Microsoft Deprecating Some OOXML Functionality

christian.einfeldt writes "According to open standards advocate Russell Ossendryver, Microsoft will be deprecating certain functionality in its Microsoft Office Open XML specification. Ossendryver says the move is an attempt to quiet critics of the specification in the run up to the crucial February ISO vote. The Microsoft-led industry standards group formally offering OOXML confirms in a 21 December 2007 announcement that issues related to the 'leap year bug', VML, compatibility settings such as 'AutoSpaceLikeWord95' and others will be 'extracted from the main specification and relocated to an independent annex in DIS 29500 for deprecated functionality.'"

Comments

deprecated but widely used by MS software?

[mr_mischief]

If MS deprecates it but makes support for the deprecated features the default option in their software, they'll still be contributing to people spewing incompatible files that don't render correctly in software following the standards. It'd be better to just rip out the parts that shouldn't be there and resubmit the standard. Having to recognize and either support or report lack of support for a maze of twisty little semi-standard features for sake of backwards compatibility is not going to help the situation much,

Re:deprecated but widely used by MS software?

[innerweb]

You are in a Microsoft Office. To the North, is a door, you hear what sounds like chairs being thrown. To the South, you see an open door, but a very dark room.

What do you do?

InnerWeb

Re:deprecated but widely used by MS software?

[Ash-Fox]

Do you actually believe windows developers actually want to touch OO?

Being a Windows developer (I also develop on other platforms, but this is irrelevant) I can tell you that I don't want to touch OOo or Microsoft Office. If I want to generate a document, I want the ability to do it myself if need be and so on. So far, OOXML is not really the solution I've been lucking for. The documentation is appalling, what is considered a very simple document and 'correct' in the specification does not work with Microsoft Office. It's annoying.

But in the end it makes development easier.

Honestly, generating odt, ods documents is easier.

Microsoft takes care of developers.

I don't agree. The MSDN is one huge example. It's great that it has such a vast knowledge base. Unfortunately a third of the documentation contains the wrong behavior and possibly the worst workarounds I have ever seen for a problem with lots of empty promises to fix issues in the future that haven't been fixed. That is how well Microsoft takes care of the developers.

Developers are the ones who make this who software word turn around.

I disagree. Microsoft has been buying out software companies that are a threat, launching extremely anti-competitive campaigns against 3rd party software developers that rival their own products and so on. Microsoft are the ones making the software world go round because they are manipulating everything, not the developers or the consumers.

It's about documentation, support and tools.And face it...that is a field where microsoft has no competition.

Have you even seen Microsoft's support? Staying on the telephone for hours on corporate support to report a serious bug, only to get a idiot who doesn't seem to even grasp Microsoft's own products (and this has been on every occasion I have tried to do anything with the enterprise support). Microsoft does not even provide direct support options to consumers, never mind small-time developers.

Let's see what the Linux side does.

Do they have corporate support? Yes.
Does Microsoft? Yes.
Do they have 24/7 corporate call centers and fast pick up rates? Yes.
Microsoft does not have 24/7 corporate call centers.
Do they have people who know what the hell they're talking about on the otherside? Yes -- I have even got a kernel developer at one point when it came to a serious issue.
Does Microsoft? Well, in my experience - never managed to talk to anyone who seemed to actually know.
Does the regular consumer get support? Yes - obviously paid support is better but there are a lot of free alternatives that appear to be just as good (despite the people who perceive Linux support is 'rtfm').
Does Microsoft? There is a community that provides support on issues, but there is no paid support options offered at all.

Googling up for solutions and looking them up in forums(do i hear linux users trying to say smth?) is not acceptable.

Try researching the subject a little before opening your mouth next time.

Smoke and Mirrors

[ozmanjusri]

The result of Microsoft's manipulation should be ISO banning MSOOXML from participating in the standards process.

It's abundantly clear now that the format is critically flawed and cannot be implemented by anyone, not even the Office team themselves.

ECMA 376 is a bomb disguised as a standard. It redefines functions and components just to retain ties to the undocumented legacy formats. Therefore a number of things that should be fixed by now, thanks to better engineering, and existing ISO standards, are left not only unfixed, but even perpetuated by ECMA376. The fact that Microsoft continues to push this fake "standard" shows how little they care about their customers and how much their business is predicated on lockin.

Re:Smoke and Mirrors

[ozmanjusri]

It is no more a "fake" standard than any other standard.

You may not see a pattern here. I suspect may others will.

• Maybe we could define the APIs so that they work well with NT and not the others even if they are open. Or maybe we could patent something related to this. - William Henry Gates III on ACPI, 1999
• Screw Sun, cross-platform will never work. Let's move on and steal the Java language. - Prashant Sridharan, MS Visual J++ Product Manager, 1997
• The first obligation that the ICPs undertook was to distribute Internet Explorer and no "Other Browser" in connection with any custom Web browsing software or CD-ROM content that they might offer - US District Court of Columbia on proprietary HTML extensions, 1999
• OSS projects have been able to gain a foothold in many server applications because of the wide utility of highly commoditized simple protocols. By extending these protocols and developing new ones, we can deny OSS projects entry into the market. - Vinod Vallopillil, ex-MS Engineer, 1999
• The first type of conduct found to constitute an abuse consisted in Microsoft's refusal to supply its competitors with interoperability information and to authorize them to use that information to develop and distribute products competing with its own products - EC First Instance Court, 2007
• We [Microsoft] are OASIS members but since we didn't have an interest in ODF we didn't participate in its development. - Brian Jones , MS Office Program Manager, 2007

This isn't a battle between OOXML and ISO. It is a battle between having document standards and not having them.

Microsoft is trying to wreck the concept of standards and interoperability to a point where those concepts are useless.

Deprecated means forever

[filbranden]

In another move to spread more FUD, now they're trying to hide the UGLY part of the specification. But, what use is hiding it? They claim the deprecated features will be used only for the migration of old binary formats, and that they should not be used by new documents... But considering that the whole point of this document format standardization effort is to be able to open any document in 20 or 30 years time, and if the old binary format documents will be converted using deprecated features, that just means that any software implementing the standard will have to support the deprecated features anyway...

Although they keep manipulating, manipulating, and manipulating more, I still think their format stinks, they're only using it to spread FUD over other formats, and I really hope they can't pull this stunt.

Re:Deprecated means forever

[Anonymous Coward]

And VML is used in Office 2007... see this openmalaysia blog post. Marking things as deprecated just means that it's discouraged, and it doesn't mean that there's a modern replacement (like how in HTML FONT was deprecated and it's replacement was CSS functionality). VML is still a necessary part of OOXML, so marking it as deprecated doesn't actually help developers. What would help them is if DrawingML could be used in all the places that VML can be. Infact, as the CNS (Microsoft's covenant not to sue) specifically excludes patent coverage over non-required features this means that we may now be lacking patent coverage over VML. Can anyone from Microsoft comment on this? (the Microsoft OSP might grant coverage if that "Necessary Claims" means normative, as they claim)

Re:Deprecated means forever

[Just Some Guy]

They claim the deprecated features will be used only for the migration of old binary formats, and that they should not be used by new documents...

Someone help me out here, for real. I think I'm missing something. What is the point of those ridiculous "backward compatibility" tags? Word's never been good enough for pixel-perfect rendering. For example, printing the same document on different printers hasn't ever been likely to give the same output. So, what on earth is the justification for maintaining a "renderLikeWord95" tag when that was never well-defined to begin with?

If the <foo> attribute originally meant "centered, bold, double-spaced", then just make the importer translate it to something like "<textblock align="center" weight="bold" height="200%"> text goes here </textblock>". Forget bug compatibility. That's a dying horse and needs killed now before we end up with something like the loose HTML parsing nightmare that browser designed are stuck with. Who cares how the document originally displayed on the original machine? MS never did before today.

Don't hide those tags - delete them. There is no rational explanation other than lock-in for having them, and as long as they're around, the IT world will know this is a joke.

A superb standard

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd just like to remind everyone that OOXML is a superb standard.

-- Miguel

This is an unsurprising move

[erroneus]

Just like with Vista, they just drop features until it's "releasable."

Here's the obvious problem:

They will claim a feature is deprecated, or not part of the spec, but their software will continue using it. Meanwhile, other programs that try to read and write OOXML format following the "official" spec, will result in the documents created or edited by other programs not being fully compatible with MS Word. This will be seen by the user community as a deficiency in the alternative software and no as a problem with Microsoft's software.

We have seen this before and we continue to see it. People think that because a web site works with MSIE and doesn't work with Firefox that there's a problem with Firefox... Microsoft continues to damage the competition in this way and will persist in the same. I hope that the voters in the ISO decisions are aware of this potential problem.

Sneaky?

[PhotoGuy]

This seems sneaky to me. Remove controvesial stuff from the standard, but put it in an Annex, that MS will implement and people will rely upon left and right, so it will become a de-facto microsoft embrace-and-extend standard.

I really try to fight the kneejerk anti-microsoft sentiment around here, but lordy, all of their moves seem so calculated and evil. It's not just single actions, it's a pattern of actions. Humans are great at recognizing patterns. And even with good moves and bad moves, one can generally see a positive attitude behind Google, for example (some may disagree, but I think the general consensus is that they're not dastardly.) But with MS, every move seems like a piece of a puzzle showing a nasty, calculated, aggressive, anti-competitive entity. Everything seems consistent with that. The way the US rolled over on everything for political reasons is shameful. Hopefully the EU will right some of those wrongs, at least in part of the world.

I guess to try and find the bright side, one could say "at least it's documented" (without an exorbitant fee and crazy restrictions, like SMB et al.)

The big problem with this

[jafoc]

IMO there's nothing wrong with the decision to deprecate some of the most revulsive misfeatures of OOXML, but there's the very real problem that this could lead some people (in particular in the national standardization bodies that will have the opportunity in March to change their vote about OOXML) to think that these relatively minor changes somehow make OOXML suitable for acceptance as a "standard".

If you agree that this is a real risk, and you're willing to help with doing something about it, please join us at OpenISO.org and help put together a "problem report" document about OOXML that explains the main issues clearly.