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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?"
Up front disclaimer: This article has a tangible odor of troll, so don't blame me and the other posters for responding in kind (flamebait, troll, offtopic, etc.)
FTS:
I wouldn't say this is entirely true (effortless) on Microsoft's part. Any user of any Microsoft product is well aware of how difficult it is to work in and out of various new vs. old formats. Yes, even Microsoft has a difficult time being compatible and interoperable with Microsoft (actually, I seem to have better luck overall with interoperability using OpenOffice...).
And, also FTS:
Actually no, usually Microsoft takes an existing open standard (e.g., sockets), implements it poorly (winsock), and puts it everywhere (95,98, NT, XP, etc.) forcing the technical community to re-adopt the standard in Microsoft's cast.
It's official, I've been on the internet way too much. I saw "RTF Vs. OOXML" with just a quick glance and read it as some new, bizarre acronym like "ROFLCOPTOR".
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
No.
Here's a copy of the draft OpenISO.org "Problem Report" entry for this issue:
Microsoft's attempt to essentially unilaterally dictate office document standards is an abuse of their dominant position
Problem description:
Normally standardization is conducted by means all interested parties participating in a discussion of the desired features, so that all interested parties have an essentially equal opportunity to develop products implementing the standard.
By contrast, OOXML is simply documentation of the document format that Microsoft's products already use, and there is no indication that Microsoft would intend to make the details about future versions of OOXML available to competitors before Microsoft is ready to release their own implementation of the new features for public beta testing.
Expected impact:
To the extent that OOXML is accepted as a standard, all of Microsoft's competitors will be encumbered with a permanent economic disadvantage.
Possible solution:
Reject all claims about OOXML in some way being a standard, and take legal action, on the basis of national and international competition law, against Microsoft as well as against Ecma and all other organizations which are guilty of aiding and abetting Microsoft's anticompetitive actions.
I think I could beat OOXML, if I took a few weeks to train up with some old kung fu movies beforehand.
-- RTF
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
It's definitely important that those who agree that OOXML is not a good standard should help organize a list of problems that can be easily seen by the members of the upcoming ISO OOXML ballot meeting in February 2008 and all the Internet in general.
OpenISO.org, an independent open organization much inspired by slashdot, is planning to include the issue of this post in the problem report document produces in its OpenISO.org Review of OOXML. OpenISO.org is asking for help to organize the comments of your country in a wiki at http://f29500.openiso.org./
Please have a look at all the problem reports at http://f29500.openiso.org/ and help to include more and organize the ones already included, even if only one or two. The more documented and organized the OOXML problems are for discussion in an easy accessible manner, the less likely it will be accepted as a standard.
ps: I'm not associated in any way with openiso.org, it just seems to be the right thing to do.
call it ROTFL
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
My suggestion: Get a better title for the slashdot piece. How about "OOXML will not work just like RTF failed."
RTF? RTF what? What am I supposed to be reading to eliminate my ignorance of some set of operations?
While making a new standards body like OpenISO sounds like a good idea, I don't want to rain on that parade.
However, I think there is also a problem with the national standards bodies. They can vary from a formal technical committees answerable to democratically elected governments according to what their country needs, through to a ragtag bunch of nobodies who can dictate whatever they want according to their specific corporate interests. I think ISO needs to start with itself and standardise how national bodies work.
Also I think that if you are unhappy with the decision your national body made, then you need to either seek to get on it (or make a group that raises funds to get one of you on it), or setup a competing national standards organisation, get to work, and then try to replace the old one as ISO's National standards body for your country.
My little Linux and tech blog
On top of OOXML being developed in a closed environment, MS Office is not even using the proposed ECMA or ISO spec, they including all types of tie-ins. This article explains more: not even compliant
I have worked on industry standards before. Writing spec is just half the battle. You then have the problem with implementation. Every company will implement it in slightly different ways. You would be surprised on how many ways there are to read a spec! Then you get in a yelling match over who is actually doing it correctly.
When you have a reference application to test with then you have less yelling.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Output on different devices is what a word processor does. Other wise its "process" step wouldn't be anything at all. And the 1950's model doesn't consider "storage" part of the I/O model but modern sanity sort of would imply it unless its direct memory or object dump.
Words storage model is odd. It doesn't match the input model but is sort of based on the output model assuming line printers with loads of hacks to make it work with modern printers. As far as I know its been that way since I was using Word (for Unix on a 3b2) in 1987.
Microsoft's published RTF specs for a quite some time now -- the latest version of the spec is 1.9 and you can download it from Microsoft in your choice of binary .doc or MS-OOXML .docx, sorry no .rtf!
The spec is actually not bad, though the continued efforts to shoehorn in new features gets a little laughable. Here's an example of an RTF-reencoded XML tag from the spec:
As far as I know they've never tried to have RTF ratified by any standards body, but it's still very widely used. People have a lot of files named .doc around that are actually RTFs, and some word processors (AbiWord for one) actually use .doc-named RTFs as their "Word" format, since, having a spec, it's a lot easier to write than the binary .doc format. By design, old Word versions and non-Word software ignore any tags they don't understand, and I'd guess that most modern third-party RTF parsers and encoders are designed around the 2000 RTF spec (version 1.6) without all the new stuff.
But given the MS of embrace and extend, I must resign myself to a world in which MS products are just too unreliable to use for real work of any significant magnitude. I know that RTF is not sufficient to make the fancy memos people like, but it does seem to work.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
You can also find a documentation of HTML on MSDN, this is not a standard either it's a documentation of the HTML implementation in Internet Explorer. This type of document is usually called a standard. While it's true that ODF started as a documentation of StarOffice XML, it's worth noting that ODF went through a long standardization process and have been changed by many parties. Including Microsoft!
But the key point is that the whole process was open.
The ODF standard was designed by an comitee (OASIS), where several of the various office suite maker collaborate.
The procedure has been openly documented and everyone was able to know what was being done.
The standard was available "in advance" of the products, not the other way around. The standard will be followed by the various maker as you said.
The critics made to microsoft in TFA are that Microsoft is designing the standard alone without consulting the concurrence or even letting them know what they are doing.
The next iteration of OOXML is probably going to be made available "afterward" : they're going to first build MSOffice 14 and then publish "What we've done new in MSOffice 2010" or some other king of list of modification they did (notice past tense) to the standart. As you say, it's the product which will define de standard.
Yes, in both case the standard are published.
Yes, in both case they started life as internal representation of specific softwares.
BUT, OOXML is still an internal representation of word, and is best defined as "whatever the next version of word spills when you hit "Save" ", if Office change, OOXML will change with nobody knowing it in advance and being able to take part into the process. Want to make cross-operating software ? Please wait until Microsoft takes their next product to the market and makes it mind about what they'll throw next into it. Too bad that this will introduce delays into your own product.
The "standard" is still a moving target, the only difference with reverse engineering is that nobody needs to decypher cryptic binary data but only read 1700 pages, appart from that it's the same "play catch up".
WHEREAS ODF has been beated into a standard by a body where different vendors/makers could give their opinion and everyone can be informed of potential modification of the standard as it's a public procedure.
Want to take part in the development of the next standard ? You can !
Want to write software compatible with it ? Just stick to what is published in the ISO standard no need to track a single specific vendor and it's proprietary product.
ODF may be a bad standard for some people but it's still an OPEN standard, as in "the procedure of the creation of this standard was open".
OOXML is just a "we let you read the text we print to document what we've thrown in Office 2010" closed standard.
Yup. I agree with you.
Must probably all the noise comming from Microsoft's marketing department "But see, our is a standard too : we publish the specs too !!!"
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
I have a vague idea about what OOXML is, but not RTF
Imagine hell with more backslashes.
It goes from God, to Jerry, to me.
I came here to ridicule the people who tagged this article "flamebait", who, in their delicate minds, confuse righteous anger and unabashed criticism with meaningless name-calling. The article is factual and its point is razor sharp. Since when are we worried about hurting Microsoft's self-esteem?
Now, my post and the above is more accurately accessed as "flamebait". His point is lost inside a wall of meandering text, which is really just a a vehicle for his ineffectual expression of contempt for "FOSSies". Here's some advice - don't hide like you're afraid of losing your precious karma, and don't be so stupidly wrong. If you want evidence of consumer choices and Microsoft's growing irrelevance, look at the list here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/pc/
If you filter the A/C's rant, there's a point of view in there which essentially says "just follow what Microsoft wants you to do". That's fine if you want stagnation of capabilities and to pay through the nose for the privilege.
Example, the Browser War was more than just a browser - it was hijacking the Internet Ecosystem which was supposed to be open and available to all. Microsoft saw open standard browsers and servers, particularly with Java, as a mortal threat to their platform.
To counteract, Microsoft developed IE and IIS to be a client-server relationship instead of a stateless browser as intended. Tools were widely distributed to create web sites for that system which were wholly incompatible with anything else. The goal was for anyone NOT using a complete Microsoft chain of technology to see a blank page on the Internet.
They almost pulled it off. The result was IE gained market dominance and, with the exception of exploits and treachery of completely hijacked computers, no other technical advances in browsers came about for many years. The fly in the ointment was they didn't have server dominance. Had they been able to overcome Apache, you can bet we'd be paying Microsoft for every page view on the Internet.
That's why we shouldn't just do what Microsoft says.
Most of the stuff on
That's not an accurate description. The point that article makes about the spreadsheet is that OOXML distributes information all over the place so that to make the simple change of replacing a formula in a cell with a constant it is necessary to edit multiple files. The problem is not that you can't make changes inconsistent with the schema - it is that the schema is poorly designed.
Furthermore, the spreadsheet example is only one of several cases discussed, so even if you were to rebut it successfully the article would still contain a valid critique.