, but it is fairly widely used in School in Canada. Anything that allows Word documents to be a bit easier to convert to other formats is a good thing.
Their "old binary cruft" preserves backwards compatibility. Are you against that for some reason? That's all I take away from that "analysis" of the format. Is there some sort of predisposition against protecting an investment in your world?
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
You will, of course, only see those tags in files converted from Word 5.0.3 documents.
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.
All 6 of the complaints were about technical issues. The 1-month fast track approval is not the correct place to raise those types of issues. The only thing that can keep something from getting fast track approval is an objection that highlights why it conflicts with standard that has already been approved. None of the 6 complaints did this, so it was pushed through.
They can of course, raise the same complaints during the 5 month ballot process, which is the correct time to raise such concerns. Although, 6 out of 100+ is still a fairly small number.
how much did Lisa get paid for her efforts? Was it cash or "perks"?
Yeah, mod me flamebait. I'd prefer having that checked anyways, even if just to be sure there was no foul play. With MS, the safe assumption is that someone involved didn't play by the rules.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
HTML5 doesn't say things like "render like Opera 7 does"
What's keeping it from being standardized? It turns out that the standards written are grossly inadequate for third parties to implement. If Microsoft authored a better specification, nobody would care.
Not to mention, what does it matter if it's "standardized" (and by that I assume you mean accepted as a ISO standard)? It's already implemented in the next version of Office, which in a very real sense, makes it a defacto standard. What this is about is getting the format accepted by ISO. And the only reason to fast track it is so that Microsoft can use this as a marketing tool against opendocument and openoffice.
Make no mistake, all other reasons for standardization require a "drawn out" process involving interested stakeholders, such as the openoffice community as well as businesses that use office software. This ensure the standard is actually useful to third parties, making the format increase, rather than decrease interoperability.
MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut, seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
Having read TFA and the PDF of the ECMA responses to the complaints, i can see why they decided to fast-track it, many of the complaints by countries are thoroughly debunked as misunderstandings of the specification. The rest are supposed to be resolved during the 5 month process.
As for TFA, they started out talking about fast-tracking the standard, then went on about totally unrelated and unsubstantiated stories about intimidation.
I may be flamed for it, but i call FUD on the part of Groklaw for this "story", the process is working as intended.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
(which from an archival viewpoint is a good thing, the more ways we have of doing the same thing means a bigger safety net for our data)
Care to explain? Having multiple formats just means that you're more likely to pick the wrong format and end up without access to your data from new products in the future. Having multiple ways of doing the same thing only fractures the community doing the thing.
MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut, seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
Microsoft only certifies software that fully implements the standard and when it's a Microsoft standard no certification means no deal.
Is there any way to guarantee that? I mean in the standard itself?
AccountKiller
Their "old binary cruft" preserves backwards compatibility. Are you against that for some reason?
No, it was designed to break compatibility with other Word Processors back when their was competition on M$ platforms. They are abandoning those formats now and may or may not preserve that compatibility. It's obvious to me as a user that they did not care much about it in the past, because old documents lost their format regularly before I decided to not use stuff from M$.
Is there some sort of predisposition against protecting an investment in your world?
Not at all. I'm worried about user's investment in time and effort, which the M$ upgrade train routinely wastes. That's a much larger investment than M$ ever put into anything.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
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!
So that Microsoft can go to those governments that have declared that they will only use document formats that ate international standards and say "Look, look, ISO standard" (pointing to Open XML). "Now you can stay with safe Microsoft instead of going for that strange communist OpenOffice.org".
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.
Not directly, although it does say: "...and is maintained only for compatibility with existing documents from that application." In the few hundred Office 2007 documents I've examined so far, I haven't seen anything that isn't implementable from the standard.
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...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Is there some sort of predisposition against protecting an investment in your world?
Is there a reason you place M$'s interests and investments before your own?
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Let's just start over. I'm perfectly happy with plain text.
the NPG electrode was replaced with carbon blac
oh, no! ... well, let's all put our hands together and pray.
Do not. Touch. Down.
Funny, I thought this standard conflicted with the ISO standard for time because it incorrectly treats 1900 as a leap year in spreadsheets.
I never said I was smart, I just said I was smarter than you
The sad fact is that computer technology was wrestled away from the true technologists who invented it and was thrust headlong to the public sector by the businessmen, politicians, stock brokers, and bankers who saw a massive profit potential in it but had no real knowledge or appreciation of the intellectual advancements which created it.
Cry me a river.
The computer was military and commercial tech from Day 1.
The technologist was never ultimately in control of its deployment or evolution.
"The wrong path" - market-driven - brings the PC and the Internet into every middle class home and office. The golden age of the Geek ends with AOL and Windows 3.1.
I particularly liked how she referred to New Zealand's opinions as "quaint".
Stupid cow. We may not be a world power, but we aren't bloody quaint.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
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.
Microsoft have already worked with standards...
Office 97 saved Word 95/6.0 documents as RTF - and that is as close to a standard as Microsoft will ever get...
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
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.
MS Windows is POSIX compliant as well, though in practise, you need Cygwin for any POSIX programs. Just like the POSIX trick, the standardization is just to get a tick mark on government RFPs.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
You will, though, see several other instances of such tags, for various versions of Word, Wordperfect, some of which are still in common use.
The MS Word program probably does not handle it in such a simple, linear fashion. So, defining those tags would probably mean MS would have to reverse engineer their own program, rather than just memory-dumping it.
You can say that again. I have several kiwi friends and they can be pretty tough birds to deal with.
When it by no means is a standard others can implement without their blessing, then yes. There should be at minimum a drawn-out process to keep the most-commonly-used XML format from being accepted as a standard, at least until it is an actual standard...
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
The "M$ wag" where you posted your brilliant "bubba" flamebait? Which the guy actually took the time to answer in good faith? Is that it? Feels good insulting people on the internets, doesn't it? Calling them names behind their backs? For someone who complains so much about how "insulting" people who don't agree with you are, you sure know how to "dish it out" like a big tough dude. Way to go.
Most people do not understand that the fast track process is only a way of accelerating the process, it is not a mechanism of rubber stamping the standard, there are still six months of work ahead before the actual voting can begin.
/ 29/explanation-of-the-iso-fast-track-process.aspx
Details about how this work can be found in Brian Jones' blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/brian_jones/archive/2007/01
Miguel.
Isn't that just for use when converting documents from Word 5.0.3 format? New documents won't use that tag.
Compare to ODF, where key formatting parameters are left up to the application, so that if you had two completely independent ODF implementations, written just from the "standard", documents produced by one would would probably look quite different when read by the other.
Apparently the standard for "Conflict" was "Renders another standard unimplementable".
As best as I can see, the fact that OOXML treats 1900 as a leap year doesn't prevent another standard from treating 1900 as a non leap year.
The contradictions phase wasn't intended to resolve issues, but to highlight grotesque flaws. Apparently they decided that the date issue (and the other issues brought up) weren't grotesque flaws.
Go figure.
OOXML is already a standard (an ECMA one, but a standard), what this process will do is turn it into an ISO standard as well.
That being said, OOXML is vastly better specified than ODF is. As I pointed out on my blog some time ago, it would not be possible to build a spreadsheet today using the ODF specification, too many details would have to be extracted from either the OOXML spec (oh, the irony!) or an existing implementation that was based on public information like the Excel documentation (Gnumeric, Open Office).
Am sure that OOXML could still use some work and do more along the lines of having the specification be as clear as possible, but if your point of reference is ODF then the criticism is a bit like the elephant that criticized animals with big ears.
Miguel.
Whether ODF or OOXML are good standards, or not, is beside the point.
It's the process that is being studied here. Why were the detailed objections of 5 nations brushed aside, and the decision made by one person? Supposedly, if even one nation objects, that is supposed to derail the "fast track" process.
This stinks to high-heaven of msft corruption.
You said MICROSOFT already added ODF support. Then you give a link to SOURCEFORGE. That doesn't make any sense. If MS added it, you wouldn't have to go somewhere else to get it, eh?
If the stinky pinko commies over at sourceforge could make it work, then why didn't the company do it themselves and include it in their product? Maybe that would have given people the "freedom to innovate"?
As I pointed out on my blog some time ago, it would not be possible to build a spreadsheet today using the ODF specification,
Well, that's because ODF doesn't incorrectly specify 1900 as a leap year. Start throwing broken bits like that into the mix and it's no surprise that the MSOOXML "spec" is over 6000 pages (and still incomplete).
-- Alastair
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.
--
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
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.
Chernobyl 'not a wildlife haven' - BBC News
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):
I suppose Microsoft could produce a product that would comply with the standard. It would have to be a product that combined all the previous versions of MS Word/etc into one package (otherwise it is just emulating the output of the previous packages and doesn't cover all the cases of possible input).
No one else could produce such a product though, and so no one else could claim compliance with the standard. Kind of pointless as a standard, I think.
I suspect that Microsoft actually don't have the formats defined - the format is simply 'what the s/w produces'. They would have to go back and try to define the format using the source and or studying the output of the product. Sounds like an aweful lot of work to me and I'm not surprised Microsoft doesn't want to do it (if it's even possible) - assuming they don't.
Max.
Hello,
I do know about OpenFormula, but OpenFormula is not part of ODF, it is a work in progress that will eventually end up in ODF and with luck, will end up in the ISO standard.
Which was precisely my point: you can build a spreadsheet, as long as you are willing to read third-party information (source code, Excel documentation, Excel books, or OpenFormula) or you resort to the OOXML ECMA standard (ECMA, not ISO yet).
Miguel.
The original use of HTML was to create links to rich content, which in the case of CERN would be things like postscript files generated by LaTeX. Postscript has been effectively replaced by PDF files, and LaTeX has been (in)effectively replaced by word processors. The original model is still pretty good, hypertext for linking documents that are written in a markup language that expresses content and document structure and displayed in a portable display format. These are three rather different needs, although I will agree that HTML has become much better as a display language, it still isn't the equal for PDFs for print.
The Opera CTO, Hakon Wium Lie, also stated of OOXML and ODF, 'Both are basically memory dumps with angle brackets around them'. If this was true, why did the KOffice team adopt ODF before it was an ISO standard? Surely they could find more enjoyable coding problems than making KOffice able to read and write OpenOffice.org memory dumps. To me, ODF looks a lot less like a memory dump and a lot more like markup (HTML) than does OOXML.
Think global, act loco
The backwards compatibility is necessary for them to fit this new XML format into the MS Word application. Word has legacy code that they don't even know how to document, so they just tag the documents to follow that specific code path when necessary.
.doc that allows easy transition from older formats is something that MS would probably be doing anyhow. It is the standardization of it by ISO that makes no sense at all, and is only a byproduct of politics and marketing. From a technical point of view, that is no way to create a standard document format. Therefore it isn't surprising that OOXML is a poor candidate for ISO standardization, as it probably wasn't designed for that purpose in the first place, but instead was mashed into that role for other reasons.
The file format wasn't designed from scratch to be an XML document format, it was designed to be a format that MS Word could read, write, and render. That is what you get when you design the document format around the application instead of writing code with the aim of reading and writing a standard document format.
I'm sure brand new documents in OOXML format are unlikely to even have these undocumented tags, it is the ones converted to OOXML from older DOC files that will be a problem for programs like OpenOffice. So that'll leave MS as having the only office suite that can cleanly migrate your legacy documents to the new format. From an application standpoint (and vendor lockin standpoint), it actually makes a lot of sense for them to do it that way. A new XML version of
The "M$ wag" where you posted your brilliant "bubba" flamebait [msdn.com]? ... Is that it? Feels good insulting people on the internets, doesn't it? Calling them names behind their backs? For someone who complains so much about how "insulting" people who don't agree with you are, you sure know how to "dish it out" like a big tough dude. Way to go.
Well, no, I did not mention anyone in particular, nor did I point to that site where you can find the same M$ party line as you will find everywhere in the M$ press. So, no, I did not call Jones a wag. I'll wait till I know more about him to call him names. At this point, all I know is that he's working for the Beast and I feel sorry for him.
People like you, Bungi, are very insulting and you are one of many I have to put up with here. There's a whole cloud of assholes who all write the same kind of bullshit under different screen names. I post at random times, but they are always there like the paid guards they are. I'm reasonably certain that M$ pays these people, just like they paid for Steve Barkto, Compuserve BBS spam, letters from dead people against the M$ anti-trust case and so on and so forth in the info-war hall of astroturf shame.
He answered but it's a disappointing answer. I don't really feel like looking through his "many previous posts on my blog dealing with this issue." If he's got a real answer, he could point to it. Nor did I find it in his history file. Using my memory, I get an answer that's opposite his when I look at that file. In 2002, when Sun submitted to Oasis, M$ was using "XML" for a decidedly second rate html implementation. At that point, they could easily have jumped on the bandwagon and helped make something good for everyone.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Think about this... they release the nonstandard standard and push the software out to their large corporate vendors... then one of their vendors tells one of it's developers to design a tool that can parse the 50,000 documents and find all instances of the word "porn" for example.
The poor programmer causes a stink and shows his boss the set of encyclopedias that lays out the "open" format and tells him that he cannot do it because there are important peices missing.
The large corporate customer demands a refund and damages for the cost of migrating to MS Office... and switches yet again to an ODF standard. There's another major migration, this time telling the world that MS's "open" format is damaged.
MS will not die overnight... it's gonna take a constant beating before it ever adapts to, or folds under, the demands of the people to keep their information accessible.
I say, let MS keep manipulating the market. People are not stupid, I'd be willing to bet that a larger part of the people making IT related decisions are anxiously awaiting the time they can kick MS out their door... and as alternatives continue to grow in power and reputation, and MS continues to tarnish their reputation by misleading consumers, eventually they will be replaced with more consumer friendly alternatives.
A few (10 or so) years ago, I'd never touched a Mac or Linux box... now I have a couple of each, and every job I have had in the last 10 years came with the rollout of Linux server and a bunch of open source software. Even non technical people I meet in my consulting work are asking about Linux servers and Mac desktops because the heard from someone that had a good experience moving from windows.
MS is not dead, nor are they close... but they are closer than they were a few years ago. It takes a LONG time for power to shift when so much of it is wielded by one entity... but it does shift eventually.
Sometimes the best solution is to stop wasting time looking for an easy solution.
Then it's not a standard is it if it requires certification to work?
True. But I said "if Microsoft had done it right", which implied that they would have to reverse engineer their own convulted code. That's the whole irony: Microsoft set itself in the position everyone else was... documenting the undocumentable. What they did is work around it, by saying "do as that particular program does" without saying what it does because they don't know it themselves.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Sure. I absolutely agree that it is infact completely braindead for a supposedly modern file-format to include tags such as "Render however Word 5.3 on a Mac used to do it" at all. I wasn't defending it, merely stating that it *is* so, and that imho the stupid tags don't make it much harder to *write* a correct Ms-Office-xml document. (because you can simply ignore the braindead tags)
It's a non-trivial job to enumerate all possible consequences of 1900 being a leap-year, for example. One that MS has *zero* incentive to undertake. Why would they spend effort helping out their competitors.
That ISO appears poised to accept such bullshit as a "standard" is another matter entirely and a complete disgrace.
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 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.
The implication being that committees make better decisions than individuals? Please, be serious!
This should not get a score of 2.
Which is really terrible as you don't have the source code for Open Office, the driver behind ODF, oh wait, you do, so what is your point.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
> Oh that's right I forgot, ther is no real OSS community anymore
Thats funny I could have sworn I have Fedora Core 6 on my laptop. I better check:
$ uname -a
Linux helios.org.au 2.6.19-1.2911.fc6 #1 SMP Sat Feb 10 15:16:31 EST 2007 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
> Yet, ODF is just as patented and closed as OOXML
Really were did you get that from?
If you want some facts it takes 6000 pages to define the so called OOXML standard, compared to 600 pages of the ODF standard (a 10 to 1 ratio). Read into that what you may.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
twitter, please read this carefully. Following this advice will make Slashdot a better place for everyone, including yourself...
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
The main reason you should refuse to adopt Open XML is because it is not 'OPEN' in the true sense of the word. If you read Groklaw's points on it, you'll notice that the current format is closed but there is a 'covenant not to sue', the problem is that as soon as you (the programmer or your company, or OOo) extends the format or Microsoft comes along and extends or changes the format slightly for Office 2008, all those license and covenants go down the drain and the format becomes closed again, but then it will be a closed ISO standard.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Is that what you are saying? Everybody else involved in the ISO should just go away, and leave everything to one person?
Or perhaps Ms. Rachjel feels that it's better to end this charade quickly, rather than debate about it for ages, all the while allow Microsoft spokesweasels the PR bonus of claiming that they are "working with the International Standards community?"
"Fast track" just means you get a quick answer. It's a signifier of PRIORITY, not quality. You streamline the work process because it is IMPORTANT and can't wait, which this *is*. If Microsoft wants to talk, with their 90%+ market share, it is by definition important, especially with a piece of software as ubiquitous as Office. A lot of developers would like to be able to finally work seamlessly with it, instead of reverse engineering or just guessing. The protests were properly lodged now, because they need to be considered *rapidly* if fast track is to have any hope of doing what can be years of feasibility study in such a short space of time.
But "fast track" is by no means assurance of acceptance, and even acceptance is no guarantee of widespread adoption, and, in the end, if the whole "standard" is really so bad to begin with, even enthusiastic adoption *will* result in a failed implementation, and a resultant mess that will lower Microsoft's standing with their customers for decades. The more enthusiasm, the bigger the mess, in fact.
A successful standard is one that gets adopted and allows software to interoperate. Why is everyone so afraid of this abortion when it is clear that it will fail because MS doesn't recognize the *basis* of standards based design in the first place?
But this time the abortion (if it doesn't shape up) will be on Microsoft's corporate letterhead. There will be no one else they can blame for its failure.
I'd prefer that the standards process work and they fix this broken mess, of course. It's better for MS, and it's better for all developers.
--
Toro
The national bodies get to vote at the end of the 5 motnh nballot period that is now starting. The early contradictions review is not ment to block the fasttracking process by ISO. It makes it possible for the body that entered the proposal to see whether the proposal is can continue or that amendments need to be made or if the proposal better be withdrawn. As Ecma has answered the issues raised by the national bodies and seems not intent on withdrawing the proposal or amending it at this time the normal procedure would dictate the fasttrack proces continues. It could still be that during the 5 month ballot period Ecma amends the proposal if the national bodies require more than what was in Ecma's first answer. also possible is that Ecma makes a commitment to alter certain features in a future version (like OASIS is doing with ODF). For instance ecma could commit to removing bitmask from the spec in v1.1 and add additional support for iso dates in spreadhseet cells.
The Wraith http://ooxmlhoaxes.blogspot.com/
The size is not a problem. There is already a full implementation of the spec which is not the case for the much smaller ODF specification. Size does not nescesarily represent more complexity. Also in fasttracking you do not need to judge every element of the spec as you fastrack an existing standard but you need to look at thing like if this existing technology adds something additional to ISO standards and if the market can use this as a standard for office documents and if the spec contradicts the use of other ISO specs. Most complaints made by the national bodies were provoked by a mailing campaign by Groklaw to the national bodies (seeing identical issues raised). However the Groklaw issues are either not really issues or mostly non-relevant in a fastracking procedure which has no requirement to validate each element in the spec. It is good to remember that a for a complex standard like this it is unlikely that the first version is 100% correct. There is time to improve the standard in future version and ISO can pro-activly ask Ecma to commit to cwertain changes in such future version during this proces.
The Wraith http://ooxmlhoaxes.blogspot.com/
Yes, I think that was the gist of my post.
MRSH-Recording device, corned beef sandwich with kraut, seafaring bird, and the foamy top of a beverage.
The claim that MSOXML is completely unnecessary because ODF exists is quaint! Even if it were correct (and it's not an unreasonable opinion, and certainly one to which PJ is sympathetic), it ignores certain political realities. MSOXML is clearly on the table because MS wishes to avoid providing its competitors with a level playing field at all costs. The opinion would be quaint no matter who said it! World power or otherwise. So why don't you take the bloody chip of your shoulder, old chap?
Who cares about writing though? Isn't the point of all this that you should be able to read the documents without having to pay Microsoft?
They've already got a lock on the market. The only reason they're bothering with this stuff is because some governments and companies have laws/rules stating documents need to be stored in an ISO standard format. Those rules and laws exist to guarantee the ability to read those documents. The only piece of software that should care at all about being able to write OpenXML files is Microsoft Office. If you're not using Office, why would you care that you are capable of writing a file that can be read by it?
"If you're not using Office, why would you care that you are capable of writing a file that can be read by it?"
Because, oh! brave new world, you might need to *modify* it.
I don't see how modifying it bestows some requirement to save the modified document in the original format...
Because _it's_not_your_document_. The owner might want to furtherly work on it... on the format he manages because he uses -gasp, Microsoft Word (someone had to, since the document ended up being Ms Doc format).