Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

RTF Vs. OOXML

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the already-extinguished dept.

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?"

3 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Re:well, not effortlessly by Gr8Apes · · Score: 5, Informative

    You know, if the only item I had to compare formats with was MS and applications trying to be MS, I might have come to your conclusion.

    However, you should look to older and other standards. HTML - 4 versions and all of them work seamlessly together, although newer versions may not have the pizazz in older renderers. WordPerfect and WordStar, good examples of how file formats don't have to break backwards compatibility from what I recall.

    As for winsock, that was a poor port of the BSD socket stack. Actually, it's a really poor port. Multicast still doesn't work, and if it did, an entire set of applications could occur with much lower traffic on the internet. (Think IPTV, IPRadio, and other streaming type applications)

    --
    The cesspool just got a check and balance.
  2. RTF What? by Shinmizu · · Score: 5, Funny

    RTF? RTF what? What am I supposed to be reading to eliminate my ignorance of some set of operations?

  3. Office 2007 not even compliant by Bayesela · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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