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Microsoft Standing Firm On OOXML ISO Vote
christian.einfeldt writes "Microsoft has responded via the industry trade group ECMA to some of the thousands of criticisms of its submission of Office Open XML as an ISO standard. Open standards advocate Russell Ossendryver takes a look at those responses to see if Microsoft has made significant changes in either the substance of OOXML or the manner in which the OOXML specification will be maintained going forward. Ossendryver concludes that Microsoft's position has not significantly changed, but only hardened in place in advance of the Ballot Resolution Meeting which is to occur from February 25 through 29 in Geneva. While no one can say for certain whether Microsoft will succeed in having OOXML win the nod from the international community, Ossendryer thinks that Microsoft's firm stance is likely to backfire."
Petition currently running at noooxml.org
http://www.noooxml.org/petition
All I could think of when reading this is a M$FT rep saying "Come on, we're Microsoft! You can trust us!" while hiding a +10 Spiked Club of Patent Trolling behind their back....
Which OOXML most certainly isn't. There's real doubts that even Microsoft could implement it as it currently stands.
It's a scam, pure and simple.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Many reasons:
1. There is already an ISO standard for this same purpose.
2. There are exclusions in Microsoft's Open Specification Promise, meaning Microsoft can sue over other parties writing implementations of some of the things that the OOXML standard references (ActiveX and VBA are examples).
3. OOXML is designed so that fully-compliant applications can only be written by Microsoft, and mostly-complaint applications can be written by other parties but only to run on a Windows platform. Therefore OOXML is not inter-operable with other applications and especially not with non-Windows platforms, and the whole purpose of making something a standard is to facilitate such inter-operation.
4. OOXML is technically very inferior to the existing standard, ISO 26300. For example, OOXML specifies three different implementations of "a table", instead of just one common to different Office applications. This means that you cannot write a "table handling class" as a library, but instead you have to duplicate equivalent functionality several times over.
5. OOXML includes deliberately mandating bugs (such as dates before 1900) just to pander to errors in Microsoft software.
6. OOXML is controlled by just one corporation
7. ISO 26300 already has many implementations by many vendors on multiple platform. OTOH even Office 2007 running on Windows Vista does not implement OOXML
8. ISO 26300 even works with Microsoft Office (up to Office 2003) using a free plugin written by Sun. Microsoft deliberately broke Office 2007 file filters so that this plugin (or any other plugin not written by Microsoft) would not work in Office 2007.
9. ISO 26300 has a compliance test suite. You can use this test suite to make sure a given application works properly with ISO 26300. No such thing exists with OOXML.
10. It makes no sense to have "choice in standards"
They actually hold multiple patents (18 currently held, or pending) that apply to OOXML. My worst fear however, is that they'll maintain the format, and change it continually, not warning anyone when they're going to make a unilateral move. Leaving everyone else who wants to read documents sent to them in that format in the dark.
I make a point of nat being a grammar nazi, but there does come a time where the meaning you are trying to express is obscured by grammatical errors. IE in terms of Microsoft usually refers to Internet Explorer. IE in terms of ISO means Ireland's TLD. In future you might want to try using "i.e." which the most accepted abbreviation for the latin "id est," meaning "that is; in other words" and is the least confusing way to express your meaning.
Office already saves thousands, if not millions, of documents in OOXML
It's worse than that -- the MS-OOXML that Office saves documents in is not the same as the OOXML that MS spec'ed out to ECMA and got submitted to ISO. (This should be no surprise to anyone -- when has Microsoft ever produced software that matched the spec?) It's close, but different. Even if you could write software to the ECMA spec (doubtful since it is incomplete and ambiguous in places), it wouldn't interoperate well with MS Office.
-- Alastair
OOXML and ODF are both thin veneers on particular application products.
.sxc, etc) were vaguly similar to the ODF formats, but not the same. (And of course native formats aside, there are plenty of other office apps that can read/write ODF.)
OOXML may be (or pretend to be), but what application products were you thinking of for ODF? Were you aware that KOffice (no relation at all to OpenOffice.org) also uses ODF as its native document format? The old StarOffice/OpenOffice.org formats (.sxw,
The "thin veneer" argument against ODF is just Microsoft FUD.
-- Alastair
Office does no such thing. Office 2007
If we take this as given, then let us be absolutely clear here: the result is that there is no applications and no files at all
They have partial implementations. Quit making things up. Not even Microsoft has an implemented ECMA-accepted OOXML product out there so how can you justify what you're saying.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
No. Not at all.
Even if it were the case that the
So now we have a
The converters you speak of, I believe, are meant for the
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
Point taken; however ...
Yeah Apple is so open and this is the reason i can run OS X on my beige bo- OH WAIT I CANNOT !
Actually you can. There are a bunch of sites explaining how; that is much more useful than running XP on the new Intel Macs, which you can also do.
But that's not such an issue at least songs i downloaded with Itunes can be played on my noname mp3 play- OH NOES IT FAILS !
You have to convert them first; you can do that in Itunes.
Well at least Itunes runs on Linux, to- SHIT IT DOESN'T !
It works with wine apparently, or Crossover Office.
Google Knows All.
I wonder ... have you installed ODF plugin? So that those workers using OOo can be supported.
How about the other, about a million different, formats?
I would not consider "things to work" if there is several random file formats for word documents.
Quoting from zmotula's post:
"...see the post by the guy who evaluated the OOXML specification for the Czech Normalization Institute. This means that Czech Republic is most probably going to vote for OOXML when the time comes."
Read that post and you see that nearly every one of the Czech Republic's objections has been addressed (the only one not satisfactorily addressed was the Czech Republic's complaint that part of the spec has redundant info). Let me quote:
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Of course they are. There is, for example, only one ISO standard for paper sizes, ISO 216. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_size#The_international_standard:_ISO_216
This standard is used in all countries bar two. Becase there are two countries that use a competing non-ISO standard (they use an ANSI standard instead), it causes all sorts of un-necessary costs all around the world.
Actually, it is you who is misleading here, and your anti-ODF FUD is from brian Jones in 2005 (when OOXML also lacked any definition of formula syntax). ODF version 1.2, which is currently going through the approval process, has a far more detailed definition of formula syntax, known as OpenFormula, defined by an independent body. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenFormula This is what will be formally agreed in the upcoming version of ODF, but it is backward compatible with the (admittedly vauge) syntax definition in earlier versions of ODF, and it is also what all of the ODF applications actually now use.
OpenFormula is indeed technically superior to the formula syntax of OOXML, for the following reasons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenFormula#OpenFormula_Attributes
No, it is not. Before it was an ISO standard, it was an OASIS standard, and Microsoft were part of OASIS. Microsoft were invited to join the development process of ODF, which began in 2002, but Microsoft refused. Apart from the solitary exception of Microsoft, however, ODF otherwise has full industry consensus. In fact, after a long review period where comments from a broad array of interested parties were invited and incorporated, the ODF specification was put to a formal vote for OASIS approval, and it was passed unanimously. Yes, as an OASIS member, Microsoft approved ODF. Further, after that vote, ODF was submitted to ISO for approval as an International standard, via the long-winded PAS process (not fast-track), and after world-wide solicitation of comment and incorporation of recommendations, it was again approved unanimously. Yes, Microsoft approved it a second time ... then refused to implement it.
It wasn't wrong for the original release of Ofice 2007. Full plugins were borked in that release. I'm pleased to see that Microsoft fixed it (now that Office 2007 has a foothold) in SP1. As for Microsoft-sponsored ODF convertors ... they are convertors, not plugins. You cannot use Microsoft's convertors to open & save as ODF ... you must have an OOXML version of your document first, and then you can import & export it as ODF. Microsoft convertors do a terrible job compared to the Sun plugin, and of course you cannot set Office 2007 as the default for .odx file extensions because Office 2007 can't open them directly (without Sun's plugin).
... all the more reason to use ODF (ISO 26300) format and not OOXML.
Anyway, now that Sun's plugin works for Office 2007
Also came accross this Disclosure: In January 2007, Rick became embroiled in a controversy after mentioning in his XML.COM blog an approach from Microsoft for a several-day contract job to correct some Wikipedia entries from a neutral point of view, as an experienced technical writer with credible first-hand knowledge of standards and procedures. This was incorrectly reported as being a secret plot to subvert Wikipedia. With the support of many editors on Wikipedia, with complete transparency, and with care to respect the Wikipedia rules, Rick has started participating on the Wikipedia entries.
The company that is the co-owner of Topologi has a long-standing training business and will be providing some presenters for some Microsoft sponsored-events in 2007 in Australasia. It is highly likely that Rick will be one of the presenters on standards matters at some of these. link
Seems he has lots of involvement with MS.
I call bullshit on this one. I actually did look at both specs. OOXML is indeed a quick and dirty XML-like version of Office formats and doesn't even pretend to try to make functionality generic enough to make it easy for any application to implement. Even for functionality that is designed to interoperate with other types of applications OOXML is written just for the most popular add-on. ODF, on the other hand, makes a reasonable attempt at implementing functionality in a generic way so that it can be easily implemented by not only existing software packages but also new software developers who have no access to the source to existing applications. It certainly isn't perfect, but it is a night and day comparison to OOXML. ODF is already fairly well implemented by software from numerous commercial entities as well as open source projects. OOXML would be very, very hard for any third party to implement as written and it is unclear if anyone will ever be able to write to the spec instead of (as is the current case with MSOffice formats) trying to reverse engineer enough for partial compatibility.
OOXML is MS's attempt to create something close enough to an open standard to fool some bureaucrats or give them plausible deniability when they're bribed, but at the same time make sure that users don't gain the benefits of a truly open standard, which is to say interoperability with numerous programs so that users can easily switch from one to the other and gain all the benefits of real competition. This is business as usual for MS. If you look at their "shared source" initiative it was very much the same strategy. Customers wanted the advantages of open source software (many eyes to find bugs, competitive bids for new development, guaranteed migration path and future proofing) so MS came up with something sort of like open source that they could claim was "just as good" to people who didn't understand what the benefits really were and just knew that open source was beneficial in some way.
HTML is also a document standard.Yeah HTML is a document standard, but the stuff that you have to hand to IE in order to have it work properly is not HTML because it has to break the standard to work. It also fails to implement pretty much any of the last 6 years of development on HTML and other Web standards. I don't think you picked a very promising example if you're arguing in favor of MS's willingness to use standards. The whole of Web technologies has been artificially retarded by nearly a decade as a way to keep the Web from being a viable alternative platform to Windows. Progress has been crippled and billions of dollars wasted every year in order to insure MS's platform lock-in and avoid fair competition in the marketplace. The whole point of requiring standards compliance in the first place is to insure competition and the other benefits of avoiding a single vendor lock-in for office applications. MS understandably would rather have guaranteed profits than have to actually make a better product, but there is no reason why anyone other than them and people they have paid to go along with it. That is why it is important to have a truly open standard that can be and is fully implement by multiple vendors all of who are truly interoperable. OOXML is clearly an attempt to avoid that.
Is it really possible that you don't see how ridiculous it is for giant government customers to ask vendors to create products that comply with a specification and to have one monopolist tell the customer that "No we won't make a product that meets those specifications. Unlike everyone else we're going to invent another format that is incompatible and we're going to try to force you to use it using our monopoly influence in several markets." Not only should governments not be accepting OOXML as a standard, they should be charging MS with criminal antitrust violation for trying to foist it upon them.
Well, because the "standard" is so convoluted, it's not totally clear.
.docx files end up chock full of VML because of linkage with proprietary MS tech. See the "Application-defined" binary blobs for Microsoft Ink(TM) data?
.docx using such deprecated or proprietary features (i.e., saving a file which is not interoperable with non-MS products using the OOXML standard). And you have to be some kind of genius to know what not to use.
.bin file format" might be interesting to you also.
The OOXML standard states that use of (proprietary) VML is deprecated, but if you search the web for "VML"+"office 2007" you get lots of info on how most
This may or may not be OK with the standard, the big point is that there is no mode for Office 2007 which warns you when you save
"Office 2007
Standards for bolts and screws? Don't get me started!
:-
..] different competing standards are bad. Which is why there is only one standard type of screw drive head, Flathead. I once heard someone claim that there were other standards, such as Philips (better for automated assembly) and Pozidriv (allows latge torque without gouging the screw); but I reckon they were lying.
..] I mean, how could competition possibly be better than one standard having a monopoly? Everyone knows how good monopolies are.
You wrote
[sarcasm
Are you trying to say that having these these different screw head standards is OK, therefore two document standards will also be OK?
Low torque screw heads are a good example of why there should only be one standard - Pozidriv in this case. Philips was an earlier cross head, still used by the Far East, but Pozidriv was an improvement on it. And any crosshead is better than flat head - more blade drive area and less likely to slip out.
Many people do not understand though that such standards are NOT compulsory (except in some safety areas). Even if dropped as a standard, Flathead would always be widely used in special areas - like on camera battery compartments meant to be opened with a coin. Likewise there will be "anti-tamper" heads which are essentially non-standard.
Note I said "low torque" use. Standards can overlap. There are also standards for hexagon and Allen heads, used for high torque and larger applications. While there can be overlap with low torque applications, they are basically for different applications. ODF and OOXML however are NOT for different applications.
[sarcasm
Standards don't "have monopolies". Standards are NOT monopolies. In fact, standards are the very opposite idea from monopolies. One idea of ODF is to stop monopoly.
Standards should enable any company to come along and join in the party without fear of patent or copyright infringement. That is why Microsoft hate standards, because they love their own monopoly. But, recognising that the world is demanding a standard here, they are desparately promoting a crippled half-baked one in OOXML in the hope that their rivals will find hard to implement, and that its control will be retained by themselves.