Stephane Rodriguez Dismantles Open XML

Elektroschock writes "Stephane Rodriguez, a reengineering specialist who became popular for his article on MS Office 2007 binary data, now comprehensively debunks Microsoft's new Open XML format. With small case studies he demonstrates the impossible challenges third-party developers will face. His conclusion: it is 'defective by design.' Next week members of the International Standard Organization are likely to approve the format as a second official ISO standard for office documents, even though most nations have submitted comments. Rodriguez claims he is 'not affiliated to any pro-MS or anti-MS party/org[anization]/ass[ociation].'"

Comments

Re:This is not proof of OOXML being defective by d

[David Gerard]

OOXML is a theoretically perfect standard that just happens to have no implementations whatsoever.

Re:Can anyone repro?

[gardyloo]

Interesting experiment. However, I suggest you do not title your posts "Can anyone repro?" on Slashdot. The answers you get may be, well, .... exciting and very, very scary.

Re:This is not proof of OOXML being defective by d

[orcrist]

Did it ever occur to you that the Office 2007 was finished before the OOXML spec was? Remember, there were many changes in ECMA comittee long after Office 2007 was finalized.

My guess is, yes, it occurred to the poster you were responding to, since I highly doubt that when he wrote exactly that, it was in his sleep. Did it occur to you that reading his post all the way to the end might have resulted in slightly less of your foot being inserted into your mouth? ;-)