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de lcaza calls OOXML a "Superb Standard"
you-bet-it's-not-out-of-context writes "A blogger on KDE Developer's Journal has found an interesting post by Miguel de Icaza, the founder of GNOME and Mono, in a Google group dedicated to the discussion of his blog entries. Six days ago Miguel stated that 'OOXML is a superb standard and yet, it has been FUDed so badly by its competitors that serious people believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with it.' In the same post he says that to avoid patent problems over Silverlight, when using or developing Mono's implementation (known as Moonlight), i's best to 'get/download Moonlight from Novell which will include patent coverage.'"
The developers had a conference on the Brain Slug Planet. Miguel liked it so much he decided to stay of his own free will.
I wonder how much Microsoft paid Miguel to say this.
Can it be verified that it really was him posting that?
KDE, here I come.
I know this is a kdawson slashtroll, but does it happen to be true?
Hey Miggy, how much $$$$ did microsoft deposit into your swiss bank account for spewing that kind of utter fucking bullshit? You are one sad motherfucker.
You don't have to put on that Silverlight...
I'm sorry, Miguel, but this is getting weirder and weirder. You may be a sierra-hotel coder, but I'm not sure that translates into authority to make legal commitments on behalf of Microsoft.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I'm sure the real Miguel is able to see the obvious technical deficiencies of OOXML.
I'll think about getting it from Novell....as soon as MS hands over the list of "patent violations". IMHO, this is just a try to make the "If it's Novell/MS, it's legal" line of shite more palatable.
If you're going to try to feed us a crap sandwich, do NOT tell us it's filet mignon.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
...the standard is superb - superbly arrogant!
SURELY NOT!!!!!
Little things like this in the spec make it less than superb:
Table like Word95
Only Microsoft has that information. No one else can implement this "superb" standard like MS can.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
Tell me it ain't so Miguel!
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
-But, why must you confront him?
-Because, there is good in him. I've felt it. He won't turn us over to the Emperor. I can save him. I can turn him back to the good side. I have to try.
We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us
Enough of your bull with patent-covered Mono, SilverLight, and OOXML. Something that is born to crawl will not fly, don't fool yourself and others. Farewell!
that miguel releases under a true oss licence should be treated with extreme caution and prejudice. Who knows where this guys eyes have been. All of his code is tainted as far as I'm concerned, unfortunately any Novell contributer should be treated in the same light as well. This SOB is on the microsoft payroll and it will come back to haunt the oss community in a few years.
First Mono. Now he wants us to download stuff from a specific vendor to get patent protection. And finally he thinks a standard that has hundreds of pages of backward compatibility modes for 10 year old apps is a good standard? Is there anyone not ignoring him completely yet?
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Well, yeah I'm not too surprised. I mean, de Icaza has kind of followed the Microsoft line for quite a while.
.NET reimplementation, which de Icaza also said was the shit, really talked up how everything for .NET was going to be completely cross-platform, honest.
I don't know how gnome is internally designed NOW, but at one point de Icaza had decided COM was the best thing since sliced bread, and was making a COM-workalike for Gnome to use.
Mono is a
So, having him say that OOXML is really great does not surprise me at all. I won't call him a Microsoft troll or shill, because I think he believes it, but it does keep in line with his view on other Microsoftian technologies.
Miguel has been fascinated with Microsoft since long before he started writing Gnome, and that fascination shows no signs of having waned. Unfortunately, while it allows him to see the good things MS has done in a clearer way than many of those in the free software world, it also tends to give him a bit of a blind spot where some of their deficiencies are concerned.
If that is the same Miguel, it is fun how things have changed since the KDE license issue that gave birth to GNOME. Fun fun fun.
Or maybe just abstruse like the captcha.
Miguel is a regular troll/shill on /. so no surprise here.
You have now officially jumped the shark!
You're technically competent, so what part of "AlignLikeMicrosoftWord98ForMac" is a good standard, eh? How much did you cost? I'd really like to know, I need a stripper for the bacherlor party of a gay mate of me...
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
... he's doing his master's bidding and getting paid. That's all he likely cares about.
Seeing this article made me wince, like when I see a skateboarder about to break twelve bones. The coming violence that we're going to see in this thread is giving me sympathy pains. Miguel is going to get savaged here.
First and foremost specs need to be judged on their own merits not on who likes or does not like them.
Secondly what exactly does mono and a windowing system have in common with ooxml? I don't see the overlap?
Why does this remind me of Mr Hawkings lecturing us to build spaceships and leave earth before its too late?
Maybe the opposite is Uninformed Praise and Optimism (UPO).
It seems he hasn't read about how you can "look but not touch" when it comes to the internal data. An expert in the Office format recently proved you could modify the xml in the new Office formats but Office would complain and not load it.
The fact that it's XML seems to only benefit the world in one way, it compresses nicer.
Before everyone starts flaming Miguel, bear in mind that this story was posted by kdawson who has a less than stellar record of posting inflammatory non-stories whose sole source of reference is usually a sketchy blog post, forum comment, or usenet posting.
"What kind of music do pirates listen to?" -Paul Maud'dib
"Yeeeaaarrrrr n' Bee!!" -Stilgar, Leader of Sietch Tabr
I could be off topic, but... Why the hel. can't the sane people agree on a basic version on things. Then the rest of us can argue about what tweak we fancy. This will/could lead to an end of all this shi. that remind me of Babylon. (I/we am/are better than you because I/we like mine/our basic better than your basic) For some: GROW UP!
Considering all the love between Miguel and Microsoft, why isn't he an outright MS hire making gobs of smack? Maybe he's more valuable as a mole attempting inject MS IP into GNU/Linux?
I think this whole thing started as a lifelong campaign to overcome an inferiority complex induced by failing to become an outright Microsoft hire. He's going to show them, and us, and everyone! He's going to be the next Bill Gates! What better way to get there than by following in the master's footsteps: spend countless coffee fueled hours copying someone else's work so you can call it your own and then try to build an empire on top of it. The next head of MS isn't going to rise through the ranks like all of the other MS peons, he's going to sidestep that whole awful business. He's going to get his attention by being as Machiavellian and ruthless as Bill himself. Anyone ever wonder why MS doesn't just pounce on him? Because they're grooming him...
The only other possibility that I can see is that he's just plain stupid, which doesn't appear to be the case.
Miguel is like the mentally challenged relative that everybody smiles at lovingly when he speaks as he is sitting in a pool of his own urine.
At what point are we going to treat him as an adult and tell him he is either out of his freaking mind or so far up the Microsoft orifice that he cant see the light of day anymore?
Mono always left me a nauseous feeling and I tried not to attack Miguel because of his work with GNOME but I think we've past the point where he was harmless and maybe misguided.
Yes Miguel, we all get our technical news from Groklaw because you obviously think that everyone who doesnt agree with you is an FSFer. Check the comments from AROUND the planet this past few weeks from people who've studied the specs and you might be shocked to find out a few things.
Had this been signed by Bill Hilf, I wouldnt have said a word, its part of his job description but Miguel was supposed to be one of 'us'.
Watch as his language starts incorporating more and more of the key phrases that Microsoft execs repeat like a mantra.
A buddy on IRC just mentioned that Miguel must have been very unpopular as a kid and is now trying to fit in with the older, cool kids. And whenever that situation used to happen in school, the dweebs who try to 'fit' in usually come across as ackward, clumsy and borderline retarded.
Just like Mig.
And forget folks, Novell is the best distro out there because they have patent protection.
F U Miguel.
Sincerely,
Lyle Howard Seave
Sorry that you aren't able to compete.
i got nothing smart to post, just a loud f u to a ms shill.
Systemd: the PulseAudio of init systems
The criticism is not new. From the beginning there has been controversy in the open source community about these efforts to clone proprietary Microsoft APIs.
I'm just sayin'.
. . . here before starting a flamefest.
I'll paste it here to make sure those averse to clicking on links can read it too (anonymously even so you don't say I'm karma whoring):
Hello,
On 9/10/07, martin.schlan...@gmail.com wrote:
> On 6 Sep., 07:37, "Miguel de Icaza" wrote:
> > OOXML is a superb standard and yet, it has been
> > FUDed so badly by its competitors that serious people believe that
> > there is something fundamentally wrong with it. This is at a time when
> > OOXML as a spec is in much better shape than any other spec on that
> > space.
> Michael Meeks didn't seem to think so at FOSDEM 2007.
That is odd. Michael and I have discussed this topic extensively. He certainly would like clarification in various areas and more details in some. But Michael's criticism (or for that matter, the Novell OpenOffice team working with that spec) seems to be incredibly different than the laundry list of issues that pass as technical reviews in sites like Groklaw.
The difference is that the Novell-based criticism is based on actually trying to implement the spec. Not reading the spec for the sake of finding holes that can be used in a political battle.
Finally, Michael sounded incredibly positive after the ECMA meeting last month when all of their technical questions were either answered or added to the batch of things to review. I know you are going to say "The spec is not owned by ECMA", well, currently the working group that will review the ISO comments is at ECMA.
For another view at OOXML look at what Jody Goldberg (no longer a Novell employee) has to say about OOXML and ODF from the perspective of implementing both:
http://blogs.gnome.org/jody/2007/09/10/odf-vs-oox-asking-the-wrong-questions/
I find it hilarious that the majority (not all) of the criticism for OOXML comes from people that do not have to write any code that interacts with OOXML. Those that know do not seem to mind (except those whose personal business is at risk because Microsoft moved away from a binary format to an
XML format, which I also find hilarious).
> >Will I have to suffer
> > > the shadow of Microsoft patents over Silverlight when using or
> > > developing Moonlight?
> > Not as long as you get/download Moonlight from Novell which will include
> > patent
> > coverage.
> You're saying two things here that really shock me. Please tell me I
> misunderstood.
1) You're saying that people _will_ have patent problems - i.e.
> Moonlight "infringes" MS patents and doesn't work around them. Even
> though Novell promised never to ship code that infringes MS patents -
> but always avoid them one way or another.
First of all, am not aware of such Novell promise to "never ship code that infringes MS patents". You can not make such statement because for one, the patent system is broken. Novell statements are wildly different, they are of the form "we do not believe that we infringe" and am sure they say something along the lines of "we dont plan on infringing, and we plan on removing infringing code". But I am not aware of all the promises Novell has made, and I can not comment on other parts of the organization. If you want an official answer, my personal blog on politics and poor attempts at humor is not the place to get an official answer. Contact Novell public relations for that.
But you might be referring to the policy that we use for Mono, and I will be happy to discuss those with you. The policies are on our FAQ, so you might want to read that before you post in panic again.
Moonlight does not have the same policy that Mono does in terms of us working around to remove infringing c
I slashdot so desperate for stories (at least those that will prompt endless Microsoft-bashing) that a simple post to Google Groups is worth the front page? Heaven help us.
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
I've seen this over and over, not only in the tech field. Somebody who is "highly respected" by a great number of people, because of technical proficiency, wisdom, or what have you, expresses an opinion that a lot of people disagree with.
One can disagree with someone without losing sight of their strengths, and respect someone's strengths without losing sight of their weaknesses. In this case: just because someone is technically proficient, that doesn't mean he's wise.
I don't consider depending on standards that Microsoft (or any company) controls "wise", whether that's OOXML, CIL, or Silverlight. Miguel's score on the subject is public knowledge.
The criticism is not new. From the beginning there has been controversy in the open source community about these efforts to clone proprietary Microsoft APIs. I'm just sayin'.
Okay. But clearly, quite a few commenters here do NOT respect de Icaza, and seem to just want to bash him. Okay, we get the point -- you don't like the guy. Can we move on please?
lol man, you made my day. And it is 1:45 am in the morning =o)
Thanks!
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Use his stuff or don't. It's not like all the coding talent in the world is being exhausted on his projects. I have no interest in .NET or Mono, and what's it to you if other people do?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Now, to put this in perspective: Jim Mason (of Oak Ridge National Laboratory) isn't on one side or the other, but has been doing document-format specifications for a looooong time -- he was, I believe, the founding chair of SC34 and had a hand in the creation of SGML. The dude knows documents, he knows standards, and when he writes
I'm inclined to take his word for it than Miguel's.Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Somewhere, there is a blog entry which reads:
"I have learned the designs of Lord Ballmer, and I now am Gnome of the Many Colors!"
This is my sig.
I've long wondered what to make of Miguel: (1) Genuine advocate of free software sincerely trying to improve it through better compatibility with software's dominant force, or (2) corrupted Microsoft whore trying to contaminate free software and lure it into a patent minefield?
If Miguel really did say this, then it lays to rest all uncertainty in my mind about this question.
First they vote down OOXML, then next week they announce they are giving code to Open Office.
Some reasons why OOXML is unacceptable:
:P
OOXML is wholly un-XML-ish.
It doesn't re-use existing ISO and W3C standards, whose behaviors have already been publicly vetted.
Its licensing is still quite unacceptable, especially in its lack of clarity.
Look, Miguel, I know you love MS and all, and I guess I can at least partially tolerate that, but keep the fellatio behind closed doors, OK?
You fucking piece of shit.
> In summer of 1997, he was interviewed by Microsoft for a job in the Internet Explorer Unix team (to work on a SPARC port), but lacked the university degree required to obtain a work H-1B visa. He declared in an interview that he tried to convince his interviewers to free the IE code even before Netscape did with their own browser.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Icaza
> Miguel de Icaza has received the Free Software Foundation 1999 Award for the Advancement of Free Software, the MIT Technology Review Innovator of the Year Award 1999, and was named one of Time Magazine's 100 innovators for the new century in September 2000.
Awards for Innovation, blimey,
GNOME - puke
Gnumeric - puke again
Midnight Commander - I'm wretching now, don't mention Ximian & Mono, I'll bust my ring
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
"it could be argued that's a deficiency in the Office implementation of the format, not the format itself."
Doesn't matter. MS will be viewed as the "standard" and if a file won't load then the file will be blamed, not Microsoft.
The whole point of XML is to be human readable and editable with a simple text editor. It seems that if you try to edit Excel worksheets by hand then Excel will refuse to load them.
The link:
http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/2007/08/microsoft-office-xml-formats-defective.html
No sig today...
I must say Microsoft + Novell's strategy is absolutely brilliant. Microsoft's announcement that Silverlight would be fully supported on Linux because of their partnership with Novell reminds me of a classic Chess gambit, offering a small sacrifice of material to gain a superior strategic position. Of course 'fully supported' comes with the small print that you have to lock into a distribution system that still feeds Microsoft revenue, and enables them to gradually gain control over a competing platform. Fighting Adobe and GNU/Linux at the same time, with one integrated product/patent package! The architects of this strategy must be Ballmer's favorite employees.
The countless apologists and pragmatists will have the standard laundry list of reasons why its no-big-deal and how the biggest barrier to Free Software is an antagonistic attitude, etc, etc, but the actions of Microsoft and its partners are transparently designed with "control and capture" as their goal, not "collaborate". A hypothetical next step: MS provides proprietary tools for SLED to allow it to read and write OOXML documents, available "free" to all SLED users who are also hold Windows/Office licenses. The model of using patent protected proprietary components distributed under special-purpose licenses to dance around the GPL is being implemented and extended.
Read the fucking link, instead of ripping on the guy for selectively chosen comments without their supporting context and explanation.
(a) He says OOXML is great not because the specification itself is a work of engineering genius, but because out in the Real World is easier to implement than ODF. That might not be for a good reason (OOXML is similar to existing World formats in structure, and so existing code is easily modified to use it, where ODF requires an entirely new approach and so is far harder to add to existing software), but it's certainly a different story than Miguel just blindly loving the OOXML spec.
(b) The patent protection claim is exactly what it sounds like, except for the fact that there are NO known parents which Moonlight or Mono infringe. It's a simple of matter of, "if something comes up, we won't sue your customers." Those same companies (Microsoft and the MPEGLA group) are still totally free to sue the developers and companies behind FFMPEG, Linux, GNOME, KDE, Apache, X.org, OpenOffice.org, etc. Nothing about the protection Novell offers will increase the risk of those lawsuits - all it does is decrease the risk for people who download from them. It's a nice gesture that some suit-wearing types give a fuck about, and the rest of us are free to ignore just like we ignore the patent minefield for every other project, all of which are guaranteed to be infringing _something_.
(c) The article submitter is a sensationalist jackass.
Until they decide to drop the patent whammy bomb. Sure you can get the code "free speech", but no place does it state that it is "free beer" always. And there is no time provision for patent claims. Feelin' lucky are ya?
as always, the fine print rules
Icaza is a thoroughgoing Microsoft shill.
OOXML is objectively horrible/unworkable as a "standard" and if Icaza's attitude is reflective of (or impacts) Novell's then IMO what little FOSS credibility and good standing Novell had will have vanished.
It seems Mono has become a non-starter and he needs another way to grab attention.
I made that comment on my blog because that reflects my personal opinion. You really need to obsess over something else.
And before someone brings up the Microsoft connection, you should know that Novell official policy is to actively endorse ODF and that Novell's position on OOXML is neutral. My employer does not engage in any advocacy for or against OOXML (but folks in engineering work on OOXML support for OO.org).
My opinions are my own, they do not represents the views of my employer.
Now, speaking purely personally.
I consider OOXML to be a pretty good standard all things considered, as I said back in January or February I did not agree with a lot of the criticism that was aimed at OOXML. The quality of the critique was not very high, and it so far has consisted of throwing as much mud as possible and waiting to see what sticks, and what sticks repeat it a thousand times.
If these critiques were aimed at Linux or open source, we would be justly up in arms about the criticism being sloppy and having very little to stand on. I went into some detail back in January:
http://tirania.org/blog/archive/2007/Jan-30.html
Some of my opinions are based on the work that I did in Gnumeric many years ago.
Before there was any agreements between Microsoft and Novell, I was part of ECMA and when Microsoft initiated the OOXML specification process, it was me that got Novell's OpenOffice.org hackers to attend the meetings. At the time my goal was to extract as much information as possible from Microsoft because of the history we had with Gnumeric.
Michael Meeks and Jody Goldberg were some of the guys that went and attended the ECMA meetings. From all the issues that were presented to ECMA, Novell was the second issue raiser (behind Microsoft's own QA of the spec), and it was all largely thanks to Jody's diligent review of the spec. From all the issues raised to date, on the latest status report only one issue had not been addressed (118 or 180, I can not recall anymore). Am personally proud that Jody and Michael made Microsoft add ~650 pages or so to the spec that documented the formulas (one of the things we struggled a lot with in the Gnumeric days). And all of this happened before the Novell/Microsoft agreement. Our interest at the time was: lets get the most information we can get out of this spec to be able to interop.
So from that standpoint, I think that the folks at ECMA have done a pretty good job of addressing the issues raised by those that were implementing it.
The specification can be criticized on various levels, from critical issues, to mild issues, and in a way the distributed effort to stop OOXML helped debug the spec and raise the issues that need to be clarified.
There is certainly a number of critical issues that must be addressed, and it seems from every comment that Brian makes on his blog, that ECMA and Microsoft are committed to resolving those issues. I would not have noticed them, so in that regard the anti-OOXML camp has done a great job in terms of finding problems in the spec.
But the majority of the criticism falls in other categories:
mild, but conflated by a pedantic outrage over it ranging from OH MY GOD THEY USE A BITFIELD THAT IS JUST SO-NOT-XML (am using caps to encapsulate the outrage in an actual discussion when an acquaintance of mine lost it)
misinformed (Stephane Rodriguez shotting himself in the foot and asking "why does it bleed?", his document is making the rounds, and I have debunked it here: http://developers.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=279895&cid=20363627 and someone else on CodeProject or in Slashdot had to explain to him with sticks and balls his mistakes).
misrepresentation, like people claim that you must obtain a license from Microsoft to implement OOXML, that is simply not
I think they are laughing their asses off at how much this guy is willing to screw over open source developers. Microsoft did not pick Novell for their sucker license for nothing. Because of Mono and its ties to Microsoft's patented MS .Net software, they already had the suckers and then they were able to make them think the deal was all about Microsoft wanting interoperability with Suse Linux. Yup, all was smelling like roses to Novell and they never knew the stink bomb was that last minute little thing about patent protection. Nope, they never saw it coming and Miguel is as blinded by Microsoft's spell as he's ever been. And with Novell still approving of this, WTF are they thinking? It appears there's still no intelligent life at Novell.
What idiots for even thinking anything with Microsoft would be good for anybody but Microsoft. IMO.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I have been following the OOXML saga fairly closely; from Rob Weir's blog, to the NO-OOXML site (admitedly that is a rather partisan site, but I've found the technical arguments presented there generally to be both verifiable and compelling), and the Standards Blog, by Andy Updegrove who seems to know his stuff (which is bizarre since he is also a lawyer, but I guess he came from a parallel universe). I've also looked at sections of the spec myself, and I agree with the major technical criticisms; aside from being redundant in that there is already an ISO standard that could -- with well defined extensions -- cover everything Microsoft wants to include (ie, the backwards compatibility stuff), the OOXML document is a poorly worded draft of a 'standard' that is incomplete, inconsistent, and not ready for standardization.
By usual ISO standards (if it hadn't been submitted on the fast-track), it would be at the stage of a 'committee draft', with at least a couple of years of serious effort into working it into something useable. This is the process that ODF, along with most other ISO standards, went though, and if OOXML makes it through without a similar amount of scrutiny, ISO will have egg on their faces.
For Miguel to say it is a 'superb standard' means he either hasn't read it or followed the technical discussions (in which case he deserves the panning he will get for making such a clueless statement), or he really has sold out, in which case he deserves exile.
Well, let's take a look at one company's deployment of Office 2007 to 25,000 workstations. Oh, what's that? It's still crap? Figures.
Yes, the information should help people interoperate with Microsoft. But all the parts they're keeping from us are important. They want to control de facto standards and keep all other ISVs at second-tier status without having to make good products.
People would be better off with standards not controlled by any one company. Even if Microsoft were the most benevolent company in the world, there's no excuse for giving another company the power to hold your documents hostage in this day and age. And it's about time that people realized that, especially when Microsoft has intentionally perverted standards like ACPI to harm Linux.
The PDF link above is just for proof. Here's a transcript of the PDF so you don't have to view it unless you don't believe me:
This is certainly true, at least partially. What impact has Mono had on the linux community? From where I sit, none at all. It isn't installed on my machine, I've never seen it in action, I don't know of anyone who has used it, and I don't even know what it offers.
Before you jump up and say "well, that is because you've been living in a cave with a windows 3.1 laptop for the last 6 years", no, I am a programmer, I use linux both at work and at home, I compile my own system with Gentoo Linux or straight from source, and I'm always trying out new stuff. But I've never come across anything that involved Mono.
"It should be added that de Icaza is a Novell VP"
And yet his blog sounds like it's written by someone very young. Consider this from his answer to a post on his site:
"You do not have to pay anyone any money. Duh.
Nobody said so. Either English is not your first language, or your reading
and comprehension skills are busted.
Miguel."
Is that what passes for civility and adult behavior at Novell from a VP? I must say I'm a bit surprised.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Thanks, Miguel. You make it very clear: all code downloaded from Novell must now be regarded as (Microsoft) patent encumbered.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
>Miguel is going to get savaged here.
Miguel as Marsellus Wallace you mean?
Well, you quoted my posts out of context(I provided a *lot* of context).
So it is not surprising that you arrive to the wrong conclusions. I wont repeat it here, all the explanations are in the blog comments.
Miguel.
Just put him in charge already! Mono is probably MS's future anyhow.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
Well, for once, I want a microsoft technology to succeed (read: hopefully, in the long run, replace flash). I'd rather have an open source implementation of a microsoft invention then some proprietary binary (like linux flash). If Macromedia decided to open source the flash player, then, sure, I'd favour them :)
Yo creo que en estos casos no vale la pena discutir, y mucho menos con el tipo de gente que comenta en este sitio. Afortunadamente existen algunas pocas personas que reconocen el tono inflamatorio y amarillista de esta historia.
So there you have it, a mouthful of personal opinions. I bet you wanted to spend your time doing something else, like making out with your girlfriend (haha, just kidding, if you actually reading my opinion on OOXML you have no girlfriend to make out with).
Oh vamos Miguel, habiendo estado tanto tiempo en slashdot creo que debes saber cuál es la inclinación de las personas que comentan aquí... no tiene sentido enojarse.
Atte.
Un Pobrecito Hablador.
I notice that in the very same Google Groups thread, Miguel makes a post that refers to what Gnumeric dev Jody Goldberg has to say regarding ODF and OOXML.
According to Jody Goldberg's blog entry, implementing the fundamentals of OOXML took only a few days, and that implementing ODF "was significantly more difficult" than implementing OOXML. Jody also says, "ODF's model of 'chartness' didn't fit well with Gnumeric."
Is this not contrary to ODF proponents' claim that ODF is equally suitable for all word processors and spreadsheets to implement? That it doesn't favor any particular spreadsheet implementation (i.e. OO.o) over any other? That it was built from the ground up to be app-neutral, and that this is app-neutrality is a virtue that OOXML lacks (since OOXML of course favors MS Office)? What say you to Jody Goldberg?
Not that Novell or former-Novell employees think that OOXML is perfect. But I think Miguel has it right, for in that same Google Groups post, he writes,
(I'm guessing that the latter comment regarding persons whose business is at risk due to MS moving away from binary formats refers to often-quoted OOXML basher Stepen Rodriguez, who has been blasting/FUDing OOXML, but who has a business based on maintaining XL spreadheets in the old binary format.)
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
What is this interop you speak of? Our company upgraded to Exchange 2007 a year ago and I haven't been able to use Evolution and the Exchange connector since. My experience is that ever since this interoperability money changed hands interoperability has suffered.
... or at least he might as well be one. Even as far back as 1999 at his rambling incoherent talk at Ottawa Linux Symposium, it was obvious that Miguel was in love with himself and with MSFT and hated anything UNIXy. He has about as much credibility left as ESR.
Yes, very interesting. Jody says: "I did not comment on the quality of the formats. That will come up later."
What did Jody actually say? That OOXML was easier to support because Gnumeric already supported the XLS format. Which does nothing to address the relative merits of having a format like OOXML standardized under the terms with which Microsoft wishes to standardize it.
Oh my God, they used a bitfield to encapsulate Microsoft-proprietary extensions like VBA rather than standardizing them as well. (Proper capitalization used to represent more somber tone of retort.)
That's right. It's Microsoft's job to pay off officials, exert political pressure, and abuse due process to ensure that OOXML is forced into consumer hands before ODF catches hold.
A disingenuous argument at best. The ODF format supports those same four applications, plus a bit more. 1,500 per application is huge in comparison. Even if we assume that it's 700 per application, it's STILL huge when compared to 867 for ALL applications.
That being said, I don't mind long specifications if they are long for a good reason. Being long because ancient cruft is being supported for no real reason is not a "good" reason at all.
ODF is predicated on the ideals of KISS, interoperability, and long-term data storage and retrieval. OOXML is predicated on the concept of converting Microsoft formats to an XML description. While the latter may be a nice goal for Microsoft, it does not conform the the former ideals required for an international standardization effort.
I'm sorry Miguel. I've disagreed with you in the past, but I can't even begin to fathom your position in this matter.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Mmmmm beer.
It will never be open if the codecs are not open.
Oh, well, if that crazy Mexican says it's superb then it MUST be!
hmm, does Nat hate it?
Microsoft's Office XML Standard is clearly bad in a number of respects: unnecessary deviation from established standards, encapsulation of binary formats, and backwards compatibility with obsolete MS Office formats. It does, however, indeed have the advantage that it's easier to import for code that's already been written to import the old binary formats. On the other hand, it's just as clearly harder to process using XML tools.
Now, the question is: are the primary use cases for which we should design an XML office format office suite input/output routine, or are the primary use cases XML processing.
Well, let's see: there are half a dozen office suites around: MS, Gnome, KDE, Apple, and a couple of commercial ones. Each of those needs to implement a reader/writer once. On the other hand, there are thousands of uses and implementors for information extraction and transformation of office documents.
Seems pretty clear to me that we should optimize XML office formats for XML processing, not for the convenience of the implementors of office suites. And that, in a nutshell, is why Microsoft's office format is worse than ODF.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
So-called "open source leaders" are often experts only on the software they are developing; their opinions on anything other software, legal issues, politics are worth no more and no less than those of anybody else.
When they have a case of foot-in-mouth, unfortunately, they hurt not just themselves but also the projects they are responsible for. Miguel's silly statements about OOXML now add yet more suspicions to the Mono project and its relations to Microsoft and give other people and companies ammunition for FUD.
So, Miguel, Linus, etc.: please stick to using your name and reputation for talking about the projects you're responsible for and are clearly experts on. You do everybody a favor if you post other opinions or rants under a pseudonym.
Linus T. made some very bad comments about C++ this week.
Things like this show just how out of touch these people can be.
No sig today...
I'm going to have to say that yes, yes it is. Although it may be somewhat sensationalized, the man DOES own a Zune. I repeat, Miguel de Icaza owns a Zune! If that isn't worthy of a pointless Slashdot flamewar, or at least a paddling, I don't know what is.
Your friend Jody, who works on Gnumeric, who therefor has oodles of experience coping with MS file formats and has code libraries that have been under development for many years to deal with such things, found that he could parse OOXML into something usable in a short amount of time.
Try that again, only this time start from scratch. 7-8 hours on plane plus a untold thousands of hours of previous work - so what was the point about how "easy" OOXML was again?
The rest of the world is not interested in giving official "standard" status to something which is so transparently an effort to promote MS patent and licensing encumbered formats. The MS marketing machine can shout "OPEN" and "STANDARD" all day long, but that does not make it so. Remove the encumbrances, and truly promote interoperability, and then we'll talk. Until then, OOXML is just another MS hook in the mouth. I've gotten rid of those, thank you very much, and I don't want more.
Would you denigh that OOXML is about vendor locking? Politicking the ISO process to create a standard that vendor locks? Can't you see the irony there?
It seems like you've got a big blind spot - perhaps you should take a few more cynical pills. OOXML will just create more money for MS, and push a whole bunch of unnecessary work on the rest of the world - and possibly not solve the problem of a black whole in hour history because of outdated locked vendor formats.
Given that it may be possible to modify ODF (or use it as is) as a perfect fidelity format for Office documents - and the murky process through which OOXML has been shoved down developers throughts - can you come up with some coherent rational explination on how the world is a better place because MS decided to make everything just slightly incompatible unless you use their software? Speaking strictly from a $$$ point of view, the work to use ODF as a perfect MS-Office format is already well under way.
Think hard before you speak, because what we do in life matters.
if you actually reading my opinion on OOXML you have no girlfriend to make out with
Once you actually get a girlfriend, and get in the habit of regular sex, you find out that there's more to life than just getting laid. Think of a genuine highlight in your own life... was it associated with greed? anger? an orgasm? Hint: only a miserable person would answer yes.
Like all pain, suffering is a signal that something isn't right
Who actually cares if it is a good standard? Is it any better than the current standard? Why do we need another standard of the same shit?
You don't know where it's been (and it's probably better that way).
I know that All Things Microsoft is something you want Linux to aspire to.
And that's your right.
But OOXML is NOT a good standard. And no amount of apologetics on your part is going to make the open source community come to believe otherwise.
Developing tools for interop? Yeah, nice, that's something we SHOULD do.
Standardizing on a faux-open format like OOXML? Nope. Sorry, we may be crazy, but we're not STUPID!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
a good idea, Silverlight is just another MS "me too" effort like the Zune, never liked Novell buying their way into to the Linux game and now we can officially ignore Miguel.
fsck you, you can go straight to hell...
this comment is probably redundant and will most likely modded as a troll but i felt i had to say it in response to his comment about ooxml
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Yes, OOXML might not be great enough to be the end of all our problems; but look at it for what it is. More interoptability with Microsoft software than has ever been given to us before, if we destroy this we'll be back to looking at .xls files in a hex editor.
Take this one for the team, we can get a properly documented and designed spec to win the war later on when the depandancy on Microsoft has been weakened by OOXML.
VISTA
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
That's the key point in my mind, and what's been bothering me about much of this. It appears to me as a potential user of the spec (in my case transform of word processor docs) that as potential international standards they both stink. They're both tied to particular implementations and make decisions that simplify the use of the format with that implementation rather than seeking a representation that's clearer and easier to work with. It seems more like an OpenOffice-vs-MS-Office issue than an ODF vs OOXML one.
As a work documenting a format the OOXML spec is clearly massively superior. It's detailed, comprehensive, and nobody's screaming about inaccuracy yet either. The holes in the ODF spec are well known.
As a format I don't much like either of them. Then again, I'm not writing a spreadsheet or word processor - I'm only processing the data these apps produce for use in our in-house tools. As such I see much in the OOXML format I like, in particular that it makes room for preserving 3rd party XML in documents (a lack I find annoying in ODF and by extension OpenOffice). People argue that this lack is by design and intended to prevent "Embrace and Extend" - something I find nigh incomprehensible. To my mind the reverse is true, in that if a clean extension mechanism is provided there's no need to butcher the core format to do what you have to or make a whole new format to work around the inflexibility of the old one.
What bothers me is that as international standards neither seem satisfactory. Both are immature, insufficiently widely implemented, and based on a particular app's needs rather than trying to reach a generally useful format. ODF should not have been standardized, and standardizing OOXML to make up for that seems like a similarly awful idea.
On a side note, the fact that I've seen criticism of OOXML because it _doesn't_ store localized dates etc is just amazing. Do these people hand-translate their source code too, and write apps with XML element translation tables so that they can treat <file> and <datei> as the same thing? Does the German localized version of their app even read their English app's files? Picking one representation and sticking to it (be it US English in source code, or ISO dates in a file format) is the only sane way to do it, as you'll be well aware. The fact that people picked this argument up was the main thing that made me start questioning the anti-OOXML folks.
It still strikes me as a terrible idea to standardize it (it's a business ploy, much like the ISO standardization of ODF was more about marketing and politics than technology) but it looks like it might be an OK format to work with.
Then again, I'm a sysadmin & internal developer who maintains (not by choice) a large number of different platforms. I'm used to senseless zealotry from Linux people, Windows people and Mac people, all of whom make demonstrably false and often nonsensical claims about their favoured platforms and the ones they see as "opposed". This affair seems like much the same sort of thing.
de Icaza is hardly an impartial commentator on the quality of OOXML because he has a vested interest in its success. Personally, I wonder how he resolves the conflict between the principles of free software and the principles of selling out to Microsoft.
Does anyone else see the blazing hypocrisy here? de Icaza created the GNOME project in to provide a free-as-in-beer alternative to the supposed un-free-as-in-beer nature of the Qt libraries underneath KDE, and now he's telling us that binary-only codecs, .Net, Silverlight, Moonlight are acceptable?
Bah.
I just interviewed for a new SysAdmin position (which I got thankfully) where I would be responsible for both Linux and Windows servers, though the Linux servers are more mission-critical. So during the peer-interview portion when I was asked about relevant experience, I started with all my *nix experience, to which one of the current SysAdmins responded that Linux is programmed by a bunch of teenage turds who probably don't know anything about anything, and no one in their right mind puts Linux on servers, or anything critical. He went on to explain that every Microsoft product has been perfect out of the box, and all the problems in the world are caused by third-party people who can't properly write drivers or apps for Microsoft platforms.
When I asked for a correction (because I thought all their mission-critical stuff was Linux) he said, "hell, no! I've seen the windows on those boxes and stuff" to which his coworker corrected him, and said they were all Linux. He was confused, and they had to explain to him that Linux was capable of a GUI, to which he insisted it wasn't.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
How can anyone praise a standard like OOXML?
It's like praising a book on recipes with instructions that go:
'Bake the cake just like Aunt "Word 95" Marge used to do it', but doesn't actually tell you how.
It's ok if the recipe is just a single joke the editors allowed through to amuse the readers.
But if MANY of the recipes are like that, it's not a "superb" recipe book, it's not even a recipe book.
OOXML is not a "superb standard", whether it is even a standard at all could be debated.
If any HTML/HTTP/SSL standard/RFC said stuff like - do this the way Netscape 1.0 does it AND doesn't say how, then it should be treated with contempt.
Anyone who _honestly_ thinks OOXML is a good standard is stupid/ignorant.
Anyone who doesn't think it is good but claims it is good is being evil.
I don't mean any disrespect, but if I have to think about MS patents at all, it's not worth using. There are so many Linux distros and programming frameworks that don't come with that particular headache, it's just not worth it.
Ever have somebody you trust lie to you? Not a little lie, a real lie. A powerful lie. Something that tells you that this is not the person you grew to know.
Your perception of a person is based on data and you gather over time from this person. Things this person has told you are important to you because of the trust you put in to their word.
And when they lie, they put that trust in doubt. Not simply about whatever the lie was about, but of everything they've said. It is a powerful betrayal.
Episodes like that can easily destroy any built up respect.
"What do think about Fred?" "Fred? He's a liar. He lies to people he holds in confidence. I don't trust him. You can take this opinion as you will."
That doesn't destroy tangible deeds. "But Fred saved that dog from the river." "Yea, he did, that was very good of him. He's still a liar."
I am not suggesting that Miguel is a liar. I'm positing a situation where respect for someone can be changed quickly, and abruptly.
What Miguel may have published here changes the perception many may have had of him. As one poster said, he wouldn't trust any code the he posts as it may well be tainted and patent encumbered.
I'm not question his position, but without a doubt some folks who held him in high regard before hand may very well be reevaluating their perception and opinion of him.
In my specific case, I used to read the writings of a guy, technical writings. They were good, they were interesting. This was years ago. Then, by happenstance I learned that he's a 9/11 Conspiracy Theorist. Now, there's theories and then there's theories. His particular theory is just spectacularly incredible. Just beyond credible by any sense of reason or reality. But that's his story and he's sticking to it.
Now, he's on my "Complete Nut" list, and I have lost all respect for him. What was once, to me, a light of logic and reason is now stark raving mad working in a place with neither. I was very disappointed when I learned this.
So, respect and perception are very closely tied together.
Is Bill Gates giving de Icaza free blow-jobs, or what?
Miguel's love of all things Microsoft has really veered into seriously freaky territory.
However, the "Scope" for the specification clearly states that its primary purpose is full-fidelity preservation of legacy documents. If so, then those "render this like WordStar1.3" tags are necessary for any application using it to be useful.
So which definition shall we use?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Then you must not use gnome. Every time I install it in freebsd, mono libraries are installed.
Better review all code thats been touched by this guy. Maybe microsoft 234 patents isn't FUD, its Gnome, mono, ximan, midnight commander, gnumeric, etc.
It's not just one opinion. The Mono debacle was dodgy enough. Now he's supporting the MS patent FUD and supporting a standard which many many people (not just in Slashdot) have pointed out is a very bad candidate for a standard.
That is NOT one incident. That is a worrying pattern of behaviour. The only thing that Miguel did that was useful for this community was working on Gnome, which frankly, sucks.
First it was Gnome, an attempt to build a desktop Just Like Windows.
Then it was Mono. We've had slashdot stories on Miguel's pleas for Microsoft to please not constantly break compatibility to push people towards their implementation.
Now this.
Miguel, we care about you very much, and you need to understand that Microsoft doesn't love you. Microsoft will never feel about you the way you feel about Microsoft. Your pure heart is not enough to suddenly make Microsoft embrace any kind of genuine open standard. Microsoft has never had any goal but the ruthless elimination of any possible competition, and all you're doing is enabling the abuse.
You need to stop, and you need to walk away. You need to get into therapy, and start thinking about what's good for you, and what's good for the people who care about you.
Microsoft will never love you. They will not adopt open standards to make you happy. They will not try to make interoperation with you better. They will occasionally say just enough to string you along and make you write thousands of lines of ugly, bloated, crappy code in servile imitation of their unholy crap, but they will never actually care for you.
It's not gonna happen.
Look, face it: Bill Gates appears to be happily married. It was never meant to be. Just move on, and for the love of God, stop shipping multi-megabyte "frameworks".
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Miguel has stated an opinion that does not conform to the Linux Zealot Orthodoxy. He must burn for his sins.
OOXML has been so politicized that it is dangerous to even bring the topic up.
.xls files-- only moderately okay?
And why do you suppose this is? And who started politicising it?
Microsoft pulled out of the OASIS ODF working group during the creation of ODF. Instead of working for a standard, they decided to go their own way. As the giant in the industry, they have the clout to do so. When it seemed they didn't have a sure vote for fast-track of their own single-vendor standard, they are the ones who gamed the system, strongly urging their close partners in member countries to join and vote in the ISO process.
Microsoft has arrogantly assumed the industry will follow them. It is this arrogance, and a good memory, that has produced this resistance to their market push. Microsoft has twisted standards to funnel customers their way (Kerberos, IMAP/MAPI, etc). They have shown they have no interest in playing well with others, which is the entire point of a standard.
As far as Jody hacking in support to import cells from a spreadsheet: good for him. But how is the display and print and graph fidelity? Will it look the same as it does when printed from Microsoft Office? Will cell styles look the same on-screen? Or does Gnumeric only do about as well as it does with
Support for reading in cell data is one thing. For that, the OOXML-published spec is a godsend. But that isn't the real test-case here. ODF is designed for disparate word processors to operate on the same files with equal fidelity. It's designed with internationalization in mind, including dates and times (something at which I hear OOXML isn't so great, though maybe I'm just swilling the FUD-aid.)
If OOXML is such an excellent spec, then Novell should be able to create a filter that will be able to import and export moderately-complex OOXML files that look almost identical (in print and on screen) in MS-Office and some other non-Microsoft product. (Sorry about that sentence.) If it's as good as you claim, we should see this product before ISO voting begins in February. And if it is to make a good standard, I should be able to download the filter from anywhere, hack it, and redistribute it without fear of patent litigation.
Do you imagine this is doable? Are you willing to back up your claims with some promises (not as a Novell employee, but as Miguel the hacker)?
Actually, I don't think even Microsoft can claim I will be able to download it, hack it, and redistribute it without permission from Microsoft. And that right there is reason enough for me to fight it.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I will agree with you that having two is suboptimal, but we have to support them both *anyways*, so its not like its a big deal.
No we don't. The whole problem with OOXML is that no one will be able to "support" it but M$, just like their old DOC "standard". Why waste time chasing their tail now?
M$ is weak, so it would be better to break their back and be done with it. There is nothing positive that anyone should say about buying yet another $400 Office Suite that does little more than the old one except open the new "superb" format. People hate having to put out the money and the way everything has changed in the interface. Most of all everyone hates the new format. I can continue in this way, but the bottom line is that Microsoft is an enemy of freedom. They must be destroyed because their goal is domination and they will never stop.
Ever see Bridge Over River KWai? You are building the enemy a better bridge. Sooner or later you will ask yourself about it.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
This reminds me, it's best not to post messages after drinking heavily.
If you do, please do it anonymously.
Otherwise you spew this stuff out.
"I love Microsoft, I really do. Those ODF people should give up. OOXML is wonderful. Who cares about the legacy blobs. It's mostly open, and that's good enough for me. I trust Microsoft. I love Microsoft. I love you too." -m
-a
He's a shill now. we know from Groklaw that the MS-Novell contract does not cover "copycat" technology. So Openoffice, mono, samba, etc are all "excluded" from patent coverage protection. This would mean that silverlight is neither under the contract (much like GPL 3 is not under the contract for Microsoft) and it is also a "copycat" technology so it's excluded that way.
This is where those Utah mormon guys just don't get it. Like SCO before them, they've made a "deal with the devil" and in 3 years they'll be suing Red Hat because they "own" linux and Unix and Red Hat has been "stealing" from them for the last 15 years. I don't get how anybody can still believe the Microsoft deal makers with their gold fiddles. MS is like Walmart.. they never make a bad deal for THEM. Even when they lose, somebody else under them is made to pay for it. Why the Novell guys and in particular why Miguel in 10 years of Gnome, and Mono and GTK hasn't seen it. The time is to FIGHT, FIGHT, FIGHT. It's not even about "ending" Microsoft, it's more about playing the game down to the Whistle and having more than one "team" to root for... Who'd want to see a Football game where the team is paid to walk off the field in the third quarter? We don't accept that in rather trivial sports like baseball or football... we have congressional hearings about players "maybe" cheating... but we allow business to do anything with thousands of people's livelihoods in the name of "business".
Here is the Google tranlsation of Miguel's post in 'Cofradia'-- a popular FLOSS newsite in Mexico. Miguel even enters into a fight with one of Cofradia's editors.
http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cofradia.org%2Fmodules.php%3Fname%3DNews%26file%3Darticle%26sid%3D20217%26mode%3Dnested%26order%3D0%26thold%3D0&langpair=es%7Cen&hl=en&ie=UTF8
The JZA
Enough dollar signs there, champ?
I'm going to make one for each dollar M$ has in the bank.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Microsoft XML's is designed for vendor lock in, not for interoperability! Its ridiculous backward compatibility tags are well known by now. Its non-interoperability with existing standards and its inherent fragility, so that simple changes to the document break the content and/or the package, make it a non contender for a viable document format. De Icaza calling this shit a superb standard is newsworthy because he outed himself as a 100% pure Microsoft shill. His previous efforts on open source platforms no longer deserve any benefit of doubt.
Miguel, you seem to feel that you can play words one way one minute, then another way the next. My own personal opinion is that you are losing a lot of credibility with your own personal opinions. There is a very good non technical reason to dislike OOXML, just as there's a very good reason to dislike Mono, and your post that it would be best to download silverlight from Novell's servers to avoid patent hassles simply transfers the undesirability target from Microsoft to Novell, because enforcing users to use Novell software is no better than forcing them to use Microsoft software to avoid legal patent threats from Microsoft itself.
I don't know how many hundreds of people posted here warning you about the dangers of using Mono on Linux, the very FUD patent threat statements that Microsoft actually then later made in order to coax people like you and your bosses into becoming even more enslaved to Microsoft's whims than those who use Windows itself.
You don't seem to see Microsoft is more than likely to use OOXML and Silverlight as clubs to threaten people with later on. That's the real reason why OOXML is dangerous.
Was that before or after he started secretly working at SCO?
;-)
Actually, he really did get the gig at MS -- he just told the rest of us otherwise.
OOXML could be the best thing since sliced bread, and I still wouldn't accept it. Not because I hate Microsoft; I most certainly do hate Microsoft, but I also recognize the technical contributions they've made to computing. I'd reject OOXML because Microsoft has ruined its (both OOXML's and Microsoft's own) credibility with its gaming of the standards process.
I'll set aside for the moment the problems I see in the draft as it is. If Microsoft believed its format was good enough to be an international standard--as opposed to simply a de facto "standard"--why did it then try to mislead ISO members around the world with demonstrably false information? Conversely, if Microsoft didn't think its format was good enough to be an international standard, why did it submit the format to ISO in the first place? And what will Microsoft do to make amends for its improper actions? (I'm not asking you for answers to these questions, but I suspect most people in the anti-OOXML camp will want satisfactory answers before they're willing to focus on the merits.)
I'm currently developing a collaboration system for a client which will (among other things) input and output spreadsheets in an XML-based file format. I was considering OOXML for a while, since its technical issues don't impact this particular application; but with the shenanigans Microsoft has pulled to try and force OOXML through ISO, I've settled on ODF. I simply can't support a company which engages in such unethical behavior.
The desktop search program for GNOME (Beagle) is written in Mono. Last I checked it is a memory hog and is kind of unstable (I think I disabled it when it started causing my system to crash) which may or may not have to do with the Mono stuff. I do remember when it started out it was a real pain to install and get running because of all the Mono dependencies and DLL Hell (literally, there are .dll files). Interestingly, the Deskbar applet that you can use to query Beagle (which is a pretty decent UI and works fine) is written in Python, my favorite language. This also makes it brain-dead easy to write new search components.
technical comments on ooxml given by the standard bodies. I'm sure Miguel can read, probably even did read those comments.
They seem very technical, and the problems seem real.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
If they weren't so tied up in protecting the sanctity of their IP, they'd be able to freely write converters between their older formats and their new format, thus removing the need for version-specific tags.
http://www.xkcd.com/354/
Well, when it comes to .NET, there is a crap ton of copyrighted and patented stuff, and Mono breaks a lot of em, and they know it. They just know Microsoft won't do anything, since they are semi-partners and all.
.NET as well, you know.
Ah, I see. And I suppose the GNU project is in on the conspiracy as well? They are producing their own, independent implementation of C#, CLR, and
So, get real and stop spreading FUD! Miguel may have gone slightly insane, but that doesn't affect the status of Mono. Nobody has ever been able to show a Microsoft patent that Mono infringes. If you can demonstrate one, please share it.
Even MS Word doesn't preserve format from system to system. All you need to do is have a different default printer than the person who sent you the document and it will lay it out differently for you than it did for them. Page boundaries, fonts, pretty much every aspect of the document can change simply by not having the same printer driver they have.
Signatures are a waste of bandwi (buffering...)
THIS.... IS... TWITTER!!!
Waaaahhh! Mommy! The cruel man put a dollar sign in Microsoft's initials!!!! All I did was say he was an Communist Open Sores loser who lives in his mom's basement who worships the General Public Virus and Linsux. And then he went and did this HORRIBLE insult. WAAAAHHHH!!!!
Seriously, the letters "MS" mean Multiple Sclerosis to anybody over 35, and I think this is a rather clever way to make an unambiguous abbreviation and hardly an insult. Perhaps you really don't have anything better to complain about to pick on this.
http://www.xmlopen.org/ooxml-wiki/index.php/Office_Open_XML_Overview
Well written and critiqued from the Granddaddy of all Standards Organisations. They have no axe to grind whatsoever, now someone tell me THAT's FUD.
If you don't risk failure you don't risk success.
I think it will be next to impossible for ANYONE except Microsoft to implement OOXML. Which is just the way they like it.
Al'ight... Just let him implement the "partylikeword95" tag stuff in the Linux clone of OOXML and we will be happy!
just wonder why there are so many anonymous cowards in this world....
You keep using that word, but I don't think it means what you think it means.
Some other things you've missed:
1) No one thinks that "everything" open source is some magical fairy sky beard's gift to anything. miguel has put out a lot of open source and it's all rubbish, upon which almost all of us agree.
2) Linux is easier to use than windows, period.
3) You confused "familiarity" with "games." I can see how you might do that since the second and third letters of each are "am."
The Farewell Tour II
who is paying him? he spends to much time at microsoft.....
There was an old fart from Peru
Who happened to mate with a Gnu
The son come out well
Got work at Novell
And praised Microsoft all way through
F-Spot is one example... a rather shiny and feature-rich photo album application. With time, expect more stuff like, as developers find it easier to focus on features than code optimization.
Being a C geek, I do not know whether I like this or not. Features and shine are good for linux users but it comes with a free topping containing potassium benzoate... which is bad...
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Oh come on. Admit it. You're just exaggerating.
That's the thing that boggles my mind. I'm not. I have written documents in raw markup code using "ed" to edit them, and I've written similar documents in Word, and it really was less frustrating to use "ed" to edit things like SGML than to use Word to edit Word documents.
For one obvious example, Word doesn't even get simple stuff like nested lists right.
Move a block of text into a list in HTML, and the block retains all its markup intact while still inheriting markup like fonts and styles, and the list remains intact. Changing a paragraph in the block into a list entry does the right thing.
Do the same thing in Word and depending on how you do it, it either changes the paragraph markup to match the list, or splits the list into two lists. Markup is all or nothing... you have to manually change the font to match the list. Change a block into a list entry then and you end up with duplicate item numbers. And on top of that you may need to manually re-indent parts of the resulting list to the right nesting level.
If there's a table in that block of text things get even hairier. And moving a table into a table and Word will happily merge the cells in the inner table with the outer one. There's ways around this, but you have to plan your edits carefully to keep Word from doing the wrong thing.
Why? Because Word doesn't have any document structure other than paragraphs and table cells. Nesting is simulated by dynamically changing the type of paragraphs in a completely ad-hoc manner. It's nuts.
ODF has to support the Word list style for interoperability (under "numbered paragraphs" where it notes that this can be used as an alternative list style), but the standard way of managing lists is as a nested container that inherits styles from its parent and that child containers... including other lists and paragraphs... inherit styles from in turn.
I can quite easily see myself saving a Word document as ODF, and going in with a plain text editor and fixing up all the list styles directly, rather than trying to figure out the right magic incantations to get Word to do what I want. So, no, I really wasn't exaggerating. Word really is that bad.
OOXML defines tags by saying "like an application we wrote did it". In what way is this an excellent standard? When you download Moonlight (with patent provision(tm)) what patents are in there? You must know since you are a Novell VP and reworked Moonlight to avoid MS patents and specifics. If you haven't done the work to know what you had to leave out, you've now admitted that there is a ticking time-bomb in silverlight.
And why the 5 year release of the patent pledge?
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 43 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
Miguel is personally partly responsible for completely nullifying the concept of Standards, by promoting a "Standard" which product has to be downloaded from a certain vendor to be free from patent mis-use.
In other words, Miguel tells the world: "You have to download it from us, or Microsoft might sue you, but it's still a Standard".
That nullification disgusts me enormously, just like the rest of the things de Icaza has done over the last 5 years or so.
It's just idiocy that the rest of the free software world doesn't take stronger stand against it by refusing to use/distribute ut.
I think Linux distributors, at least Debian, should soon come up with a policy not to ship any software that comes from Novell. This includes Evolution, Moonlight, Mono etc etc. This software is simply not free, and not safe for end-users, and we certainly don't need it. I don't think it should even exist in an official non-free section. It simply shouldn't be there, unless you download it from unofficial mirrors.
But the free software community is blind, and keeps on rolling like if nothing has ever happened.
That was, by far, I think, the most seasoned post written in this whole topic.
However, how can it possibly said that a format with tags like "formatLikeWord95" - which are completely meaningless, be "superb"? OOXML doesn't need FUD to discredit it - just the existence of formatLikeWord95 is bad enough.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Miguel,
I'm not trolling when I ask you: have you read the OOXML proposal or parts of it?
If you have, do you believe the content is a standard? in the light of the comments from various organizations?
If you have not read the OOXML proposal, on who's authority do you base your positive comments?
Karma? What's that again?
ooxml is neither Superb nor Standard.
Hardly.
For instance Migule is not even the 1/100th of Fabrice Bellard (see ffmpeg, qemu) and other guys who have done amazing stuff (and btw haven't received a penny from Novel).
Migule de Icaza is different not because his code is Sierra Hotal but because his project are politically interesting, and unfortunatelly bad for OSS. Migule proves how one can be a "famous person" not by doing good algorithms, but by chosing projects that become mainstream instantly because they are backed by Novel in strategic moves to divide FOSS.
you'll see a period. An extra period would be superfluous.
And as to the "adding someone group's dumb name" (sic) to it, what about:
Windows (XP)
(Red Hat) Linux
(HP) (Unix) (pick one)
etc
?
Everyone does it. Ubuntu or Fedora don't add "Linux" to their name because it's more GNU stuff than Linux. But you seem to be OK with "Linux" being used...
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 55 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
From the "I-Told-You-So" Department: Years ago in my LinuxFormat column, I questioned de Icaza's contribution to the Open Source movement and what his advocation of .Net might mean. Sadly, his endorsement of a poorly defined "standard" reinforces my opinion of him as a "sellout". Shame on us and those who have supported him.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
- You mentioned that "things" were being taken care of; you did not (in any of your posts here, and I read them all) specify that the scoping was one of them
- You're pulling the classical "I have secret knowledge that proves that I'm right" rhetorical trick. Point me to the revised spec and we can talk.
- You've practically proven, all by yourself, that DIS-29500 isn't at the level of committee draft, much less final ISO submission. One of the basic responsibilities of a technical committee (see, for instance, JEDEC JM-21L) is clearly defining the requirements for conformance and clearing legal rights for those requirements. According to you, that hasn't been done and here we are at the ISO final vote stage. ECMA-376 needs to go back to committee until it's actually ready for prime time.
As a standards maven, I've read the controlling portions (I'm not planning to implement it, so any controlling language hidden in footnotes missed me. As they should.) I'll point out that "optional" has a predefined meaning in standards literature, much as "scope," "shall," "may," and other words that are no more subject to local redefinition than any other legal term. Apparently, the drafters of ECMA-376 had never done any standards work before (the "Scope" section alone makes that very clear) and ECMA made no effort to correct even the most basic flaws.The problems with technical details I'll leave to others.
Again, your "most of that has already been fixed by ECMA" is an indictment, not an excuse.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
You open every meeting with a statement of the organization's patent policy. You make participation contingent on agreement with the policy, which includes an affirmative obligation to identify any known blocking IP. When a submission comes from a company, you require a binding letter from the company covering all IP they have covering that submission. You do this for every single point in the draft specification. Anything that doesn't get IP clearance doesn't make it into the draft.
Microsoft could have simply issued a blanket IP clearance for ECMA-376 as passed. Any additions after that point might not be covered, but anything sticking to ECMA-376 as submitted would have been. That's a very common industry practice; in a normal standards body that would have been required. They didn't. Now, I'm a believer in the law of intended consequences, which is similar to "intention" in common law: when a rational party goes out of their way to do something that has predictable consequences, it's reasonable to conclude that they intended those consequences.
Microsoft (and Microsoft Legal) isn't run by idiots. Logic follows.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
If you don't trust it, don't trust it. It doesn't matter much, whether you don't trust it because it's from him, or because his blog isn't from him.
At this point, there really aren't any more excuses for Miguel...
I have read significant parts of the MS-OOXML spec and I can assure you that this it would be a horrible mistake to accept this beast as an international standard. The biggest issue are not the (existing, but comparatively minor) technical shortcomings, but the fact that Microsoft's semi-proprietary OOXML standardization strategy is a head-on attack on the existing, technically better, genuinely open standards.
Its been his lifelong dream to work for Microsoft.
The argument as to why OOXML are good or bed, vs ODF, aside there is a matter of history to think of. Microsoft can't be 100% evil, it's just hard to hire people like that and expect them to function. So I agree we should not jump on MS for everything. But to be fair they do have a history. I worked at a company that, as a result of taking MS at their word(and poor management, which took MS at their word) they went under. I famous line uttered in the meeting some 8 months before things got bad was "Come on, Microsoft would never screw us!" This was spoken by the person we'd hired from Apple after they downsized, which seemed to have something to do with being screwed by Microsoft.
Microsoft has a motive. That is everything. One motive has been to control file formats, to the end that it makes them money. They are motivated by profit. Microsoft is the smartest company in the world at insuring they make money. They were forced kicking and screaming into supporting HTML, no matter their public face. The last thing they need is for users to have a path to a different set of office applications. Do you really think that all this work on OOXML is intended to lose MS money AND give their office applications the kiss of death? They are smart when it comes to making money and they have a plan to make money from this, or why the big push? Something, sure as hell, stinks. It stinks big time, when they rig the ISO vote.
But if you can see that MS has no grand plan being OOXML to hurt people I would not mind hearing it, but I am never going to think for a second that you have the slightest understanding of the cunning and tactics, nor do I think you can stoop to that level for long enough to think like they do. But give it your best shot and tell me why you think MS would just give the store away?
I reserve the right to be completely wrong.
-- Prepared at the direction of, or to be sent to Legal Counsel, in anticipation of litigation. Attorney Client Pri
because it doesn't produce EXACTLY THE SAME output and is therefore wrong.
So if absolute positioning isn't a requirement (which means that not specifying TableLikeW98 is OK) means that there is no NEED for the tag, so why are we keeping it? Surely just "Table" is enough, since we don't care if it's like W98 did it. If we do care about exact placement, then we must have the meaning (format changes) specified so TableLikeW98 is incomlpete.
So we either have
a broken standard because TableLikeW98 (et al) aren't needed
a broken standard because TableLikeW98 (et al) aren't specified
"Slashdot requires you to wait between each successful posting of a comment to allow everyone a fair chance at posting a comment.
It's been 1 hour 20 minutes since you last successfully posted a comment"
More like a "Hotel Redmond" coder (You can check out anytime you like, but you may never leave. Cue guitars.)
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
You're getting close. No, I do not say OOX is a great format. There are lots of places it could have been improved. However, the same is true of ODF. Gnumeric makes a lovely test bed for comparison. We're a neutral 3rd party implementer trying to handle both of these specs. Once the politics have been removed there are two unpleasant truths that the ODF-cheering section doesn't want to hear.
1) like OOX, ODF is underdocumented, and has significant limitations.
2) OOX, despite it's various flaws, is better documented, and in some ways superior to ODF.
There is a fundamental hypocrisy that is unfortunate. We should be discussing the limitations of each standard and how to improve them but at the core it is my belief that if ODF is acceptable as a standard, then so is OOX. Take both or take neither, but to chose just one is nonsense.
A while back I played around with some openoffice generated files.
First of all the openoffice files are smaller in size than the files saved in M$ format.
You can use standard tools to uncompress the openoffice file.
Then you can use a text editor to view or modify the content.
You could even write your own program or a script to generate the content you desire.
Then you save the new content and compress.
That's it.
Now use openoffice to open the file you created or modified.
It works great.
--chip
Microsoft's "Men In Black" (remember OOXML?) seem to possess the "neutralizer" (the flashy thing) with a special service pack installed. This allows them not only to wipe out one's memory (by formatting it with an alpha version of WinFS), but it also allows them to install some Vista drivers into one's brain, which make a person (like Miguel de Icaza) a "Genuine Vista user" (read: brainwashed). No payment needed! Note: Of course, it took Microsoft yeeeaaars (what else?) to produce that service pack for the MSneutralizer ;)
Miguel should resign, or be fired. Sadly, he is the linchpin on several of these big projects. I hope Novell can find someone to replace him.
Miguel says crap like, "We never made a promise to avoid patents.
BULLSHIT.
From Novell's website
Q4. With this agreement, will Novell include Microsoft patented code in its contributions to the open source community?
No. Novell will not change its development practices as a result of this agreement. It has always been our policy in all development, open source and proprietary, to stay away from code that infringes another's patents, and we will continue to develop software using these standard practices. If any of our code is found to infringe someone else's patents, we will try to find prior technology to invalidate the patents, rework the code to design around the infringement, or as a last resort remove the functionality.
Novell is committed to protecting, preserving and promoting freedom for free and open source software.
Of course, it should be understood that under the patent agreement each party will promise not to assert patents against customers. The patent agreement does not cover the development activities of Novell or Microsoft, and Novell has no plans to changes it development policies relating to patents.
Please re-read the bolded section (emphasis added). Someone need to smack Miguel in the face; he's sounding more and more like an MS hack everyday.
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Use Strigi
No, no, no.
You don't "standardize" on an incomplete specification saying "We'll fix it later". Before OOXML is passed as a standard, it should be complete and correct *first*. As it stands, OOXML is a joke. Microsoft is proposing it as a standard for one reason only: maintain vendor lock-in. If they were serious about supplying it as a standard, it would be properly documented. IMHO it also goes without saying that if you are proposing a standard for everyone to use, you allow *everyone* who follows that standard to use your patents, and only go after them if they deliberately abuse that standard (as Microsoft did with Java, forcing Sun to nail them to the wall for contract violations). Saying "just use our products and you'll be okay" is unacceptable. It's not a true standard in that case.
Sorry, I have faith in no one. I trust no one. Until I have something actually in my hands, I will not believe it will exist, or that it will work as advertised. That goes for Microsoft, Apple, or anyone else. As it stands today, OOXML is a PR campaign, not a spec, and should be rejected unless and until it is a spec.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
When working on filters for gnumeric my standard approach is to write a collection of test files tweaking various pieces of the format (see gnumeric/samples dir in svn). I've yet to hit any significant binary blobs that are not also in ODF (eg emf/wmf images). Indeed, while reviewing parts of Spreadsheetml I haven't come across significant binary content. There is lot's to complain about in OOX without our making up random stuff.
I have to admit that Midnight Commander was one of the programs that encouraged
me to switch to Linux. With its Turbo-Pascal/Norton Commander like color scheme, it
brought a level of comfort to this ex-DOS user. I must give credit Miguel for that. Even if
it was many years ago, it was a great contribution. I still use midnight commander today!
As far as Moonlight and OOXML go. I think that Miguel is entitled to opt to use this software and develop for it (if Microsoft allows him) and have Novell-Microsoft grant rights to use Microsoft stuff (which they can revoke at anytime). However, I don't think we want it in our non Novell/Microsoft Linux distros (ODF please)! I will never willingly extend myself into Microsofts embrace.
Does that mean that we should all turn our noses up at the ATI drivers that are coming from Novell? No matter what else you think you heard or read, that facts are that Novel and its relationship with AMD is the only reason the OSS world is finally going to get a 3D graphics driver.
I only scored 35% on the Nerd Test, I'm sorry.
Those who insisted, despite considerable clues and evidence, that Senorita Miguela was not a M$ mole must now eat their words.
According to many sources (including Wikipedia, which might be wrong, and his own damn web page, which probably isn't), it's de Icaza, not de lcaza.
That is to say, it is a CAPITAL I, not a lowercase l.
Please use a serif font in the future. Thank you.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Ever since the whole "mono" thing, I've been waiting to see signs how it would work out. From what I understood, it was always Miguel's wish that whatever "killer app" Microsoft came up with on Mono would be readily available on Linux. I guess this "Moonlight" product will be the fruition of that desire. However, with copyright and patent law being as obfuscated as it is, I just can't have any confidence that Microsoft isn't going to eventually pull the rug out from under Mono, leaving derivative applications on the desktop sort of high and dry. As I've personally seen from the SCO fiasco, it doesn't take solid legal case to cause a problem for Linux. Even that ball of outrageous lies ("millions of lines of code") caused resistance to Linux within my company, and I had to fight the FUD. I suppose Miguel will claim that it's all clear to him, and that may well be, but it's not to me, nor to a lot of other people. All it would take is for Microsoft to threaten Red Hat over distribution of Mono, and suddenly we've got a defacto "Microsoft-blessed" distribution in SuSE, which is my take on what's happening here. In a way, that'd be good for my company, since that's their chosen platform, and it might even expand use of the platform internally, but my very large, very expensive application (when it comes to Linux) is only supported on Red Hat. I just want to avoid the nonsense entirely. With some of the crazy stuff that Microsoft pulls in order to trap people on their platform, how does anyone believe that they don't have an end-game in mind with all of this business? Miguel might just be a useful, unwitting pawn in the game. But, hey, I'm still bitter that they managed to buy out Daniel Robbins. ;-)
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
We finally find out for sure which team Miguel is really playing for. Let me give you a hint and say - it's not our team.
Saying a thing and having it be true are two different things. Miguel is just acknowledging the futility of making a pledge about not violating patents he is not aware of existing.
As many people are quick to point out, Microsoft has more to lose by disclosing which of its many stupid patents the various pieces of software often refered to (rightly or wrongly) as Linux may be violating. If and when they release that list, then Miguel, and probably everyone else with half a brain, will be able to say whether or not their software is patent encumbered.
Only a Stallman type would say in advance that their code is not violating any patents. It's probably in the GPL somewhere.
After decades of atrocious anticompetitive behavior that programmers and users are negatively impacted on a daily/hourly/minutely basis, Microsoft deserves absolutely no slack. On THIS SPECIFIC DEBATE they have shown willingness to bribe and undermine legitimate voting efforts with the bribery of the ?Swedish? delegation. Therefore, they already have no credibility, and have proven that this is a dangerous trojan horse standard. Their actions and internal correspondence leaked to the internet has demonstrated it further. To apply a "throwing mud" analogy at critiques of a 6,000 page standard is fundamentally disingenuous. The criticisms will be from people of varied backgrounds and limited knowledge of the various areas, either word processing experts, XML experts, or spreadsheet experts. I have read several criticisms, some were a little weak, but they did fundamentally show that the Microsoft Office applications didn't respond to basic, natural changes to an XML file it exported, with little or no specification in the standard as to why it was. This means that the standard is a hollow shell, and the actual, functional standard is determined and hidden in the binaries and application behaviors of Office's closed source programs. No "standard" can exist in such a situation. Thank you for the invective at the end. Hang on, I need to look up a proper response....oh, here it is: you have a little penis.
Hey, I'm just your average shit and piss factory.
Hey, Miguel, thanks for the reply.
Actually, my history is exactly correct. Microsoft officially participated in the Open Office Document TC. Rabih Filfili was Microsoft's observer of record. They may have been creating their own standard at the same time, but at that point, ODF was in the long process of becoming a standard. So, Microsoft chose to go their own way, rather than collaborate on a standard equitable to all.
So the history was correct, as is my assertion that Microsoft has reasons to not participate in a standard accepted by others; and that these reasons benefit only Microsoft.
As for your link to Mr. Jones' blog: it's a rather MS-biased timeline, don't you think? It mentioned neither Microsoft's participation in the OASIS TC, nor their later withdrawal. It also glosses over ODF development, leaving the implication that ODF was quickly developed, and quickly accepted as a standard, neither of which is true.
Finally, as for your reason for not giving a full reply: accepted. I'd rather watch Colbert than argue with a het-up idiot like me any day.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
superb for what purpose?
clearly, ooxml isn't superb for the purposes of "let's play mice and make computing inter-operable" crowd.
it is superb from the msft centric point of view, though.
this guy clearly takes a msft centric position.
Spec out where things are going, not where one company has been. Backwards compatibility to one vendor should not drive the development of what is supposed to be a universal standard.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I'd rather have an open source implementation of a microsoft invention then some proprietary binary (like linux flash).
If those were the only options you might have something. But for the problem that Silverlight is supposed to solve you also have the choice of: a (finally) open source implementation of a Sun invention, and an open source implementation of an open standard, as well as a number of less well known browser plugins (some of which actually provide a real sandbox).
Between Flash, Java, and AJAX we don't need Microsoft barging in with another spin on ActiveX/.NET to "level the field".
but the system I use isn't just linux.
Rather like saying you drive a ford (because your chevvy has a ford engine). It's OK for piddling about.
and lastly, if you want to call someone a dick, at least apologise for being a dick yourself (re: the period and query character fuckup you tried to impress us with).
Care to name an example where MS put out anything that was really multiplatform?
Back before Microsoft owned their own platform, Microsoft Basic was kind of a standard.
I said that ECMA was going to document that for the next batch of issues to resolve in the spec.
See, here's the problem. If elements that are obviously going to need to be defined aren't defined then the spec is a long way from finished. This isn't just a matter of the spec not defining things you think should be in there, like ODF, this is a matter of the spec not defining stuff that's actually in the spec itself.
This is like a book proposal that's got things like "Chapter 11: (Add fight scene between goodguy and badguy) Chapter 12: The next morning my hand still looked like a shredded tire under the bandages, but I didn't have time to lie in bed..." in it. A publisher might accept that as a draft, especially if you've got a good track record, but they won't publish it like that.
A spec that's a long way from being finished was just pushed almost all the way through a fast-track process to jump it straight from this stage to "published", which means that Microsoft wants it to be treated as a finished spec... not a draft. Even if it's the best draft in the world, it's still a draft.
So do you mean that it's a good draft, or that it's actually a good standard? Everyone else is judging it as if it was complete, because that's how Microsoft is presenting it. Is that how you're approaching it?
Does anyone still have mission critical documents in word 6 that depend on the exact formating Word 6 had?
The main reason these standards are a "big deal" right now are incoming legal requirements for maintaining archived documents in a format that can still be read when nobody's using the software they were created under any more. So when they depend on said software to figure out what the document looks like it kind of defeats the purpose.
Sigh. Every time this discussion comes up, I have to explain this again.
/>
It is simply the wrong way to implement this kind of thing. It shifts a huge amount of burden onto the implementation, even just a reader, compared to the alternative.
Consider fonts. Would you rather have:
<heading1>This is a heading</heading1>
<movie_title>Gone with the wind</movie_title>
<blue_like_BSOD_of_win_NT_on_alpha>I like blue</blue_like_BSOD_of_win_NT_on_alpha>
Or would you rather have the much saner system of styles that we have now? You can still do:
<p style="blue_like_BSOD_of_win_NT_on_alpha">I like blue</p>
Provided that, somewhere in the same document, you actually define that style:
<style name="blue_like_BSOD_of_win_NT_on_alpha" color="#0000FF"
I'm not sure exactly what XML is used in the real document formats, but everyone pretty much agrees by now that styles are the way to go.
So, for example, "spacingLikeWord95" should be specified by first defining a standard way of defining a spacing scheme, then you apply it to a style. That way, implementors need only implement the general way of supporting all spacing schemes. If they want to support exporting to old (broken) formats, they always have that particular spacing scheme right there in the XML as a reference.
That would be the right way to support backwards compatibility, without adding an extra few fucking THOUSAND pages for people (including Microsoft) to implement decades, even centuries into the future. Why should we have to carry along Microsoft's baggage here because they find it more important to lock out competitors than to implement this right?
Or are they really that incompetent?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Even if they didn't, they also have the ability to run Word95 without having to buy a copy, not to mention a copy of the particular OS this quirk was on, not to mention hardware that's no longer for sale.
I've read elsewhere on this page that there are actually tags that specify things like "tables_like_Word95_on_NT_on_Alpha". Are you actually suggesting that Microsoft doesn't have a distinct advantage there?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Browsers lay out HTML differently from one another.
HTML is a structural language, like Docbook.
OOXML and ODF wouldn't be needed if all we were looking at was document structure. These are more detailed markup languages where maintaining the appearance of the content matters, because sometimes meaning actually does depend on layout... even in ASCII, which is why people used to spend so much time making their terminals bug-compatible with the vt100.
It may be that these tags don't actually specify anything that changes the layout of a document enough to matter, and should actually be treated as a comment by any other program, but until Microsoft specifies them we don't know that.
Having just read the blog comments, they didn't really help. What are the "correct" conclusions supposed to be?
I've been a defender of yours in the past (e.g. prior to Sun's dramatic liberalization of Java, I was advocating Mono as the least worst alternative), but this situation with Moonlight leaves me very uncomfortable. While the Mono patent policy seems sane, it seems the Moonlight policy means that Moonlight fails the "could you fork it?" acid test -- at least, forking Moonlight would mean knowingly assuming a patent liability with respect to Microsoft. That's a bit different from a project which has a less direct relationship with Microsoft IP.
DNA just wants to be free...
Miguel,
I see the flame fest continues, but could you please take a little time out and give me an answer to a question I have.
I've posted this in the past. I see a problem for us (humanity) in the future. We would like to be able to go to a digital world. As things stand now we can't. The reason is file formats.
Documents like birth and death certificates, property deeds, legal writs, treaty's etc. need to be available and readable for CENTURIES. File formats for the last 30 years or so change every 3 years. After two or at most 3 cycles, the format is no longer readable. That makes digital documents unacceptable. We need centuries for file retention, with full readability. We get a couple of years.
The only real contender right now is ASCII text. That file format has been with us for 50 years now, and continues to remain readable.
I work for a government body, with buildings. Permits are a matter of life safety. If we can't keep track of what is in a building, people die. There is still no substitute for paper records. They are the ONLY long term recourse we currently have. the great need is for a file format that can remain unchanged for centuries. (The best long term recording medium seems to be mud. Summarian records and literature from 5,000 years ago are still readable, if you know the language.)
we desperately need a real long term document format.
ODF tries to be that. I believe that the jury is still out on whether it can fulfill that need or not. OOXML seems to be too linked to a product that will continue to change. OOXML also has those digital blobs that will NEVER be human readable without the originating program. The standard will change radically in the next few years too. That renders it unusable for my needs.
Ideally, I'd like to have a file that would allow setting up forms that would be relatively easily for a human to read, and would explain itself adequately for document recreation. It needs to have this without having to have the originating program, or any other reference than the file itself. I need that for drawings too. It doesn't exist. Even for relatively easy things like forms and written reports it doesn't really exist.
*Shouldn't we all be pushing for standards that are independent of any product?* That seems to be the only way we'll get what we really need.
Maybe TeX? HTML showed promise for a while, but it keeps changing too. OOXML doesn't have what I need. I'm not at all sure that ODF does either.
Oh well, I guess paper is not going to go away.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
We can move on when he stops sucking time and development effort away from tasks other than sucking Microsoft's greasy cock.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Hello Miguel, have you ever read this weblog: http://www.robweir.com/blog
This weblog makes it very clear to me how OOXML is not such a great 'standard' and how Microsoft is trying hard to lock the world into their Office format.
I'm so curious, you're apparently a VP and one hell of a programmer, so I guess you're a smart and intelligent guy. How can you ignore all the bad news and keep up this facade in the face of critics. Are you lying? Naive? Afraid to admit you were wrong?
Or is there something we are missing? If there is, please tell us, because it would save everyone a lot of energy.
Thanks!
It's hard to type with the cock in his mouth...
Miguel, while you have made valuable contributions to FOSS, and believe me, I appreciate it, and give you credit for those contributions, at the same time, you don't really get it with FOSS or Microsoft. Just ask yourself this, what kind of person talks about cutting off someone else's air supply? Or what kind of person hurls a chair across the room and says they're going to f****** kill Google? Pretty rough language and behavior, not exactly the kind of people I personally want to be around. Think about it.
I don't think the word means what you think it means.
According to Webster: "marked to the highest degree by grandeur, excellence, brilliance, or competence"
Yet you simply say it manages to sort-of document a cumbersome updated legacy format for office documents.
I haven't looked at Mono, but must ask if you design your software like the OOXML - so that if I make a trivial change in the obvious place in one source file, it will break the whole thing unless I also update dozens of other places which I wouldn't guess would be referenced. Touch x.c causes the entire system to be recompiled under make? If you consider such "superb" design, I'd hate to see what you would consider bad design. Oh yea, completely functional yet minimal, clean, and modular code.
I would think the word "superb" wouldn't be applied to a rust-bucket that happened to run well enough (if you don't mind the smell of burnt oil) to get you a few miles to work each day. I would want both the powertrain, body, and interior to be clean and well engineered too.
You can do a superb job of specifying an atrocious design. In ISO-9000 processes, I usually refer to a perfectly repeatable cement life-jacket. Of course you'd sink like a rock, but as long as they are made within tolerance... Perhaps this is what you were referring to.
But you haven't said the underlying design is horrible, and it does sound like it is the binary formats recoded into XML. That might make it easy to write a converter, but says nothing about whether the coding is a good or bad design.
Even so, the OOXML document is not very well done. Minimally, the legacy support should be in various annexes, to separate it from the core design. There could be a lot of other structural improvements.
But this comes down to a fundamental question - DID YOU USE THE OOXML document - reading it fully just like you would do to ODF - to implement the section of Gnumeric, or did you simply highlight the excel-like sections which you already had code for and it just worked?
The proper way to test the questions is to give a group who has never seen either ODF or OOXML both specs and have them split up and start coding - without an oracle like OOo or Excel - and see how fast and how well they do. Let Novell sponsor such a contest, maybe over one of the holidays or something if you really want to decide the issue.
First I was shocked, then I believed that someone was pretending to be Miguel, but when checking his profile and all it seems as it really was Miguel saying this. I also had hard to imagine that he would have been paid by Microsoft to say this, so I really don't understand his motives.
Here in Sweden we are currently arguing with Klas Hammar, who is business area manager for Microsoft Sweden. Recently, in a a debate article (7th Sept, in Swedish) he claimed that OOXML is "future safe" and in another article (today 11th of Sept, also Swedish), he says "one could ask why it shouldn't become a standard".
For him and others I collected the documents I had studied before the decision to reject OOXML and put them here (all in English). It is a collection of some documents from e.g. Google, Oracle, Spain FFII, Italian PLIO etc which very clearly describes the flaws of OOXML. This page could probably be useful for Miguel to read as well. This is not to compete with <NO>OOXML, it is just to illustrate how we have come to this conclusion on our own.
We are not opposing OOXML by principle just because it's Microsoft, in fact we looked forward to the Microsoft XML format a few years ago, but that was before we understood how bad an "XML" specification could be designed. OOXML is a rough draft, nothing to take seriously as it appears now. I also have a blog entry about this if you want to send me some comments. (I'm not a blogger, otherwise)
Someone else already mentioned Mr. de Icaza's "blind spot" with regard to Microsoft's deficiencies and questionable practices. His postings indicate that he's already formed his opinion, and no amount of comment from Microsoft detractors will change his mind.
Ironic thing is, he'll probably say the same about me and others who disagree with "standardizing" OOXML...
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
I believe that Miguel is a very very smart person and that he sold to MS more than five years ago. His actions have simply too many strategical consequences to maintain the naive view that there are coincidences in them. Basically he developed Midnight Commander and then he became the MS 'infiltrated spy' in the Open Source world.
.NET. Now MS has to protect .NET, make it the universal API that every developer use. Linux (as always) is a threat to MS. So what's MS strategy this time? The same they used against Java, just a little backwards. Against Java they used the embrace and extend, promoting J++, that used MS proprietary extensions to the Java language to achieve developer lock in. To protect .NET from Linux, they would do a backwards embrace an extend: give Linux a limited .NET implementation, so that developers would still be locked to .NET proprietary extensions in the Windows platform. This limited .NET implementation is MONO. And who started MONO? Icaza.
Explanation (I'm quoting myself here.):
MS monopoly is all about protecting the API. As Ballmer said: developers, developers, developers! They had one API everybody used, win32, and it was their crown jewel. As long as everybody keep developing for win32, MS would win.
Then came Linux. If Linux distros could provide a competing API to Win32, MS would be screwed. MS solution? fragment the Linux API. You see, one of the main values of a successful API is that it's universal. So how to destroy Linux? Destroy the universality of the API. Make not one, but TWO competing APIs! Then developers would have endless religious wars and Linux would not grow as a competing commercial platform against Win32. How to do it? Make Gnome and start a religious war against the then 'closed license' QT libraries. Forward ten years and what's the result? Nobody uses either KDE or Gnome to develop commercial software, the 'developers, developers, developers' are still somewhere else. Oracle currently uses Java as the API when running in Linux. And who started Gnome? Icaza.
Then after Linux it came Java, and it becomes MS new enemy. J++ and stuff. (Icaza was not involved with J++.)
Now what happens, MS decides to create a new API from zero, sacrificing their beloved Win32. The new API is then called
I don't think any of this is a coincidence.
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
The poster did link to the whole thread, so I think the charge of misquotation is quite thin.
You talk somewhat in that thread about low-risk vs. risk-free code in regard to patent infringement. If there are technologies about which Microsoft has already been known to sabre-rattle over in a standard (OOXML), then implementing code that conforms to that standard can never be even low-risk, never mind risk-free.
But patent risk isn't even the bottom line problem with the groklaw folks, if you've bothered to read what they're writing about OOXML: There are things in the OOXML standard which have no clear specification outside of "That's how [a particular version of MS-Word] does it. Just reverse engineer what it does and you'll be correct." That kind of garbazh doesn't belong in a standard.
Fuzzy logic belongs in speculative laboratories, not in standards, any standards whether open or closed. Fuzzy logic that can only be resolved by running closed-source software (whose EULA includes, if memory serves, a covenant not to reverse engineer!) really doesn't belong in any standards, but it's particularly odious in open standards.
If you don't get that, that's pretty sad.
Re-read what you're saying with RMS' four freedoms in the back of your mind (and yes, they're admirable even if you don't buy everything that RMS says, as I don't) and maybe, just maybe a little bit of understanding will slip in? At least, understanding what people objected to in what you wrote. All of it. In context.
cheers...ank
Still hoping for Gentle Treatment...
Usually, format doesn't matter, and only the words matter. Sometimes, however, it does. If it does, you want to know that as soon as possible.
Now if you make ODF your standard, your sort of screwed as to displaying that word 6 document exactly as word 6 did anyways, so what have you really lost by simply marking it as word 6 style in the Word xml?
If you make ODF your standard, and some aspect of Word 6 layout turns out to matter, you will know that the first time you look at the document after the transition to ODF... even if you're still using Word.
If you make OOXML your standard, and some aspect of Word 6 layout turns out to matter, you will never know unless you ALSO switch from Word, because Word will hide that from you.
So just don't save your stuff with the crazy format tags and you should be safe.
"You" is a secretary working on a legal document and saving a file in Word. He has no idea what XML tags are, even if there's an option in Word for "don't save your stuff with the crazy format tags".
And then a decade later something in some document doesn't line up right because it depended on some aspect of Word 6 table layout, and someone's words are attributed to the wrong person...