RTF Vs. OOXML

Rob Weir has an interesting essay comparing the viciousness of RTF and OOXML: "The [document format standard] concerns of 2004 (or 1995 even) are very similar to the concerns of 2007... 'RTF is defined as whatever Word saves when you ask it to save as RTF.' This should sound familiar. OOXML is nothing more than the preferences of Microsoft Office. Whenever Word changes, OOXML will change. And if you are a user or competitor of Word, you will be the last one to hear about these changes. The coding of Office 14 a.k.a. Office 2009 is well underway. Beta releases are expected in early 2008. But are file format changes needed to accommodate the new features being discussed in Ecma? No. Are they being discussed in ISO? No. Are they being discussed anywhere publicly? No. By owning the 'standard' and developing it in secret, in an Ecma rubber-stamp process, Microsoft rigs the system so they can author an ISO standard with which they are effortlessly compatible, while at the same time ensuring that their products maintain an insurmountable head start in implementing these same standards. Is this how an open standard is developed?"

Comments

OOD has doomed us all to bad standards

[thogard]

Computers do Input, Output, Processing and Storage. Its been that way for more than a half centuy.
At some point people thought it would be cool if that wasn't the case and dreamed up lots of crud to put in text books sold to college students and they made lots of money but hasn't changed a thing.

It still doesn't fix the problem that a word processor has an internal model of what the user typed. Its job is to output that in a way that is consistent with what it's showing the user and what the user told it to do. Now for some odd reason a large group of people come along and say "we want magic" and expect the input/output and storage models to be disassociated. How is that supposed to work? Remapping input? More levels of indirection? It sill doesn't fix the core problem.