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."

Comments

You won't get what you want from MS Office XML

[twitter]

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.

Re:hmm

[MoogMan]

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".

The new references the old and is just as bad.

[twitter]

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.