Roadmap To the OOXML Process

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "With all the pieces floating around on OOXML, it's been hard to get a good sense of where it is in the standardization process. Fortunately, IBM's Rob Weir has a provided us a road map. Today Microsoft is due to submit its set of proposals for resolving the 3,522 comments to JTC1, which controls OOXML. Tomorrow or soon after, we can expect a media blitz heralding these 'changes,' as numerous reporters are, reportedly, being flown to Redmond. But all those recommendations are non-binding, because only JTC1 can change the standard and that happens during the Ballot Resolution Meeting. And even if all of the recommendations are adopted, no one has to change their vote. The BRM, where all the real work will happen, isn't until February 25-29. Within the 30 days after that, everyone will be able to reconsider their vote. That's when we can expect the real fireworks."

Comments

grim.

[apodyopsis]

Its certainly a triumph of commercial interests and bureaucracy over design and common sense. I suspect we all know the eventual outcome from this farce.

Re:Czech comments resolved by the ECMA

[adpsimpson]

Interestingly the absolute worst elements, such as 'footnoteLayoutLikeWW8', 'lineWrapLikeWord6' and 'useWord97LineBreakRules' (the parent's article lists objections to about a dozen of these) seem to have been resolved.

This does raise the prospect that a truly open implementation of the format could be created, which was my biggest worry about a format which calls itself 'open'. What we were faced with before was a supposed standard format which had unexplained and undocumented hooks to long defunct, proprietary formats which only Microsoft could correctly implement. If these are now correctly documented, we may now have a format which anyone may be able to implement, although still in the firm grasp of Microsoft.

We may even have more information about how old versions of MS Office operated (if, for example, the mysterious footnote behaviour of various versions of Word has been explained).

However, since the resolution from ECMA is behind a passworded site, the official resolutions cannot be accessed. Odd behaviour for a standards creating body at a consultation stage, leaving us hoping the Czech team, and the others, have done their work.